Prism academy sybilla a.., p.1
Prism Academy- Sybilla: A Litrpg Supers Adventure, page 1
Prism Academy- Sybilla
Copyright License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Prism Academy- Sybilla
Copyright © 2022
David Burke
Cover art copyright
David Burke
Contents
The Story Up to This Point-
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Too Late
Chapter 2 - Land Fishing
Chapter 3 - A Frightening Thought
Chapter 4 - Into the Pit
Chapter 5 - What Scares the Monsters
Chapter 6 - Plain Speech
Chapter 7 - Sorting Problems
Chapter 8 - Better than a Nail in the Head?
Chapter 9 - The Kitten Becomes a Tigress
Chapter 10 - Stat Sheet 1
Interlude 1 - Who’s Who
Chapter 11 - Speculation
Chapter 12 - A Decision
Chapter 13 - Trying Something New
Chapter 14 - In Between
Chapter 15 - Air Priska
Chapter 16 - Son of Shadow
Chapter 17 - Showdown in My Mind
Chapter 18 - Bagels and Words
Chapter 19 - Let Them Watch
Chapter 20 - A Still Step
Chapter 21 - Is Anything Private Now?
Chapter 22 - Hard Limits and New Options
Chapter 23 - Upgrades
Interlude 2 - Into the Dark
Chapter 24 - Dressed to Kill
Chapter 25 - Coterie
Chapter 26 - Questions Before Dinner
Chapter 27 - Remembering
Chapter 28 - Cutting the Line
Chapter 29 - Someplace Quieter
Chapter 30 - Party Crasher
Chapter 31 - Her New Friends
Chapter 32 - Did That Change Anything?
Chapter 33 - Enhancement
Chapter 34 - Becumming a Family
Chapter 35 - Brainstorming
Chapter 36 - Gut Check
Chapter 37 - Moving Forward
Chapter 38 - Lists and Innuendos
Chapter 39 - Setting Dates
Chapter 40 - Lab Time
Chapter 41 - Negative Space
Chapter 42 - Sharing Secrets
Chapter 43 - Playing with Fire
Chapter 44 - Prison Break
Chapter 45 - An Offer
Chapter 46 - The Walking Dead
Chapter 47 - Reunion
Interlude 3 - So Close
Chapter 48 - Heartbreak
Chapter 49 - Shadow Bond?
Chapter 50 - Domestic Unrest
Epilogue - Moving Parts
The Story Up to This Point-
One of the issues which people have asked for is a reminder up front of who’s who. In the past I have put an index at the end of the book, but in some ways, it makes more sense to put that up here.
Significant Terms
Board - the group which owns Prism Academy and controls it in broad terms. It is composed of representatives from the five major private shareholders, a representative for the remaining smaller private shareholders, and a government representative, usually from the military. In book 2, Aden gained a seat on the board and thus a vote in his future.
Bonding - the process of forming a connection between a Ray and Refractor. It is lifelong and causes the two to care deeply about one another. It enhances the Ray while opening the affinity of the Refractor. A Refractor can only bond with a Ray who has one of his affinities which he hasn’t already opened.
Four-X (4x) - the name is given to those rare Refractors who open four of six progenitor affinities.
NAAG - North American Alliance Government. This is the primary government which is over the 13 remaining cities/safe zones in North America. There are supposedly two other areas where humans remain alive but as far as the public knows there is limited contact with those other areas.
Prism - the superhero name of the founder of the academy, a Refractor who had all six progenitor affinities. Now, the name is given to a super with all six affinities.
Progenitor Energy - a mysterious energy which arrived on the Earth 178 years ago and created supers.
When a human becomes a super as a result of exposure to progenitor energy, they manifest one or more affinities which are categorized by colors. Rays can only have one affinity, while Refractors will have between two and six.
Red - Bright Energy
Orange - Movement
Yellow - Senses
Green - Morphic
Blue - Mind
Violet - Dark Energy
Ray - the term for a female super. They all have enhanced strength, speed, and durability as well as access to one of the six affinities.
Refractor - the term for a male super. They share the same physical enhancements as Rays but the greater the number of their affinities the greater their base physical stats. They also have access to between two and six of the affinities but can only access the by bonding with a Ray.
Shadow - a mysterious energy/substance which appears to be the opposite of progenitor energy. It is what corrupts animals into monsters and what possesses incompatible humans who are exposed to progenitor energy. There are hints that it may be more of a being, than an energy.
Tri-Star - the name is given to Refractors with three progenitor affinities. Once the most common of Refractors, now the few who reach this level are some of the greatest supers on Earth.
Cast
Aden’s Nanite Optimization Program (A.N.O.P. — aka ANOP) - a nanite based AI system placed into Aden as a child by his mother and other unknown parties.
Aden Samuels (aka Sol) - the first new prism in a hundred years, he is a super with all six affinities. As of the end of book 2 he has activated his affinities for bright energy, sensory, morph, and dark energy by bonding with matching Rays. He also bonded with a psychic Ray, but she was killed leaving that affinity opened but bondless.
Aqueous (aka Molly) - a super with a morph affinity that allows her to take various fluid or gaseous forms and, after bonding with Aden, a battle form. She is unreserved in her support of Aden and more than a little handsy. Her world view is pretty simple: whatever is good for her and her team is good—and anything else is bad.
Bravo - a powerful super and chief instructor for the new supers. His affinities are morph and movement. He is bonded with Switch and Flurry.
Catherine - a super with a psychic affinity. She is the right hand of the regent and a prominent scientist within Prism Academy. She has an unknown history with Aden’s parents. Evidence has been mounting to indicate that she is behind a number of bad things, including human experiments and potential deals made with the Shadow.
Demis (aka Jill Perkins) - a super with a dark energy affinity. She is the most recent of Aden’s bonds. She has a troubled background with abuse and neglect but instead of allowing it to make her a victim, she has sought, imperfectly, to live life in her own way. She was highly protective of Aden even before bonding with him at the end of book two. It stands to reason she will be even more so, now.
Feinston - the regent of Prism Academy, he is responsible for over all recruitment of new supers, and is head of the Chicago branch. His affinities are psychic and movement.
Flurry - one of Bravo’s bonded Rays. She has a movement affinity.
Inertia - a super and former teammate with Precision and Aqueous. They had all agreed never to bond unless they all bonded the same Refractor. She has a dark energy affinity. She attacked Aden in book 1 attempting to force a bond with him and then has joined forced with poachers and worse in book 2.
Inferna (aka Jen, or Jennifer Soros) - heir to the Soros Clan and a new super with a bright energy affinity. She is Aden’s first bond and the one he goes to for advice in dealing with political machinations.
LM (aka Lean Man, or Daniel Brown) - a super who acts as Aden’s Mentor. His two affinities are morphic and sensory.
Precision (aka Willow Thompson) - a super with a sensory affinity. She is Aden’s yellow bond and the tactical leader of their team. As of the end of the second book, Aden has had the tech team work on developing drones and some high-tech armor to allow her to see the entire battlefield and better direct their team. She came from a well-to-do family, but nothing like the Soros Clan. Her commitment to Aden is unwavering, but she worries about being able to protect him.
Queenie - a renegade super who Aden bonded in book two. The bond drove her to sacrifice herself in an unnecessary attempt to save Aden, because she was unwilling to lose the love she felt through the bond—something which she had never truly experienced before in her life.
Supreme - one of the three strongest supers in the world—until Aden appears. He has affinities for movement, positive energy, and sensory. He sponsors Aden to take the test to determine if he can become a super.
Switch - one of Bravo’s b
Sybilla (aka Sybil Mizrahi) - a super with a psychic affinity. She is the one who discovered Aden, even before he became a super. She is known as the Seer and her secondary psychic ability gives her limited visions of the future. She claims that there is a karmic thread connecting her and Aden, but has never really explained what that means. She had been Aden’s choice for his psychic bond, until she withdrew herself and suggested he should attempt to bond Queenie. She did this, believing it was what was best for Aden—even if it wasn’t what he wanted and even though it broke her heart to do so. This obviously ruptured the trust between Aden and her.
Titana - a green or morphic affinity super on Aden’s security team. While she can’t bond with Aden after Aqueous opens his morphic affinity, she believes in his mission and is attracted to him.
Twinkle (aka Kenna Malone) - a super who works for the Soros Clan. She has a movement affinity with the ability to teleport. She has a bit of a chip on her shoulder, growing up in a poor family which is barely part of the clan. She and Aden connect over their common experiences of growing up without much. She is seeking to become Aden’s orange bond.
Valkyrie (aka Petra Mitchell) - a military pilot and movement affinity Ray with the ability to duplicate various aspects of vehicles. She is the military’s top pick for his orange bond and connects with Aden over their mutual interest in working with their hands to repair things.
Wraith (aka Priska Madur) - one of the newly created supers. She has a movement affinity which included the ability to phase through objects and as she discovered in book two, between dimensions. At the beginning of book three she is stuck between dimensions in a place or horrors. She and Aden had started to form a friendship in book one but haven’t have much contact since then.
The next issue before a brief recap is the set-up of this book. This is litrpg. To me that means it has stats in it and that those stats are expressly stated.
During regular chapters I will discuss the upgrades they get including gear and the above-mentioned aspects. I will talk about when they have a choice between skills. I may occasionally provide a reminder about what a skill or power does, although I try to avoid too much of that. It can be a difficult balance to strike between how much of a reminder the reader/listener needs and what is just going to be annoying. If you are like me, you have many series that you are reading, and sometimes little reminders help.
As for full stat sheets, those will occur in their own chapters and generally only as often as there have been significant changes. That means it could be one to three times per book. I love litrpg and I love stats, but I know that everyone has different levels of preference. By making them their own chapters, I am attempting to meet everyone’s needs.
If you like stats like me then you can read or listen to them. If you don’t like them, then you can skip those chapters. That will make it easier for you. Despite the occasional review which suggests this- there is no attempt to pad the word count of a story by doing this. If all litrpg was written solely for me, there would be more stats not less, but I am doing it this way to try to meet everyone’s needs. There will also be a summary at the end after the index. You don’t have to refer to that or you can cheat and look forward to see the progress that has been made in this book.
Okay, with that business out of the way, I’m going to recap the story up to this point and then let you dive right in.
Book 1 - We met Aden in the slums. After being saved by Supreme, who he impressed by standing up to a gang, he gains the opportunity to attend the next test for supers and the testing fee is waived for him. Once he is exposed to progenitor energy, and ANOP becomes active, he learns that his mother injected a nanite based AI into him as a child.
This leads to a number of problems, including the realization that many of his memories have been altered or suppressed, as how he feels about negative things has been affected. During the testing, he learns that he is the first Prism in more than one hundred years, although exactly what role his mother’s actions played in that is still being revealed.
His primary struggle is to assert control of his own destiny, while wading through the political mire at the academy even as he seeks to learn to control his abilities, form a team, and have his first confrontations with the shadow.
Book 2 - The stakes are upped when he calls the board out and gains a measure of independence by voiding the contract he had signed before taking the exam. He also finds himself forced to bond with a renegade Ray who is guilty of numerous crimes. Aden’s struggles in this book have some of the same elements, but he starts going on more missions outside of the academy—including trying to rescue his ex-gf, who was abducted from the apartment he had shared with her in the slums.
His relationships with his bonds grow stronger, but he is also being pushed to form bonds for his remaining three affinities. New Rays step up in his interest including, Tess, a scientist, Valkyrie, a military officer, and Twinkle, their teleporter. In the end, he bonds Demis as his dark energy bond and reaches a deal with the military and Soros Clan which effectively holds the rest of the board at bay.
He is rocked by the death of his new psychic bond. She may have been an evil person, but the bond still created an incredibly strong emotional connection between them, and he is nearly crippled by that loss.
Now, Aden resolves to move forward—determining who can be trusted and who is using him—as more secrets are revealed.
Prologue
Terror would be an understatement for what Priska felt now. She was stuck in a nightmare. No, that wasn’t fair; nightmares made more sense than this. At least they did whenever she thought of those she remembered having as a child. There had always been a connection to the events of her life, no matter how warped or odd.
Wherever she was now, however, was like nothing she had ever experienced. At first, she had thought this ‘upside down’ space, as the journal had described it, was empty. That seemed like wishful thinking, though. The emptiness was very alive—but whatever filled this space was so alien to her that just looking too closely at the dim shapes that flickered at the edge of her vision threatened her sanity.
None of the many gods which her grandmother had told her about explained this place or the things here. She felt like she’d been here for hours, but knew it likely had only been minutes. Some time had passed, though. She’d seen flashes of light and streaks of darkness through the eerie grayness. She still had her senses and in this strange place had experienced sounds she could taste as well as smells she could feel. It would have been very trippy if it wasn’t so terrifying.
Most bizarre had been when Aden and someone else had appeared before her eyes. They’d been like streaks of color. Probably two other people. An orange streak and a violet streak next to the dazzling swirl of color which was Aden. He’d only skirted along the edge of this place, never sinking into the quagmire she found herself stuck in.
Priska cried out to him. It felt cowardly. Worse, it felt like a betrayal. If he came to her, would he be stuck in this hell with her? Then he was gone. She thought he had seen her but seemed shocked.
A few moments later, he had appeared again. His outfit was different this time. It didn’t seem possible that there had been time for him to have changed, yet he had. Something was off about that, but she didn’t know what it was. The second he had appeared, the colors around him had been even denser, richer, almost like he was the only real thing here.
