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The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.
His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.
At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.
The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.
After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.
unprophesied_of_ages
imeanforever
"I will definitely look through it more, but we shouldn't talk while it's open or leave it open and unattended. Some fairies are small enough to outright fit through this gate, some sorcerers are keen enough to notice it. The Queen is about a foot taller than me. Silver skin, long white hair that at least right now is worn curled and up and full of fresh red flowers that match her dress, solid blue eyes. Outrageously complicated clothes. Giant, glossy wings with scalloped edges and swallowtails and patterns that make me dizzy to look at, blue and white. She's thin, sharp features, very narrow hands, I don't know if she's consistent on a scale of days about her makeup but right now it's black and glitters, very dramatic. I'm being so detailed not because anyone naturally resembles her but because I spotted two decoys. Without the boosted vision I wouldn't have noticed the sorcerously reshaped wings on the one or the missed spot of skin recoloring on the other. They don't seem to dress alike, though, so unless she changes outfits every half hour or the disguise department gets abruptly perfect at their jobs I'll be able to identify her for you reliably."
unprophesied_of_ages
He files the description away and burns the coppermind for reinforced memory.
"Excellent. This might actually work.
Would you be able to do sorcery effectively if it comes up?"
"Excellent. This might actually work.
Would you be able to do sorcery effectively if it comes up?"
imeanforever
"Thinking faster and seeing better seems to help more with that than I expected. If you manage to corner her in the room attached to the balcony or any other room with windows on that side of the palace, or outdoors, I'll be able to see into it and make it very, very hard for anyone else to do sorcery in there. I do recommend the one room, though."
unprophesied_of_ages
"If it goes according to plan I'll get in, get out, get on with it before anyone realizes I've got her. But that's good to know."
imeanforever
"Another thing I should mention - most, maybe all, fairy kinds have native magic of some kind. Mine isn't useful here, the Queen's is knowing names - everyone else there will have something else, which might help them or might not. I didn't recognize all the kinds I saw. The ones I did identify shouldn't give you any trouble, but the anti-sorcery chaos will not help if one of them can do something."
unprophesied_of_ages
"Unknown magic. Good to know.
Do you think you can make the darts unnoticeable even after they hit someone? Thorn's did that, and if the Queen doesn't have any warning until she gets an order it could come in handy."
Do you think you can make the darts unnoticeable even after they hit someone? Thorn's did that, and if the Queen doesn't have any warning until she gets an order it could come in handy."
unprophesied_of_ages
And Alendi is apparently done practicing with those, now that the darts are less expendable. And more invisible. That's fine; he hadn't missed in a while.
imeanforever
Promise is done in fairly short order.
"You might want to forget your own name before you go."
"You might want to forget your own name before you go."
unprophesied_of_ages
Alendi considers this. Only briefly, because it's a really good idea. He does.
"Hopefully that won't matter, but it's always nice to be slightly less doomed if everything goes wrong.
Do you want to do the same?"
"Hopefully that won't matter, but it's always nice to be slightly less doomed if everything goes wrong.
Do you want to do the same?"
unprophesied_of_ages
"Right. Magic.
If we make her forget your name, does it stay gone or does her magic give it back?"
If we make her forget your name, does it stay gone or does her magic give it back?"
unprophesied_of_ages
The next notable event is the public declaration that Hey Look! Fairies! Alendi has arranged for there to be as large a crowd as possible, and enlisted the Canton of Orthodoxy to pass it on to everyone else. He announces that the empire is threatened and exactly how, and warns everyone not to speak any names out loud and to make very certain of where all their food is coming from.
He introduces Promise to the crowd as being the one fairy (so far) to voluntarily take their side. By the end of it, no matter where Thorn's people arrive any bystander will be able to tell them that Promise and the Lord Ruler are in Kredik Shaw. It'll make it safer to be somewhere else in a week.
Everyone seems to believe it—possibly the fact that everything he said was true helped—and he didn't even have to use magic.
They have one week left.
He introduces Promise to the crowd as being the one fairy (so far) to voluntarily take their side. By the end of it, no matter where Thorn's people arrive any bystander will be able to tell them that Promise and the Lord Ruler are in Kredik Shaw. It'll make it safer to be somewhere else in a week.
Everyone seems to believe it—possibly the fact that everything he said was true helped—and he didn't even have to use magic.
They have one week left.
imeanforever
Promise stares through her little gate some more. She gets a sense of the daily (there is in fact a day cycle here, and a consistently full and luminous moon on a nightly basis) movements of the Queen's court. She squints at the room beyond the target balcony until she could probably draw a map of the characteristic motions of dust specks along the air currents throughout. She identifies one more decoy with one more subtle flaw in her disguise (her knees bend the wrong way, her gait is imperfect to super-vision). But she's pretty confident that she has, in fact, found the Queen's bedroom.
"If I start the gate now we'll have some extra time to figure out how the entire Queen's court works and send them after Thorn, who is some distance away, before he and his come after us. Is there anything else to do first?"
"If I start the gate now we'll have some extra time to figure out how the entire Queen's court works and send them after Thorn, who is some distance away, before he and his come after us. Is there anything else to do first?"
unprophesied_of_ages
"I'll just need the invisibility and things, and then I'm ready to go whenever you're familiar enough with the place."
imeanforever
"Maybe you should top off my storage in case I need to use a lot very fast, too." The earrings come off.
unprophesied_of_ages
And she gets them back along with a once again ridiculous quantity of speed, wakefulness, and senses.
imeanforever
When she is clad again in the appropriate superpowers:
"Do you want to go with inaudibility that breaks when you speak or a toggle attached to an object, and if the latter what object?"
"Do you want to go with inaudibility that breaks when you speak or a toggle attached to an object, and if the latter what object?"
unprophesied_of_ages
"The second one, if it lets me reactivate it afterward.
Any piece of all this metal works; I'm hardly going to risk losing these."
He hands her a gold ring from his right hand.
Any piece of all this metal works; I'm hardly going to risk losing these."
He hands her a gold ring from his right hand.
imeanforever
She peers at it. "All right. If it's turned this way," she puts it back on his hand, "you'll be audible, if you turn it the other way you'll be inaudible - not yet, I still have to cast the spell -" Pause. "There. Go ahead and try it."