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Tree branch: check. Assorted lightweight seed-bearing fruits and nuts: check. Other seeds: check. Water bottle, for when she has to veer away from the river: check.
Better not linger in her starting place too much longer. Yellow's faster than her and may have already come home to a wreck. Thorn might have a habit of checking up on the place, even, just in case. She's invisible, inaudible, unsmellable - that won't help if he sends someone thorough. Or comes in person.
She sets out.
She's been flying for about thirty minutes after her shopping trip when she falls through a tear and squeaks inaudibly and lands in the middle of -
imeanforever
wormcan
Mostly capes with wide-area damaging attacks, hoping for a chance to fire through a gate, and some people who are more useful for organization within their groups than for their power. Anyone whose tactic against major threats involves fighting them head-on has less to gain from being stashed in Fairyland.
Promise also gets the Kept she requested and then some.
Promise also gets the Kept she requested and then some.
imeanforever
Excellent. She perfunctorily inducts her old new Kept into the standard Kept rules, shoos them into Hawthorn, evaluates her would-be visitors and sends the acceptable ones through.
wormcan
They're all acceptable; Promise said her requirements in advance and nobody wants to risk her insisting on a name. But movers and strangers are less useful here anyway, so the loss from requiring containable capes is minimal.
wormcan
No one is very surprised by Nilbog's creation not working. The fairy was less of a long shot, but expectations weren't huge there either. Well, it's not like she was ever strictly necessary to fighting Scion on this end.
imeanforever
"If it is ever an overwhelming strategic necessity, I figured out her name, so to the extent she can be powered by the already-dead she's available; I retain my objection to slave labor in lesser emergencies."
wormcan
"At her current power level she is unlikely to be what makes the difference, but that is potentially useful information."
wormcan
Eventually the day approaches. Parahumans are arrayed to fight if there's a fight, String Theory has n-tuple checked her work and verified that it'll blow up the correct planet, and Promise is in position to make a gate from the empty world to Scion's and get out of the blast radius.
It would be unutterably hilarious if after all this it turns out that Scion's real body isn't a gateable location at all.
It would be unutterably hilarious if after all this it turns out that Scion's real body isn't a gateable location at all.
wormcan
And the doomsday device falls straight down, its timer counting down from barely above zero.
wormcan
The device is several scaled-up F-drivers, pointed in different downward directions. Each of them more powerful than the weapon that would knock the moon out of orbit, they aren't trying to destroy Scion's planet's orbit. It'll do that too, but spiraling into the sun would take time. Instead, it's aimed to provide its astronomical amounts of force to a variety of points in the planet. One is directed straight down, to shatter the continent it's landing on and slam through the interior of the planet. Others to pass harmlessly through the rock for most of the distance to the opposite surface, then erupt outward. With enough angles, everywhere on the planet has an earth-shattering weapon pointed at it. And to make there not be a planet at all any more, that just takes supplying enough energy to overcome the whole thing's gravity. This was built by String Theory, and it was designed to make the planet go Alderaan.
The weapon fires. With everyone watching him, Scion disappears.
The weapon fires. With everyone watching him, Scion disappears.
wormcan
The entity feels it. Something hit it, on the world where its real body is. The host species can't have done this; the entity observed their capabilities before selecting them and interdimensional travel is far beyond it. The shards can't have done this; they had safeguards added in many cycles ago making them incapable of seeing or reaching worlds like that one. Some could not be prevented, powers that could reach that target through this avatar, but few of them. And precognition automatically moves the entity out of the way of such attacks. Nothing happened here.
The entity's avatar vanishes, returning to its world. It sees the planet broken, seas evaporated, and severe damage to many of its shards. It clasps its avatar's hands in front of it, a sphere spreading out and stilling everything in its path. Earthquakes stop, rocks settle back into their assigned places, and many of the shard clusters are undamaged. The entity looks at the device that caused this destruction. It is familiar, technology copied from a host species cycles ago. A shard did do this. The entity recalibrates its precognitive ability. Not only protecting against those powers that can strike at it through its golden avatar, it will provide a method of eliminating anything that enters his earth. The next such attack will be over before it can begin. The entity manifests its avatar again, taking care to look exactly as before. It quickly finds the world the device came from. No recognition; that world is empty. It returns to the primary destination, where most of its shards' hosts are, to look for who caused this attack.
To the eyes of the world, Scion reappears. And he's angry.
The entity's avatar vanishes, returning to its world. It sees the planet broken, seas evaporated, and severe damage to many of its shards. It clasps its avatar's hands in front of it, a sphere spreading out and stilling everything in its path. Earthquakes stop, rocks settle back into their assigned places, and many of the shard clusters are undamaged. The entity looks at the device that caused this destruction. It is familiar, technology copied from a host species cycles ago. A shard did do this. The entity recalibrates its precognitive ability. Not only protecting against those powers that can strike at it through its golden avatar, it will provide a method of eliminating anything that enters his earth. The next such attack will be over before it can begin. The entity manifests its avatar again, taking care to look exactly as before. It quickly finds the world the device came from. No recognition; that world is empty. It returns to the primary destination, where most of its shards' hosts are, to look for who caused this attack.
To the eyes of the world, Scion reappears. And he's angry.
imeanforever
Well, fuck.
This is really the wrong time to try talking, but all Promise's sorcerous tasks can be handled by others, she wrote down Moord Nag's name with all the others for emergencies, and she knows where she'll respawn and has stuff prepped there if necessary, and other sorcerers are manning the artillery gates, and the Kept and fairies all have their orders stable for now -
"Door to Scion -"
This is really the wrong time to try talking, but all Promise's sorcerous tasks can be handled by others, she wrote down Moord Nag's name with all the others for emergencies, and she knows where she'll respawn and has stuff prepped there if necessary, and other sorcerers are manning the artillery gates, and the Kept and fairies all have their orders stable for now -
"Door to Scion -"
wormcan
It's that organism again. The one that managed to talk to him, and gave him a directive that didn't help anything. And, apparently, that injured him. Not that he looks it.
Recognition.
Role.
Ineffective.
He raises a hand to threaten her. He wants her dead, exactly, killing her is just the obvious thing to do after someone manages to hurt him.
Recognition.
Role.
Ineffective.
He raises a hand to threaten her. He wants her dead, exactly, killing her is just the obvious thing to do after someone manages to hurt him.
imeanforever
"Why us, then, why not -" The scope of things suddenly widens in her head; there are two and two is not a real number and there must be more. "- the others like you, instead?"
wormcan
The entity remembers. A gray planet, covered in silt and water, every available space in all versions of that planet filled with the ancestors of its kind. Competing and fighting each other, eventually sacrificing the planet and most of the population in order to move beyond it to stars and planets that aren't so crowded with entities that they need to fight each other.
Tangle. The entity speaks, describing what fighting each other means to its kind, but how much the strange organism's ability can translate is a different question.
Cooperation.
Cycle.
Tangle. The entity speaks, describing what fighting each other means to its kind, but how much the strange organism's ability can translate is a different question.
Cooperation.
Cycle.
imeanforever
She gets... some of that.
"You could change roles. The mortals used to think of you as a defender, a hero -"
wormcan
Goal.
Cycle.
Endpoint.
The feared endpoint is the same as the tangle they came from, but in every space in all accessible universes, with no other way to expand except against one another.
The concept that comes across as "endpoint" is in no way related to the fact that a golden beam lanced from his hand to eradicate both Promise and the United Kingdom.
Cycle.
Endpoint.
The feared endpoint is the same as the tangle they came from, but in every space in all accessible universes, with no other way to expand except against one another.
The concept that comes across as "endpoint" is in no way related to the fact that a golden beam lanced from his hand to eradicate both Promise and the United Kingdom.
imeanforever
Promise wakes up in her tree stark naked with Yellow shaking her, which is really unpleasant for about four seconds until she remembers what's going on. She lets him prattle through her standard safety order renewal/rescindment and puts in a backup self-destruct and pulls on a replacement dress.
Time to do something else.
How is the fight going?