Await the Dawn
1.1
Even in the age of parahumans and mass surveillance, there were hidden places. Buried deep beneath the earth, or beneath the guise of a long-lived family. They clung to the last wells of power, the final echoes of a long-forgotten age. Each generation slipped further into history, further into legend.
What purpose guided them, what grand task they had been set, had long since been lost. All the remained was their role - jailers, of something so terrible that even the end of all things could not truly destroy it. Some said they guarded all the demons of the world, and others said all the gods. Some said that they jailed the end of all things because it alone could not end.
None could claim to know for sure what resided with the Black Vault. These last dregs of a more glorious age saw the coming of parahumans and welcomed them at first. They, at last, had a disguise they could wear without weakening themselves. Then, as monsters and terrors appeared by the hundredfold, they grew wary once more.
When it became clear that the world could not withstand the three great demons, the Endbringers, a council was called. It took some time for all the grandmothers, those who carried the strongest blood of the dragons, to agree to a site. A neutral city, one that hosted only a well-respected family of scholars and poets.
When Behemoth turned the city of Kuala Lumpur into a burning, radioactive hellscape they knew that it was not safe to gather their council in the ordinary world. In the world of Parahumans and Endbringers.
So they made the journey to the subject of their debate, one by one. Their powers, weakened as they were by the fallen world they lived in, were more than enough to see them safely to the hidden cave mouth. There, on the side of a mountain maps called Mt Everest, they descended into a hidden place.
The guardians, who had kept the secret of its exact location and defences for so many years, led the council deep into the mountain. They led them through the secret ways, past the traps and defences they had spent millennia building. Ancient mechanisms and bound spirits mixed with plastic explosives and tinkertech devices. No army, no parahuman host, could hope to breach such defences swiftly enough to prevent the guardians from enacting their last defence and burying the Black Vault beneath a collapsed mountain.
There, in the vast chamber lined with two dozen hydrogen bombs stolen during the collapse of the Chinese government after the chaos of the late twentieth century, the council debated. At first, only a single voice called for action, and all others denounced them. But she was a great woman, a warrior and a healer in equal measure.
She argued for a week, and then another joined her. They argued for another week, and soon there were five against twenty-five. It was a slow, grinding thing - as each doubter fell to implacable reason, the world decayed. The Simurgh, the one they feared most of all, attacked Canberra as the last holdouts argued.
Then, at last, they were in agreement. They could not defeat the forces arrayed against them, not in this fallen world, not with their blood so thin after so many millennia. They had failed the task set to them, and none living could take it up. Every diviner agreed, in the end, that the Endbringers would drive the world to ruin. That no mortal being, no matter how powerful, could truly defeat them.
It took months still to unravel the wards and sigils surrounding the Vault. To understand the key. But understand it they did, and so on the tenth of April, two thousand and eleven, all but one of the council left the chamber. All of the guardians left with them, their vigil at an end.
The woman who had first proposed this course was the only one who remained. She stood facing the great vault of black stone, a knife in her hand. She had known the price of opening the Black Vault - the willing lifeblood of one of its jailers. She hesitated for but a moment before hers sprayed across the smooth surface of the vault.
Thirty seconds later, the world was shocked to see multiple simultaneous nuclear detonations from within Mt Everest. A girl in the ruins of Shanghai screamed as her fate burnt away, replaced by a power beyond it. She was the first, though none would ever know it.
Forty-five seconds later, a man took a ragged stance, his hands up and ready. His daughter was behind him, her eyes wide with terror. He wiped the blood from his chin and hoped his legs would last him just a little longer. He was broken and bloodied, but not beaten.
Before the men threatening him could move in to finish him off with bats and knives, his forehead glowed a brilliant gold.
Sixty seconds later, a dead girl - dying, perhaps - rose from her deathbed. Black smoke surrounded her, and she screamed her lust for vengeance as she ripped the thing that had killed her brother limb from limb.
One and a half minutes later, Taylor Hebert stood facing one of the most powerful living parahumans with nothing more than a few, slightly charred, bugs. Lung towered over her, his metallic skin and claws giving credence to his name. Her legs shook with pain, her hands trembled with fear, but she did not stand aside. She gathered what few insects she had left, and faced him. The pepper spray had been her last trick.
All she could do now was buy those kids a little time.
Golden light exploded out from her, and from what remained of her swarm. She was lifted into the air, her forehead burning with the mark of her caste. Lung stared at her for just a moment too long, and he fell to the ground with a sickening thump as a dog even larger than he was slammed into him. Another two followed them, both with riders.
Then, with a ripple like a gunshot, a blonde-haired girl's eyes on the back of one of the dogs went wide. Her mind wondered with furtive speed, and her power matched it. She reached out as if to say something, and then she was nearly thrown back off of the dog as her forehead burned a brilliant gold too.
Taylor collapsed to the ground and found that the exhaustion had left her behind. She felt the power coursing through her and stood despite her injuries. The costumed people on their dogs left, shouting concern for the golden-haired girl amongst them. Her eyes were wrenched shut, but golden light spilled forth through her eyelids.
Then they were gone, and Taylor was alone.
I sank back down against the roof, looking at my own hands like they were some bizarre marvel. I... I had no way to understand what had just happened. Why I suddenly felt less like I was on the brink of total collapse and more like I could run a half marathon, take all my exams, and still have energy to spare.
Who had those kids on the dogs been? I hadn't recognised them, but they'd been wearing costumes. Were they the kids Lung had been talking about? They looked my age - teenagers, sure, but not quite what I was expecting. Well, most of them. The guy in the motorcycle helmet was tall and muscular enough that he could be anywhere from sixteen to forty, but I thought he was probably around the same age as his friends.
They weren't Wards - I'd done enough research on them to know the costumes of Brockton bay's junior heroes by sight. They definitely weren't New Wave and with those two possibilities eliminated, I was basically out of teenaged heroes.
Had I just fought a giant fire breathing dragon-man to save a bunch of villains? I mean, they weren't Empire Eighty-Eight, so they probably didn't deserve to get killed by Lung, but still...
Then there was whatever surge of energy had run through me. What was still burning in my veins and my apparently still glowing forehead? Had the villains had something to do with it? The blonde girl in the purple bodysuit had started to glow gold too... but they had been concerned and just as confused as I was.
I felt for that strange new power within me. It wasn't like my bugs. It wasn't a constant presence in my mind, but more like a deep well. I stood, and I realised quite suddenly that my balance had somehow gotten much better. I hadn't exactly been uncoordinated, but... now I felt light on my feet and solid at the same time. I walked to the edge of the roof, and felt just how quiet my steps were.
I wanted to leap down to make sure Lung wasn't going to get up. It was an insane desire, I thought. Just the call of the void, like the urge to jump into traffic or punch an annoying person in the face. For a start, I'd break my legs. Then there was the problem of me being all out of bugs and without a weapon of any sort. If Lung wanted to get up, there wasn't anything I could do about it.
I jumped off the roof and laned on a tiny drainage pipe, running down its steep slope like it was a gentle incline. I laughed at the absurdity of it, and backflipped off it to land in a gentle crouch. That was a little more than increased balance. I mean, a minor movement power (as cool as super parkour was) wasn't exactly what I'd have matched to the golden lightshow, but...
But the well within me was just as full as it had been when I'd started. I could feel, somehow, that it would regenerate over time - and that the power was meant to be used. Had that been some kind of passive effect?
Lung was still knocked out, about twenty feet away from me, and that snapped me back to reality. My bugs seemed to have hurt him more than I'd thought - those dogs had been big, but to knock someone like Lung out in one blow? He must have been more out of it than I'd thought. That was mildly terrifying because that meant that the unstoppable monster I'd been running from was Lung with a whole bunch of venom in him. It was a weakened, slowed Lung.
I needed a weapon or more bugs. I reached out with my 'original' power (and how weird was that to even think) but there weren't any more useful bugs around than there had been during the fight. I felt something, though. A new sensation, like finding the power socket in the dark. I pushed some of the burning well within me towards it, and I felt my range expand.
Judging from what I could see through the new bugs, it had at least doubled. When I called everything with a stinger, venom, or even just painful bites towards me, they were easier to coordinate. It took less effort, less focus - and they moved with the lethal, almost algorithmic efficiency that I could manage when I focused on controlling only a few bugs.
It wasn't going to be enough, though, and I could feel that keeping this up was going to burn through my well too quickly. I let the enhancement fade as the new bugs crossed into my original radius of control, and felt for something else. I'd wanted a weapon when I faced Lung - at least a baton or a taser or something.
I held out my hand and pushed some of my well into it. Golden motes of light swirled around it, and I had the sensation of an extendable baton in my mind. But... why settle for that? I'd wanted a baton or a taser because they were nonlethal weapons I could actually buy - but I was facing down a giant supervillain I'd pumped full of enough venom to kill a dozen normal men and who had apparently fought fucking Leviathan.
The golden motes of light whirled around my hand, and I fixed something in my memory. I couldn't make a battleship cannon or anything, but I instinctively knew I could make any weapon that I alone could carry and use. Any personal weapon was a broad term in this day and age, and I thought back to a TV special I'd seen a few years ago about a certain local hero.
The motes of golden light collapsed, and I grinned as I clutched a glowing golden replica of Armsmaster's Halberd. It was a few years out of date I thought, and I had no idea how to operate any of the special functions, but if Lung got up I'd be far better armed. All the same, though, I kept my fingers far away from any of the buttons or switches. I didn't want to activate the plasma gun or find out I'd pressed the self destruct button by accident.
I held the halberd out in front of me. I'd thought I'd known nothing about how to fight with a weapon like this, but I made a few practice swings and realised I did. I wasn't an instant expert, but I seemed to have picked up the basics along with my fancy new glowing forehead. I felt a similar sort of power-switch-in-the-dark sensation when I did that - a general enhancement power, maybe? Just activating that for a few minutes had cost as much as making my fancy new halberd, and I knew instinctively that would last for hours if I needed it to.
All the same, I kept it in mind. If Lung woke up, or if any more ABB came to reinforce their leader...
I heard the sound of a motorcycle approaching, and instinctively I called what remained of my swarm to me. They buzzed and skittered around me, blocking out the night sky and forming a menacing backdrop. My forehead still glowed gold, even through my mask, and my weapon gave off yet more light. I held it above Lung, ready to strike in an instant, just as a man rounded the corner and stepped into the alley.
He wore dark blue body armour with silver highlights and carried a weapon very much like the one I had in my hands. I could see his neatly trimmed beard and his iconic motorbike behind him.
"You... are not an Undersider," Armsmaster said. He sounded as confused as I felt. What the fuck was an Undersider? Was it some kind of villain group? It sounded like a bad guy team name.
"I don't think so? I don't know what that is," I said because I figured that telling the truth was probably less likely to end badly. And because I was way too confused to make something up.
"You're telling the truth. Unexpected. Is that a copy of my halberd?" he asked, his tone almost conversational. I could see him relax after my answer, despite the fact that an unconscious Lung was still between us.
"Um, yeah. Sorry. I can make it go away if you want," I said, relaxing in turn. Now that the real (and up to date) thing was here, I didn't exactly need a copy.
"Interesting. You defeated Lung?" he asked, addressing for the first time the dragon in the alley.
"Mostly. I think," I said because it was true. The final blow might have come from the dogs, but I'd probably done at least half the work. That, and I'd taken almost all the risk.
"Remarkable, for someone new to the scene. Would you be willing to come with me back to PRT headquarters and give a statement? Your... assistance with securing Lung would be appreciated, as well as information on what exactly you did to him," Armsmaster said, and I blinked. Brockton Bay's premiere hero (at least as far as fighting went) was asking me for help?
"Sure," I said because I had no idea what was going on and really hoped someone would be able to tell me. Also, if I helped Armsmaster out he might teach me how to use all the cool extra functions on his halberd.
AN: So, there have been quite a few Worm/Exalted fics written, but they mostly seem to just use one Exalt. I had a thought, though - what if the setup was like that in Exalted vs World of Darkness, with a bunch of Dragonblooded families, the last remnants of Creation, deciding that bringing the Exalted back probably couldn't make things any worse?
So that's the premise of this fic. Instead of one Exalt in Worm, it's hundreds running on Exalted Vs WoD style Exaltation criteria. Much of the Exalted host - hundreds of Solars, Lunars, and Sidreals has been unleashed on the world. And maybe a few other things that were once Solars tagged along in the Black Vault.
