Origin of Ego (Honkai Impact 3rd SI)
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Mature
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Ah, that's probably a result of Discord updates eating the links. I will see if I can find the original image links. Thank you for letting me know!
As an aside, next chapter is being written…but Helldivers 2 came out and the Terminid infestation won't cleanse itself.
Chapter 24
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Or so I'd thought. Reality had distinctly other plans, as the aftermath of the battle at the outskirts of Elysium came to a close. Sweeping clear the fields of the Honkai that Wendy had called to fight beside her hadn't been precisely simple, but certainly not a true challenge to the valley's true protectors.
Siegfried had been bundled into a medevac almost as soon as Wendy had dropped, the poor girl herself following shortly thereafter with Theresa beside her. I hadn't missed the way that Einstein had slipped aboard that transport, either. I hoped she'd be able to help, even if I missed the opportunity to collect on the welcome I had to deserve.
I'd done the whole big damn heroes lightshow and everything. That was worth at least a kiss! Alas that the world wouldn't wait as long as we deserved, after all we'd been through.
"Are you sure it's okay?" I murmured. I'd demanded the time to see my girls, catching Bella up in my arms far short of the command bunker of Elysium. I carried her the rest of the way, refusing any complaint or protest that she really was okay.
"You came back when we needed you," Sirin said softly. The purple-haired girl was very warm where she nestled against my side. One hand gripped the back of my restored jacket, the other holding her older sister close, but the desperation that I'd worried might be there simply wasn't.
Somewhere in the hell of the attack, my daughter had denied her fear. I could feel it in how she held me, how I could feel the steady stream of energy flowing from her into Bella. And how I could visibly see the cuts and bruises of Bella's fight with Wendy fading as a result. My children had done exactly what I'd taught them to do by example, leaving me rather torn. The parent in me, the mother who wished to protect, wished that they could have waited a little longer. But the rest….
"Yeah," Bella murmured. The bruises around the silver-haired girl's face were almost completely gone now, and she smiled sleepily against me. The rational part of me tried to suggest that that was a result of the pain being gone. The rest of me tossed that suggestion rather firmly into the figurative dustbin. In the end, it didn't matter.
I would have had to be blind not to recognise how they both felt. They wanted me home, of course, but I'd also proved that I would be when the world demanded it. And, I had to admit, it wasn't as if I'd be leaving Elysium undefended. Welt and Hua would be staying in Elysium when we left, Siegfried having already left to check on Cecilia. He'd wanted to take Kiana with him, too, but Welt had managed to convince him of the potential complications of that. If all went well, though, the couple would be home in a few days.
"Elysia?" As I had with Bella, Teri had carried Wendy to the secure medical facility attached to the command centre. And her casual tone belied the cold that had frozen her eyes into a lethal mirror. "Are you ready?"
"I think so," I said, checking with the girls again. Theresa and I had a different destination to Siegfried, and a very different conversation waiting for us there.
"Go, mom." Sirin said softly. "I'll…we can keep Kiana company. Whilst her mom and dad are away." The purple-haired girl smiled at the thought.
"I'm so proud of you both," I said, leaning down to kiss both girls on their heads. "I'll see you soon."
They looked away, flushing gently at the praise. They were going to be so beautiful when they grew up, I just knew it. But that would have to wait. I looked over at Theresa as we made for the elevator, actually having to look up a little in the process. She really had grown, in every way I knew she'd had to come to terms with never being able to do. Working out if she could maintain this form in the future was going to be an interesting experiment.
"What did Einstein say?" I asked. For all her general expertise in the harder sciences, Lieserl wasn't exactly a slouch when it came to biology, especially where Honkai was concerned.
Theresa didn't say anything until we were behind the elevator's doors. Only then did the pasted smile on her face slip completely away, grinding teeth giving way to a low growl. Then she slumped forward to press her head to the metal. I came to her side, an offer of support in the motion but carefully, carefully.
"She's in a medically induced coma," the no-longer diminutive woman said at last, leaning against me. "Einstein…she said that it would be better to keep Wendy unconscious until she and the other specialists here can work out the details of how Otto modified her."
I sighed, squeezing her side gently. "I think that whatever he did, most of it isn't going to matter in the long run."
"What do you mean?" Theresa asked sharply, her eyes narrowing to look over at me. Was it wrong to notice how close our faces were?
"Because what he was trying to do worked." I tried to be gentle in ripping off the bandage, but there were only so many ways to do it. "Herrscher bodies aren't human, Theresa. No more than yours really is, now that you've had your Vishnu genes properly activated.
"It doesn't change who you are," I added quickly, watching the numbers tick by. We were heading for the roof after all, it seemed. "But Thunder's power was also called Conquest. And I don't think it would allow for anything to remain in Wendy's body that could be used to control her. That's probably why we've not seen any real response from Schicksal this morning."
It was Welt's best guess as well as mine, but it also felt right. And as much as I hated to admit it, that seemed to matter a lot sometimes. Especially given who I was. The lift came to a stop with a ding to mark its arrival, and the doors slid open. As expected, there was a shuttle waiting for us on the compact landing pad. Its engines were already running.
"I suppose," Theresa breathed, pulling herself upright. "But it doesn't change what needs to be done."
I wanted to try to comfort her, to find a way to give her solace from the pain she was facing, and the worse still to come. Yet I knew I couldn't. I shook my head, my lips firming into a thin line. "No," I sighed, again. "It doesn't."
Theresa slumped, looking up at me through white bangs. There were tears in her eyes, anger and hurt twined together in the cruellest of combinations. Yet beneath it, I could see the same resolution that had guided me through the insanity of the Second Eruption, even as my everything had wanted to fly apart.
The same will that was guiding me still.
"Then come on." Her lip twitched in a sad, sad smile. "Let's get it over with."
Schicksal HQ wasn't nearly as pristine as it had been first and last time I visited. On that singular, crazy day when I'd ripped almost all of Otto's most readily available superweapons out of his hands - one very literally. The day that my actions had begun a cascade of events that couldn't have led to any result but this return, with the only true heir of Schicksal beside me. My prediction would have had her a little less incensed, and far less grown in body to match the woman she'd become long ago.
But this future was the one my actions had created. And despite all the pain they'd caused one innocent girl and all who knew her, I found that I was content with it. I…actually hadn't expected that. Not happy, of course. But accepting - and really, was that wrong? I'd done far better than I'd ever expected.
And yet, the trials of smoke rising from sections of Schicksal's airborne fortress-city did worry me. Theresa's expression was pinched with concern as she looked down at her birthplace and what had also been home for almost her entire life.
"How bad?" I asked. Theresa turned to me, her blue eyes questioning and I shook my head. "None of that, Theresa. I know that look." I'd seen it on MEI's face hundreds of times. I could see the calculations running in her head, damage estimates and other technical leadership tasks that she'd surely been trained for. We preferred simpler ways. Like just asking.
"I'd have to see a proper diagnostic," Teri said with half her attention, longer fingers moving on the shuttle's control panel. "But it supports the most popular theory, at least for now. Especially with how all the defences are still online."
And there was one reason I was very glad to be in a shuttle with Otto's unofficial heir. The defence grid around the floating complex was nothing to sneeze at, and it had been on full alert when we'd entered its airspace. Only Theresa's presence, and stern words, had prevented a far more energetic landing operation.
"Do you think he's still alive?" Theresa sighed. I couldn't have told you which answer she wanted to hear. I wasn't sure she knew herself. "My grandfather, I mean?"
She hadn't needed to specify, but I'd allow it.
"Einstein thinks so," I said. I was shooting for comfort, and despite my feelings on her grandfather, I think I got there. "She's usually right about things like this. But I agree with her, too." That was the answer she'd actually been looking for.
We'd received an initial report from my dear scientist during transit, confirming my initial suspicions. Whatever systems Otto had crammed into Wendy's body had been utterly destroyed by her transformation. Curiously, it was almost all of it, though a significant reservoir of Soulium had been left behind by the process. Tesla thought that it was how she'd been able to rebuild her armour so quickly, and why it had been so effective.
But there was another side to the coin. If Otto's enhancements and…control mechanisms had been burnt out of Wendy, it wouldn't have stopped there. Conquest was like that. I didn't think Otto would be dead, the man was too squirrely for that. But looking down at the smoke rising from Schiksal's headquarters put the cost of his failings in stark clarity.
And that was to me, someone who'd only ever looked at Schicksal as an unpleasant requirement for humanity's survival, and one that I'd happily see done away with. This had been the only home Theresa had ever known. Seeing it like this, I couldn't imagine how that would feel.
"Shuttle Elysium-Three, Tower," the terse voice of one of the air traffic controllers for the complex made me tense. And not just for how the harsh static assaulted my ears. "Redirect to Shicksal Tower, Crown Two. Confirm receipt of flight plan."
Theresa looked down at the control panel as a squeal of data unpacked, shifting our vector to the rising spire at the heart of the skybound island.
"Elysium-Three, confirming receipt, Tower," she replied. A flick of her fingers accepted the new vector set. "Redirecting now."
She shot me a look as the channel closed and the shuttle banked onto its new course, her expression shifting into a thin-lipped frown. There was only one reason that we'd have been redirected to one of the three Crown pads. Or, more precisely, only one person who could have done it right now.
"Well," I murmured, letting the word stretch. "I guess that's that."
She didn't reply, but I saw her face tighten as our shuttle completed its turn. The spire of Shicksal's heart loomed before us, and a set of reinforced doors on its facing began to yawn open. It was remarkable to me, really, how well she could blank her expression. Though it was a less disturbing to see that iron control on an adult's face, instead of that of a child.
It did make me wonder how long she'd end up staying taller than me. But I supposed I could accept that. The horns reminded me of Elysia's memories of Kosma, and he'd been such a dear soul.
I shook aside the sadness of that poor boy's fate aside in the whine of extending landing gear, followed moments later by the gentle shock as they found the bay's floor. No time for that now. I looked down at my hands, considering for a moment. Should I bring something to them, given where we were? I wasn't sure, but was leaning towards no.
Otto couldn't really hurt me anymore, not with the Void Archives lost to him. And his only remaining S-class combatant…I sighed. I respected Shusang's skill immensely, but she'd struggle against me on my own, let alone Theresa as she was now. Both of us together, no. I didn't hold many illusions about Otto's capacity to do anything that could more than inconvenience us.
The concern, as it had been before, was for the rest of humanity surviving a world without Shicksal.
"Systems are on hot standby," Theresa said, touching a few final keys. The shuttle's engines had dropped to zero, but I could feel the reactor's steady pulse of full activity. If we needed it, it would be able to lift in less than thirty seconds. Teri made another adjustment, then smiled tightly as the controls locked. "Let's go."
"Think we'll have a reception?" I asked cheerily. It wouldn't be Otto, I was certain, not even this far from his true sanctums. That did leave other options, however.
My companion ducked her head in a nod, locks of white hair slipping around her face. "I expect so," she said. A glance of blue eyes at her wrist confirmed the glimmering presence of her Divine Key, bound there by its typical bracelet of delicate chain. She punched the release on the shuttle's ramp, and it lowered with a gentle whine to reveal a similarly proportioned woman in dark clothes and an orange visor.
Ah.
That would make sense, wouldn't it.
"Hey, big sis," Theresa beat me to any comment, descending the ramp in quick strides. Amber took a step back in pure shock as she took in the state of her younger sister. Who had until very recently been much shorter, too. "Where's Otto?"
Otto. Not grandfather. That wasn't a small change, and what little I remembered of Amber - what little the game ever told us - left me quite sure that she wouldn't miss it. For a moment, she started to react, forming words to ask questions. They might even be her own questions, born of a true concern for the sibling who'd given her life in a way that Otto never could.
It made me sad to cut them off as I followed Theresa down the shuttle's ramp, boots ringing in the sudden silence of the shuttlebay. But we only had so much time. This was all on the clock now, had been ever since Theresa's first communication burst to the ATC operators, and we just didn't have the time for those moments. Later, I promised myself, I'd make sure the two sisters found their own time. Assuming Theresa didn't do it herself.
"He is waiting for you." Amber's expression smoothed to a blank facade, her voice coming out clipped and formal. She glanced at me, something hard in the set of her delicate jaw. "Is he to expect you both?"
"He is." Theresa didn't even give me a chance. But perhaps that was for the best, the playful side of my nature wasn't a good fit right now. So very sad, but I'd find a way to make it fit another time. Assuming this didn't go entirely wrong, there would be chances for that ahead of us.
Amber ducked her head in acknowledgement, then turned without a word and led us into the tower. Here on the higher levels, there was all the richness and decadence I'd expected from the few memories I had of it. Sweeping galleries of marble and gold, vast compared to the tower itself, decorated with thick carpet and fine woods. Portraits and images of Schicksal's best hung on the walls beside scenes of battle, and stands displayed other works alongside relics won or taken from faraway lands.
It was a home of royalty among the very clouds, literally above every permanent settlement the humanity of this era had ever created. If that wasn't a statement of Shicksal's power, I wasn't sure what was. That they stood above all, ruling from upon high like ancient gods. I forced down the scowl those thoughts pushed towards my lips. I disagreed entirely with Otto's desires, but I also couldn't deny how effective he'd been in protecting the world through the centuries.
Anti-Entropy could do a lot, even more now with the healing of Reason and the passing of the Previous Era's technological legacy to their hands, but that was a long term solution. If Schicksal fell, truly fell, I wasn't sure we could hold onto enough of the world for it to matter. And I'm not sure I'd ever be able to forgive myself even if it did work. A trade of billions for victory when less bloody paths exist…that isn't something I ever wanted to have to make.
It's possible we might have had to make a deal with Otto in the end. As horrible as that would have felt, there had been a reason for me dangling the possibility of resurrection before him when I'd come to take his most powerful tools away from him. I'd never have believed any of my other hopes to be possible options before Lisbon and what had followed. But I'd never expected Otto to do something like this to someone Theresa cared for. Or at least, never so swiftly.
In Theresa we held a successor to the Apocalypse bloodline, one we could support to take her grandfather's place. She'd recognised that reality far more quickly than I'd done so, a mark of her training in the field, the foundations that Otto had laid that would be called upon many years from today, in another future. Perhaps it was cruel to expect so much from Teri, but perhaps also that was a mark against me for judging her book by its cover. For all her typically childish looks and attitude, she was older than Elysia and myself combined.
She could make her own choices. And it had been hers to come here, I was just along for the ride.
"We are here," Amber said diffidently, shaking me from my thoughts. We'd arrived at a great arch of metal, engraved in patterns and sigils of Shicksal's houses. Frescoes of past glory and sacrifices, wars fought, cities saved and nations burned covered the door, highlights of what Shicksal had been. Of all it had done.
Amber pushed one side of it open, drawing it with her to offer entry in a motion as graceful as any servant. "The Overseer welcomes you."
"I'm sure he does," I muttered. Then I stepped through, a half-step ahead of Theresa, eyes alert for any signs of danger. It was unlikely, but the man had done crazier things.
There was the expected throne room, three great chairs arrayed with the seat of House Apocalypse in pride of place, elevated just so beyond reach of the Kaslana or Schariac. Deep red carpets contrasted the gold and marble of the room, artefacts of ancient past and brilliant technology scattered across display stands, testament to the superpower's strength.
It was a place of ancient power, ripped from its resting place to crown the skies, and held all the grandeur I'd tried to prepare myself for. I had, alas, failed, but predictably so. In my past life, I'd never walked even close to these circles of power. And Elysia, well, she hadn't ever focused on them. The tapestry of humanity that had ensnared her had been made of everything, and in those threads was so much more of common, happy lives than this.
Yet that wasn't the biggest surprise waiting for me. That honour was held by the blond slouching in the Apocalypse throne.
He looked terrible.
He'd clearly tried to hide it with his clothing, well tailored as always and so well chosen that it would make Eden impressed. But it couldn't hide the wreck beneath the finery, the ways his eyes were sunk into his skull by fatigue. Or the tenseness of his posture, one that spoke in equal parts of fear and pain. He had it under control, of course, he'd never have invited us if he hadn't.
But the facade wasn't perfect. And it shattered completely as Theresa stepped through the door behind me in a handful of quick steps and a whisper of white hair. Her blue eyes were hard as she stared up at the man who'd given her life, if not a life, and something in him quailed from it.
"Hello, Otto," She said, and he flinched. Because her voice wasn't the same anymore, and I knew exactly who it would remind him of. Taking the silence and making it her own, she sketched a very brief bow. The type an equal might give, to someone they didn't respect.
"It's been a while."
What could be said of that moment? Does it bear description? The clenching of muscles, tightness of chest and blood rushing in frantic pace within the copy-clone of one of the most influential and powerful examples of humanity to ever exist.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
For all my hatred of Otto's decisions, for what he had chosen to sacrifice, everything he'd cast into the fire in pursuit of a single dream, I still couldn't quite say that that dream had been wrong. He'd been the one to destroy it, of course, but that didn't make his desire to make amends wrong. No end could have justified his means, certainly not those taken in Babylon, Wendy, or the years that might have been. Except those years hadn't been, and now never would.
"You seem surprised," Theresa continued, spreading her hands to encompass the man's shock. The silence that was so wrong within courtly comportion. "Do you not recognise your granddaughter?"
"I…" Otto swallowed visibly, forcing down the terrible cocktail of emotions that I could physically feel ripping through his mind. He'd had a plan on inviting us here, no doubt, but he couldn't have expected this. He'd have seen Theresa's change, seen what she'd become, from the cameras no doubt littered all throughout the tower. But he couldn't have expected her voice.
It wasn't Kallen's, not quite, at least not from my own limited memory of the woman's words. But it was close. And Theresa's tone held the same shade of reprimand that Otto had only ever accepted from her genedoner. To hear it again, in almost exactly the same voice, nothing could have prepared him for that. Especially not barely six hours after facing the closest thing to death I believed he might have encountered in centuries.
He mastered himself, though. It took time, but it was time Theresa gave him. She was angry with the man, but she'd never indulged in cruelty.
"Theresa?" He rasped, as if the word caused him physical pain. It might. "How?"
"You made me very well," she replied, taking a step forward. "But to protect Wendy, I found a way past the restrictions you placed on the power in my blood." She gestured to me. "They and theirs helped, smoothed the road. But if you wish a singular point in time? It was when what you turned Wendy into tried to kill me."
"She wasn't…she was never meant," Otto took a deep, steadying breath. His expression stabilised, but the uncertainty in his green eyes only fell back from the fore. "The SHEAR project, it wasn't meant to hurt you, Theresa. It was meant to save us. To save everyone."
The words kindled something in him, hope or desperation, perhaps both. "It still can. If I tweak the process, take into account what the Honkai did. You…you didn't kill her, right?"
"No," I said, speaking for the first time. "We saved her."
"Then…then don't you see?" He asked, colour rushing back into his face. "The techniques pioneered in SHEAR could provide a path that will let humanity fight back. To take the power of the Honkai and wield it against them in ways that no Valkyrie ever could. I can refine the process, make it-"
"No." Theresa said, very gently. Yet the words cut through the Overseer's with the finality of a guillotine's blade, rocking him back in his throne. She shook her head, and my nose twitched as I breathed in the scent of salt. "This isn't a path to victory, Otto. Not one I can ever accept. You almost destroyed Schicksal to do it, almost killed yourself. I can't see that happen again."
"Don't you understand what this could give us?" Otto demanded. "The ability to turn the Honkai's generals back against them, we can't just set that aside."
"That's true." Otto's gaze snapped over to me as I spoke again, eyes widening at my tacit agreement. Confusion, but then suspicion, and the latter was more correct. "But I can already do that. Without torturing them to the brink of sanity, or injecting them with so much Soulium and Honkai energy that they might as well have stopped being human long before the Will made them its own."
"You can't be certain," he began to say. I slashed at the air with one hand, fast enough to send a shockwave rippling across the room.
"I can be," I snapped over him. "I can be more certain of this than anyone on this planet. Or do you think my daughters were a fluke? Elysium, a fluke?"
Any other day, in front of any other people, he'd have had an answer to that. But not here, not now, and not before the closest example he'd ever seen of Kallen reborn. He crumpled as my words slammed against him, turning his face away as if slapped, even as alarms warbled suddenly on as Honkai energy rippled around me in response to my own emotions.
I was furious at Otto.
But it wasn't my place to render judgement for this.
"You will step down," Theresa said, without a trace of give in her voice. "Schicksal will pass from your hands to those of another, someone who will protect and empower where you have protected and hoarded."
She raised a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. "I know the reasons, I don't need you to explain them. But there is a better way, I will find it. Anti-Entropy has already pledged its aid to that task, and together we will protect humanity until a path to overcome the dangers ahead can be found."
That wouldn't be easy, I knew. Even if I could head off the Eruptions, gather all the Herrschers to the side of humanity, and there was no guarantee that I could. There'd still be the ending. The Herrscher of the End. Finality. Whichever it might truly be, we'd have to be prepared in ways even the Previous Era had failed to be.
But it couldn't be done without Schicksal. And though god, did I want to punch Otto in the face for everything he'd done, to make him suffer for the horrors he'd inflicted on an innocent girl, I wasn't sure it would hurt as much as what was happening right now.
"You," Theresa went on, "will be remanded to a research facility. You will be allowed to carry out work within strict limits, to pursue the only thing I now understand that you truly care about. More than me, more than anyone.
"I don't judge you for that," she added, very gently. "But I can't ignore what you've done. I'm sorry. The world deserves better than what you've given it."
"And you…" his voice shook. "You believe you can give them that?"
"Together?" Teri asked. He nodded, and she smiled in a way that made the entire room lift itself into light. "Yes, grandfather, I do. And I think you know it too. You were never meant for the role you found yourself forced into. That's warped you, changed you, led to decisions that you never believed you could make. You still are responsible for those, but I don't want you dead. Just…stopped from hurting so many people for a dream that I'm not sure ever can be realised."
She wasn't wrong there. Einstein had delved into the theory a little, Doctor MEI's notes on the Sea of Quanta, the bubble universes and realities above them. Finding exactly Otto's Kallen and returning her to the world without harming it, or her own, and having her be okay with it? That would require the sort of precision that nothing even the Previous Era had been able to create.
And yet…maybe one day. Maybe, one day, he could succeed despite those odds. And Theresa had decided that, so long as his methods wouldn't lead to the erasure of billions, he could be given that chance.
"And what if I refuse?" Otto asked. "You know I can destroy this place, rip out Schicksal's heart."
"I do," Teri nodded. "But this wasn't a request. If you do that, we'll mourn the loss, but we'll rebuild." Judah's chains rustled against each other, gentle bells as golden chains extended. "But you won't, and you'll never get a chance to save her. Not if you're willing to betray the world, betray me, like that."
For a long moment, he stared down at Theresa, wheels within wheels spinning within his mind. I doubted this was his actual brain, perhaps that one was simulating outcomes, but it didn't really matter. We knew what he had left. He did as well. The only thing that could really hurt us would do so by hurting humanity, and he needed them to build the tools that might one day let him realise his dream.
And, though I admitted it only grudgingly, he did care for Theresa. That he'd let her live, let Amber live as well, said that in ways no words ever could. And that, next to who she looked like, perhaps that was what decided him.
Perhaps not.
I saw the tension leave him moments before he bowed his head, slumping fully in the throne as he recognised a losing hand. His lips twisted in a wry, cynical smile.
"Who taught you to cheat like that?" He asked. Theresa smiled sadly, touching a hand to her breast as if acknowledging a touch.
"You did."
"So I did," he sighed. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up from the throne and walked slowly down the steps leading up to it until he was before us in truth. He went to a knee before Theresa, a motion of courtly supplication from the time of his birth.
"Then under those terms, I surrender all that I have built to you, granddaughter." He smiled again, and for a moment I could almost see the faintest echo of the young boy he'd been once. The dreamer and inventor who might have saved humanity. Long gone, of course, but flickers still remained.
"Schicksal is yours."
Was it odd to see an empire passed in quiet words and silence? Perhaps the roar of battle would have been more fitting. Recrimination, rage, those are the languages that we know to speak in the wresting of power from tyrants. But here, there were none of those things. Just gentle words and resolution, demanding that the world be freed.
I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to forgive what Otto had done to create humanity's great shield. But as I'd come to recognise before, this wasn't my place to judge. And Theresa had made her choice.
Siegfried had been bundled into a medevac almost as soon as Wendy had dropped, the poor girl herself following shortly thereafter with Theresa beside her. I hadn't missed the way that Einstein had slipped aboard that transport, either. I hoped she'd be able to help, even if I missed the opportunity to collect on the welcome I had to deserve.
I'd done the whole big damn heroes lightshow and everything. That was worth at least a kiss! Alas that the world wouldn't wait as long as we deserved, after all we'd been through.
"Are you sure it's okay?" I murmured. I'd demanded the time to see my girls, catching Bella up in my arms far short of the command bunker of Elysium. I carried her the rest of the way, refusing any complaint or protest that she really was okay.
"You came back when we needed you," Sirin said softly. The purple-haired girl was very warm where she nestled against my side. One hand gripped the back of my restored jacket, the other holding her older sister close, but the desperation that I'd worried might be there simply wasn't.
Somewhere in the hell of the attack, my daughter had denied her fear. I could feel it in how she held me, how I could feel the steady stream of energy flowing from her into Bella. And how I could visibly see the cuts and bruises of Bella's fight with Wendy fading as a result. My children had done exactly what I'd taught them to do by example, leaving me rather torn. The parent in me, the mother who wished to protect, wished that they could have waited a little longer. But the rest….
"Yeah," Bella murmured. The bruises around the silver-haired girl's face were almost completely gone now, and she smiled sleepily against me. The rational part of me tried to suggest that that was a result of the pain being gone. The rest of me tossed that suggestion rather firmly into the figurative dustbin. In the end, it didn't matter.
I would have had to be blind not to recognise how they both felt. They wanted me home, of course, but I'd also proved that I would be when the world demanded it. And, I had to admit, it wasn't as if I'd be leaving Elysium undefended. Welt and Hua would be staying in Elysium when we left, Siegfried having already left to check on Cecilia. He'd wanted to take Kiana with him, too, but Welt had managed to convince him of the potential complications of that. If all went well, though, the couple would be home in a few days.
"Elysia?" As I had with Bella, Teri had carried Wendy to the secure medical facility attached to the command centre. And her casual tone belied the cold that had frozen her eyes into a lethal mirror. "Are you ready?"
"I think so," I said, checking with the girls again. Theresa and I had a different destination to Siegfried, and a very different conversation waiting for us there.
"Go, mom." Sirin said softly. "I'll…we can keep Kiana company. Whilst her mom and dad are away." The purple-haired girl smiled at the thought.
"I'm so proud of you both," I said, leaning down to kiss both girls on their heads. "I'll see you soon."
They looked away, flushing gently at the praise. They were going to be so beautiful when they grew up, I just knew it. But that would have to wait. I looked over at Theresa as we made for the elevator, actually having to look up a little in the process. She really had grown, in every way I knew she'd had to come to terms with never being able to do. Working out if she could maintain this form in the future was going to be an interesting experiment.
"What did Einstein say?" I asked. For all her general expertise in the harder sciences, Lieserl wasn't exactly a slouch when it came to biology, especially where Honkai was concerned.
Theresa didn't say anything until we were behind the elevator's doors. Only then did the pasted smile on her face slip completely away, grinding teeth giving way to a low growl. Then she slumped forward to press her head to the metal. I came to her side, an offer of support in the motion but carefully, carefully.
"She's in a medically induced coma," the no-longer diminutive woman said at last, leaning against me. "Einstein…she said that it would be better to keep Wendy unconscious until she and the other specialists here can work out the details of how Otto modified her."
I sighed, squeezing her side gently. "I think that whatever he did, most of it isn't going to matter in the long run."
"What do you mean?" Theresa asked sharply, her eyes narrowing to look over at me. Was it wrong to notice how close our faces were?
"Because what he was trying to do worked." I tried to be gentle in ripping off the bandage, but there were only so many ways to do it. "Herrscher bodies aren't human, Theresa. No more than yours really is, now that you've had your Vishnu genes properly activated.
"It doesn't change who you are," I added quickly, watching the numbers tick by. We were heading for the roof after all, it seemed. "But Thunder's power was also called Conquest. And I don't think it would allow for anything to remain in Wendy's body that could be used to control her. That's probably why we've not seen any real response from Schicksal this morning."
It was Welt's best guess as well as mine, but it also felt right. And as much as I hated to admit it, that seemed to matter a lot sometimes. Especially given who I was. The lift came to a stop with a ding to mark its arrival, and the doors slid open. As expected, there was a shuttle waiting for us on the compact landing pad. Its engines were already running.
"I suppose," Theresa breathed, pulling herself upright. "But it doesn't change what needs to be done."
I wanted to try to comfort her, to find a way to give her solace from the pain she was facing, and the worse still to come. Yet I knew I couldn't. I shook my head, my lips firming into a thin line. "No," I sighed, again. "It doesn't."
Theresa slumped, looking up at me through white bangs. There were tears in her eyes, anger and hurt twined together in the cruellest of combinations. Yet beneath it, I could see the same resolution that had guided me through the insanity of the Second Eruption, even as my everything had wanted to fly apart.
The same will that was guiding me still.
"Then come on." Her lip twitched in a sad, sad smile. "Let's get it over with."
Schicksal HQ wasn't nearly as pristine as it had been first and last time I visited. On that singular, crazy day when I'd ripped almost all of Otto's most readily available superweapons out of his hands - one very literally. The day that my actions had begun a cascade of events that couldn't have led to any result but this return, with the only true heir of Schicksal beside me. My prediction would have had her a little less incensed, and far less grown in body to match the woman she'd become long ago.
But this future was the one my actions had created. And despite all the pain they'd caused one innocent girl and all who knew her, I found that I was content with it. I…actually hadn't expected that. Not happy, of course. But accepting - and really, was that wrong? I'd done far better than I'd ever expected.
And yet, the trials of smoke rising from sections of Schicksal's airborne fortress-city did worry me. Theresa's expression was pinched with concern as she looked down at her birthplace and what had also been home for almost her entire life.
"How bad?" I asked. Theresa turned to me, her blue eyes questioning and I shook my head. "None of that, Theresa. I know that look." I'd seen it on MEI's face hundreds of times. I could see the calculations running in her head, damage estimates and other technical leadership tasks that she'd surely been trained for. We preferred simpler ways. Like just asking.
"I'd have to see a proper diagnostic," Teri said with half her attention, longer fingers moving on the shuttle's control panel. "But it supports the most popular theory, at least for now. Especially with how all the defences are still online."
And there was one reason I was very glad to be in a shuttle with Otto's unofficial heir. The defence grid around the floating complex was nothing to sneeze at, and it had been on full alert when we'd entered its airspace. Only Theresa's presence, and stern words, had prevented a far more energetic landing operation.
"Do you think he's still alive?" Theresa sighed. I couldn't have told you which answer she wanted to hear. I wasn't sure she knew herself. "My grandfather, I mean?"
She hadn't needed to specify, but I'd allow it.
"Einstein thinks so," I said. I was shooting for comfort, and despite my feelings on her grandfather, I think I got there. "She's usually right about things like this. But I agree with her, too." That was the answer she'd actually been looking for.
We'd received an initial report from my dear scientist during transit, confirming my initial suspicions. Whatever systems Otto had crammed into Wendy's body had been utterly destroyed by her transformation. Curiously, it was almost all of it, though a significant reservoir of Soulium had been left behind by the process. Tesla thought that it was how she'd been able to rebuild her armour so quickly, and why it had been so effective.
But there was another side to the coin. If Otto's enhancements and…control mechanisms had been burnt out of Wendy, it wouldn't have stopped there. Conquest was like that. I didn't think Otto would be dead, the man was too squirrely for that. But looking down at the smoke rising from Schiksal's headquarters put the cost of his failings in stark clarity.
And that was to me, someone who'd only ever looked at Schicksal as an unpleasant requirement for humanity's survival, and one that I'd happily see done away with. This had been the only home Theresa had ever known. Seeing it like this, I couldn't imagine how that would feel.
"Shuttle Elysium-Three, Tower," the terse voice of one of the air traffic controllers for the complex made me tense. And not just for how the harsh static assaulted my ears. "Redirect to Shicksal Tower, Crown Two. Confirm receipt of flight plan."
Theresa looked down at the control panel as a squeal of data unpacked, shifting our vector to the rising spire at the heart of the skybound island.
"Elysium-Three, confirming receipt, Tower," she replied. A flick of her fingers accepted the new vector set. "Redirecting now."
She shot me a look as the channel closed and the shuttle banked onto its new course, her expression shifting into a thin-lipped frown. There was only one reason that we'd have been redirected to one of the three Crown pads. Or, more precisely, only one person who could have done it right now.
"Well," I murmured, letting the word stretch. "I guess that's that."
She didn't reply, but I saw her face tighten as our shuttle completed its turn. The spire of Shicksal's heart loomed before us, and a set of reinforced doors on its facing began to yawn open. It was remarkable to me, really, how well she could blank her expression. Though it was a less disturbing to see that iron control on an adult's face, instead of that of a child.
It did make me wonder how long she'd end up staying taller than me. But I supposed I could accept that. The horns reminded me of Elysia's memories of Kosma, and he'd been such a dear soul.
I shook aside the sadness of that poor boy's fate aside in the whine of extending landing gear, followed moments later by the gentle shock as they found the bay's floor. No time for that now. I looked down at my hands, considering for a moment. Should I bring something to them, given where we were? I wasn't sure, but was leaning towards no.
Otto couldn't really hurt me anymore, not with the Void Archives lost to him. And his only remaining S-class combatant…I sighed. I respected Shusang's skill immensely, but she'd struggle against me on my own, let alone Theresa as she was now. Both of us together, no. I didn't hold many illusions about Otto's capacity to do anything that could more than inconvenience us.
The concern, as it had been before, was for the rest of humanity surviving a world without Shicksal.
"Systems are on hot standby," Theresa said, touching a few final keys. The shuttle's engines had dropped to zero, but I could feel the reactor's steady pulse of full activity. If we needed it, it would be able to lift in less than thirty seconds. Teri made another adjustment, then smiled tightly as the controls locked. "Let's go."
"Think we'll have a reception?" I asked cheerily. It wouldn't be Otto, I was certain, not even this far from his true sanctums. That did leave other options, however.
My companion ducked her head in a nod, locks of white hair slipping around her face. "I expect so," she said. A glance of blue eyes at her wrist confirmed the glimmering presence of her Divine Key, bound there by its typical bracelet of delicate chain. She punched the release on the shuttle's ramp, and it lowered with a gentle whine to reveal a similarly proportioned woman in dark clothes and an orange visor.
Ah.
That would make sense, wouldn't it.
"Hey, big sis," Theresa beat me to any comment, descending the ramp in quick strides. Amber took a step back in pure shock as she took in the state of her younger sister. Who had until very recently been much shorter, too. "Where's Otto?"
Otto. Not grandfather. That wasn't a small change, and what little I remembered of Amber - what little the game ever told us - left me quite sure that she wouldn't miss it. For a moment, she started to react, forming words to ask questions. They might even be her own questions, born of a true concern for the sibling who'd given her life in a way that Otto never could.
It made me sad to cut them off as I followed Theresa down the shuttle's ramp, boots ringing in the sudden silence of the shuttlebay. But we only had so much time. This was all on the clock now, had been ever since Theresa's first communication burst to the ATC operators, and we just didn't have the time for those moments. Later, I promised myself, I'd make sure the two sisters found their own time. Assuming Theresa didn't do it herself.
"He is waiting for you." Amber's expression smoothed to a blank facade, her voice coming out clipped and formal. She glanced at me, something hard in the set of her delicate jaw. "Is he to expect you both?"
"He is." Theresa didn't even give me a chance. But perhaps that was for the best, the playful side of my nature wasn't a good fit right now. So very sad, but I'd find a way to make it fit another time. Assuming this didn't go entirely wrong, there would be chances for that ahead of us.
Amber ducked her head in acknowledgement, then turned without a word and led us into the tower. Here on the higher levels, there was all the richness and decadence I'd expected from the few memories I had of it. Sweeping galleries of marble and gold, vast compared to the tower itself, decorated with thick carpet and fine woods. Portraits and images of Schicksal's best hung on the walls beside scenes of battle, and stands displayed other works alongside relics won or taken from faraway lands.
It was a home of royalty among the very clouds, literally above every permanent settlement the humanity of this era had ever created. If that wasn't a statement of Shicksal's power, I wasn't sure what was. That they stood above all, ruling from upon high like ancient gods. I forced down the scowl those thoughts pushed towards my lips. I disagreed entirely with Otto's desires, but I also couldn't deny how effective he'd been in protecting the world through the centuries.
Anti-Entropy could do a lot, even more now with the healing of Reason and the passing of the Previous Era's technological legacy to their hands, but that was a long term solution. If Schicksal fell, truly fell, I wasn't sure we could hold onto enough of the world for it to matter. And I'm not sure I'd ever be able to forgive myself even if it did work. A trade of billions for victory when less bloody paths exist…that isn't something I ever wanted to have to make.
It's possible we might have had to make a deal with Otto in the end. As horrible as that would have felt, there had been a reason for me dangling the possibility of resurrection before him when I'd come to take his most powerful tools away from him. I'd never have believed any of my other hopes to be possible options before Lisbon and what had followed. But I'd never expected Otto to do something like this to someone Theresa cared for. Or at least, never so swiftly.
In Theresa we held a successor to the Apocalypse bloodline, one we could support to take her grandfather's place. She'd recognised that reality far more quickly than I'd done so, a mark of her training in the field, the foundations that Otto had laid that would be called upon many years from today, in another future. Perhaps it was cruel to expect so much from Teri, but perhaps also that was a mark against me for judging her book by its cover. For all her typically childish looks and attitude, she was older than Elysia and myself combined.
She could make her own choices. And it had been hers to come here, I was just along for the ride.
"We are here," Amber said diffidently, shaking me from my thoughts. We'd arrived at a great arch of metal, engraved in patterns and sigils of Shicksal's houses. Frescoes of past glory and sacrifices, wars fought, cities saved and nations burned covered the door, highlights of what Shicksal had been. Of all it had done.
Amber pushed one side of it open, drawing it with her to offer entry in a motion as graceful as any servant. "The Overseer welcomes you."
"I'm sure he does," I muttered. Then I stepped through, a half-step ahead of Theresa, eyes alert for any signs of danger. It was unlikely, but the man had done crazier things.
There was the expected throne room, three great chairs arrayed with the seat of House Apocalypse in pride of place, elevated just so beyond reach of the Kaslana or Schariac. Deep red carpets contrasted the gold and marble of the room, artefacts of ancient past and brilliant technology scattered across display stands, testament to the superpower's strength.
It was a place of ancient power, ripped from its resting place to crown the skies, and held all the grandeur I'd tried to prepare myself for. I had, alas, failed, but predictably so. In my past life, I'd never walked even close to these circles of power. And Elysia, well, she hadn't ever focused on them. The tapestry of humanity that had ensnared her had been made of everything, and in those threads was so much more of common, happy lives than this.
Yet that wasn't the biggest surprise waiting for me. That honour was held by the blond slouching in the Apocalypse throne.
He looked terrible.
He'd clearly tried to hide it with his clothing, well tailored as always and so well chosen that it would make Eden impressed. But it couldn't hide the wreck beneath the finery, the ways his eyes were sunk into his skull by fatigue. Or the tenseness of his posture, one that spoke in equal parts of fear and pain. He had it under control, of course, he'd never have invited us if he hadn't.
But the facade wasn't perfect. And it shattered completely as Theresa stepped through the door behind me in a handful of quick steps and a whisper of white hair. Her blue eyes were hard as she stared up at the man who'd given her life, if not a life, and something in him quailed from it.
"Hello, Otto," She said, and he flinched. Because her voice wasn't the same anymore, and I knew exactly who it would remind him of. Taking the silence and making it her own, she sketched a very brief bow. The type an equal might give, to someone they didn't respect.
"It's been a while."
What could be said of that moment? Does it bear description? The clenching of muscles, tightness of chest and blood rushing in frantic pace within the copy-clone of one of the most influential and powerful examples of humanity to ever exist.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
For all my hatred of Otto's decisions, for what he had chosen to sacrifice, everything he'd cast into the fire in pursuit of a single dream, I still couldn't quite say that that dream had been wrong. He'd been the one to destroy it, of course, but that didn't make his desire to make amends wrong. No end could have justified his means, certainly not those taken in Babylon, Wendy, or the years that might have been. Except those years hadn't been, and now never would.
"You seem surprised," Theresa continued, spreading her hands to encompass the man's shock. The silence that was so wrong within courtly comportion. "Do you not recognise your granddaughter?"
"I…" Otto swallowed visibly, forcing down the terrible cocktail of emotions that I could physically feel ripping through his mind. He'd had a plan on inviting us here, no doubt, but he couldn't have expected this. He'd have seen Theresa's change, seen what she'd become, from the cameras no doubt littered all throughout the tower. But he couldn't have expected her voice.
It wasn't Kallen's, not quite, at least not from my own limited memory of the woman's words. But it was close. And Theresa's tone held the same shade of reprimand that Otto had only ever accepted from her genedoner. To hear it again, in almost exactly the same voice, nothing could have prepared him for that. Especially not barely six hours after facing the closest thing to death I believed he might have encountered in centuries.
He mastered himself, though. It took time, but it was time Theresa gave him. She was angry with the man, but she'd never indulged in cruelty.
"Theresa?" He rasped, as if the word caused him physical pain. It might. "How?"
"You made me very well," she replied, taking a step forward. "But to protect Wendy, I found a way past the restrictions you placed on the power in my blood." She gestured to me. "They and theirs helped, smoothed the road. But if you wish a singular point in time? It was when what you turned Wendy into tried to kill me."
"She wasn't…she was never meant," Otto took a deep, steadying breath. His expression stabilised, but the uncertainty in his green eyes only fell back from the fore. "The SHEAR project, it wasn't meant to hurt you, Theresa. It was meant to save us. To save everyone."
The words kindled something in him, hope or desperation, perhaps both. "It still can. If I tweak the process, take into account what the Honkai did. You…you didn't kill her, right?"
"No," I said, speaking for the first time. "We saved her."
"Then…then don't you see?" He asked, colour rushing back into his face. "The techniques pioneered in SHEAR could provide a path that will let humanity fight back. To take the power of the Honkai and wield it against them in ways that no Valkyrie ever could. I can refine the process, make it-"
"No." Theresa said, very gently. Yet the words cut through the Overseer's with the finality of a guillotine's blade, rocking him back in his throne. She shook her head, and my nose twitched as I breathed in the scent of salt. "This isn't a path to victory, Otto. Not one I can ever accept. You almost destroyed Schicksal to do it, almost killed yourself. I can't see that happen again."
"Don't you understand what this could give us?" Otto demanded. "The ability to turn the Honkai's generals back against them, we can't just set that aside."
"That's true." Otto's gaze snapped over to me as I spoke again, eyes widening at my tacit agreement. Confusion, but then suspicion, and the latter was more correct. "But I can already do that. Without torturing them to the brink of sanity, or injecting them with so much Soulium and Honkai energy that they might as well have stopped being human long before the Will made them its own."
"You can't be certain," he began to say. I slashed at the air with one hand, fast enough to send a shockwave rippling across the room.
"I can be," I snapped over him. "I can be more certain of this than anyone on this planet. Or do you think my daughters were a fluke? Elysium, a fluke?"
Any other day, in front of any other people, he'd have had an answer to that. But not here, not now, and not before the closest example he'd ever seen of Kallen reborn. He crumpled as my words slammed against him, turning his face away as if slapped, even as alarms warbled suddenly on as Honkai energy rippled around me in response to my own emotions.
I was furious at Otto.
But it wasn't my place to render judgement for this.
"You will step down," Theresa said, without a trace of give in her voice. "Schicksal will pass from your hands to those of another, someone who will protect and empower where you have protected and hoarded."
She raised a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. "I know the reasons, I don't need you to explain them. But there is a better way, I will find it. Anti-Entropy has already pledged its aid to that task, and together we will protect humanity until a path to overcome the dangers ahead can be found."
That wouldn't be easy, I knew. Even if I could head off the Eruptions, gather all the Herrschers to the side of humanity, and there was no guarantee that I could. There'd still be the ending. The Herrscher of the End. Finality. Whichever it might truly be, we'd have to be prepared in ways even the Previous Era had failed to be.
But it couldn't be done without Schicksal. And though god, did I want to punch Otto in the face for everything he'd done, to make him suffer for the horrors he'd inflicted on an innocent girl, I wasn't sure it would hurt as much as what was happening right now.
"You," Theresa went on, "will be remanded to a research facility. You will be allowed to carry out work within strict limits, to pursue the only thing I now understand that you truly care about. More than me, more than anyone.
"I don't judge you for that," she added, very gently. "But I can't ignore what you've done. I'm sorry. The world deserves better than what you've given it."
"And you…" his voice shook. "You believe you can give them that?"
"Together?" Teri asked. He nodded, and she smiled in a way that made the entire room lift itself into light. "Yes, grandfather, I do. And I think you know it too. You were never meant for the role you found yourself forced into. That's warped you, changed you, led to decisions that you never believed you could make. You still are responsible for those, but I don't want you dead. Just…stopped from hurting so many people for a dream that I'm not sure ever can be realised."
She wasn't wrong there. Einstein had delved into the theory a little, Doctor MEI's notes on the Sea of Quanta, the bubble universes and realities above them. Finding exactly Otto's Kallen and returning her to the world without harming it, or her own, and having her be okay with it? That would require the sort of precision that nothing even the Previous Era had been able to create.
And yet…maybe one day. Maybe, one day, he could succeed despite those odds. And Theresa had decided that, so long as his methods wouldn't lead to the erasure of billions, he could be given that chance.
"And what if I refuse?" Otto asked. "You know I can destroy this place, rip out Schicksal's heart."
"I do," Teri nodded. "But this wasn't a request. If you do that, we'll mourn the loss, but we'll rebuild." Judah's chains rustled against each other, gentle bells as golden chains extended. "But you won't, and you'll never get a chance to save her. Not if you're willing to betray the world, betray me, like that."
For a long moment, he stared down at Theresa, wheels within wheels spinning within his mind. I doubted this was his actual brain, perhaps that one was simulating outcomes, but it didn't really matter. We knew what he had left. He did as well. The only thing that could really hurt us would do so by hurting humanity, and he needed them to build the tools that might one day let him realise his dream.
And, though I admitted it only grudgingly, he did care for Theresa. That he'd let her live, let Amber live as well, said that in ways no words ever could. And that, next to who she looked like, perhaps that was what decided him.
Perhaps not.
I saw the tension leave him moments before he bowed his head, slumping fully in the throne as he recognised a losing hand. His lips twisted in a wry, cynical smile.
"Who taught you to cheat like that?" He asked. Theresa smiled sadly, touching a hand to her breast as if acknowledging a touch.
"You did."
"So I did," he sighed. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up from the throne and walked slowly down the steps leading up to it until he was before us in truth. He went to a knee before Theresa, a motion of courtly supplication from the time of his birth.
"Then under those terms, I surrender all that I have built to you, granddaughter." He smiled again, and for a moment I could almost see the faintest echo of the young boy he'd been once. The dreamer and inventor who might have saved humanity. Long gone, of course, but flickers still remained.
"Schicksal is yours."
Was it odd to see an empire passed in quiet words and silence? Perhaps the roar of battle would have been more fitting. Recrimination, rage, those are the languages that we know to speak in the wresting of power from tyrants. But here, there were none of those things. Just gentle words and resolution, demanding that the world be freed.
I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to forgive what Otto had done to create humanity's great shield. But as I'd come to recognise before, this wasn't my place to judge. And Theresa had made her choice.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
This one took a while, didn't it. Sorry for that, life just...got in the way. A lot. My ability to actually write has been heavily restricted, not by time so much as focus, the last few months. Maybe it's getting better, maybe it's not. Summer does always make me happier, and maybe that's part of this. Or maybe it was seeing the aurora Friday night. Who knows. What matters is that this is done, and that I hope it makes a fine ending to some of the still lingering plot threads. Maybe this seems out of character for Otto, I know my plan involved beating him down to get him to concede. But when it came to that, when I reached the throne room, something changed. And this is the result.
Please highlight any errors you spot, and forgive me them. Really hope it proves worth the wait 💕
Please highlight any errors you spot, and forgive me them. Really hope it proves worth the wait 💕
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
The plan was for Otto to get his teeth punched out. It was what I was building up to for a lot of the chapter.
And then Teri did Teri things.
Otto got beaten in a way I really liked, they weren't assholes about it or and didn't draw it out they just did what they had to do and defeated him not just on a practical level but on a philosophical level where Otto had no choice but to accept it.
Chapter 25
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
The days that followed flew by, blending swiftly together into weeks. Time, always pressing onward, rushed us toward the future. Elysium's population swelled in response to its successful defence against not just a Honkai assault, but one involving a Herrscher, and with zero casualties. With plenty of space across the valley, new residential districts began to be planned as the current ones approached eighty percent capacity.
The spring snows turned to rain, and then to brilliant sunshine, illuminating the paradise we had created. It was well-defended almost to the point of paranoia, yet it remained a paradise nonetheless. The schools began to open, the vast academy at the heart of the settlement filling with adults and children alike. I accompanied my daughters there, waiting for them at the gates, listening to their chatter and witnessing their smiles as they were embraced by a world of love and joy.
Today was another one of those days, spent waiting patiently at the gate, passing time in companionable silence with the parents of the other Herrscher candidates. While it was important for the children to forge connections beyond those who might be their comrades in battle one day, I refused to hide that likely reality from their parents. Not all of them had been happy with that, Seele's mother especially. However, in the weeks following those discussions, the regular meetings at the school gates three days out of five had started to help.
"Hey, Ely?" Cecilia called from the other side of the gate, where she'd been chatting amiably with a rose-eyed brunette who smelled of flowers.
The sun had reawakened those plants, filling the air with the scents of life that wove together with those created by humanity into a truly unique whole. Fresh green that swept away the bareness of winter, bringing new life to the world. New futures. And those weren't the only ones. Not nearly.
Ragna Lothbrok was not who I'd have expected Otto to send as a spy, but her deep love of flowers had made her cover as a florist an easy one to sell. Theresa had, of course, told Welt about it once she found out, but Ragna had only been operating as an observer. Her good behaviour there, and the young girl with similar features who I swore shouldn't have been introduced as her daughter, made allowing her to stay an easy point of agreement.
"Yes, Cece?" I replied.
Cecilia returned to Elysium a few days after her departure, this time on official assignment from the organisation's new Overseer, and beside a radiantly happy Siegfried. There were more political concerns in that appointment, too, with Einstein and Tesla having repaired Abyss Flower for Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie. Theresa had used their offer to return it to Cecilia as justification to send her and Siegfried to us as the first formal envoy from Schicksal to Anti-Entropy, with her husband as her bodyguard.
That it just so happened to give them the future they'd always wanted, well, I never heard anyone complaining. The two had fought to make their happy ending real, and now they'd found it.
"Did you remember your present for Mei?" The smile at her lips was almost beyond impish in its teasing intensity. "Your daughters said you were planning something special for her party."
I stared at the woman with flat, dead eyes. Some artistic licence may be required here. But I really did try. Cecilia's lips twitched.
"So mean," I sighed, flouncing artistically. "I'll have it ready for this Thursday, Cecilia. She's having her party after school, so I'll have plenty of time."
I wasn't exactly sure how I'd gotten a reputation for getting everything done last minute. I was pretty sure it was entirely unfair, too. And yet, here I was. I wasn't even involved in handling the paperwork that Cecilia had submitted shortly after arriving back. The returns getting to her late hadn't had anything to do with me!
"Okay," Cecilia said, masterfully restraining her laughter. "Just wanted to be sure."
I muttered several unintelligible somethings under my breath as she turned back to her little group. But I was smiling as I did it.
If all went well in the months ahead, the rest of Squad Snow Wolf would be sent to establish a formal embassy within Elysium. That had been what the paperwork had been for, after all, despite the way my character was being maligned in relation to it. Though it would be easier to consider the request as something that mattered if Theresa didn't seem to spend at least a third of her time in Elysium herself. She'd even considered the idea of moving Shicksal's headquarters to off the West Coast of Scotland, close enough to make transit a simple affair of minutes rather than hours.
There was, of course, pushback from within the organisation and not just on that subject. Otto had passed her total control, nothing less would have been accepted, but that didn't mean there weren't those who saw her new policies as deeply dangerous. Anti-Entropy and Schicksal had been at odds with each other ever since the former broke away from the latter, and some of those wounds still sunk deep. And not just among Schicksal.
Welt had been forced to make it extremely clear to his own followers that this new chapter was not a return to Schicksal control. That would never have been accepted, not after everything the organisation had done to AE under Otto's command. But a reconnection of equals, that could be accepted. Which was exactly why he'd presented it that way.
"I admit, I'm curious what someone of your talents would consider special," a steady, pleasant baritone intruded. Looking up from my thoughts, and in reality, I found Raiden Ryoma standing next to me. His pale purple hair was pulled back in its usual tail, but he'd at least started dressing down a little for these more casual occasions. Trying to look less like a CEO and more like a father.
His question, however, made me want to smile and wince at the same time. Because the answer was rather complicated, despite being so simple. And yet, what was the point in hedging?
"I think I have a way to stabilise her Stigmata," I replied, meeting his eyes steadily. He went very still. Ever since Wendy's Awakening, the younger Raiden's Stigmata had been acting unstable at best, as if the imprint of energy traced across Mei's existence was trying to reach out to something that was no longer there.
"It's not going to be something instant," I added hastily. Not unless Origin decided otherwise, at least, though that I didn't say that, and if I was honest, I didn't want that to happen. Hua had been able to handle the collected reality of her existence being shoved back into her soul in our first meeting, but that had been a result of training and thousands of years of life experience. Mei had none of that. "But I've been talking with Einstein, and we think it's possible."
"I see." Ryoma inclined his head, a questioning motion. "This would involve the circumstances of Miss Barbatos in some way, I assume."
"It would." It was no surprise that Ryoma knew about Wendy. Whilst ME Corp wasn't nearly so involved in Honkai experimentation now than it would have been in coming years under a different head, that didn't mean it was without resources in the field. And Ryoma was well within Anti-Entropy's inner circle, which meant he knew all about at least some of what I could do.
"Our current hope is to execute a transfer between the two girls. It will mean a lot of practice and training with Mei, both before and after the procedure, but we're confide-" the sound of the Academy's closing bell cut me off mid-word. "Ah, why don't you come around to the labs tomorrow? We can go through the process with you."
"That would be appreciated," the man said, a rare smile touching his youthful face. "I know Mei has been having to work much harder in the past few weeks to control her own output. I worry about how much of a toll it might be taking on her here."
"Well," I said brightly, turning to see the small flood of children breaching the Academy's younger education levels, splitting out to the various gates of the institute. "You know how much I love to help girls smile. I hope this will be just as much of a success!"
And if it would help immensely for Einstein to be there, explaining things scientifically in a way that I knew I just couldn't? That was something that the world could keep secret for me. Ryoma smiled faintly again, and bowed his head more fully.
"If you can truly do what you believe is possible, then it would be my privilege to see it done."
"Tomorrow, then." Ahead of me, I saw the purple and silver hair of my girls resolve itself out of the small tributary of children heading in our direction. Something warm bubbled in my heart as I saw their smiles.
"Of course." He stepped away to wait for his daughter, and let the hurricane of happy children envelop me.
The weather didn't fully clear until we were all the way home, with Sirin and Bella comfortably ensconced by the fire. I was pretty sure it was safe to put them there, given that they had homework to do. It was nice to be confident that Bella would prevent her sister from throwing any annoying questions into the flames, though I would probably have to make it up to her at dinner time.
I'd have to check the cookie box.
For now, though, I sat at the big, wooden kitchen table with several sheaves of paper scattered around me. A cup of steaming tea sat on a coaster nearby, untouched but for a first sip. I could and would protest my involvement with Cecilia's late paperwork, but not even Ely's powers had been able to save me from the creeping doom of reports. The one devouring my focus right now, though, was one I'd wanted to see.
Wendy's situation had improved significantly since the Battle of Elysium, but the purging of the Will's influence hadn't been without deleterious effects. The pain that had been a regular part of her world before Awakening in Norway was gone, as well as any sign of Otto's control circuits, rendering her clear-headed for the first time in months. But being clear-headed meant she was able to properly examine her actions.
Guilt had buried the girl in the first few days after she'd woken up after the battle, and it was only through the regular presence of Theresa that the girl had even been capable of registering Cecilia's gentle forgiveness. Which she still hadn't accepted. I hoped she was talking about at least some of it with her therapist, but if I'd had access to anything more than abstract reporting on that, I'd have fired them myself.
On the public-facing side, Schicksal and Anti-Entropy had come together in a media blitz to shield Wendy from negative perceptions. And there, we caught a lucky break. Tesla had upgraded all of her mechs in recent months to operate remotely and, thanks to that, we could accurately report that her actions whilst under the sway of Honkai had inflicted zero deaths.
There'd been a vast amount of damage, of course, but that was par the course. But the original Welt's awakening had levelled large portions of Berlin, killing hundreds of thousands, and today's inheritor of his legacy moved in the highest circles of power. Wendy, by comparison, had done damage in two primary forms.
One was the emotional impact of Elysium coming under attack, the wounds to Seigfried, Cecilia and even Bella. For most of the civilians present, they were just happy to find that the much praised defence systems of the valley had worked as promised. The other major point of harm had been to Norwegian infrastructure, something that Anti-Entropy and Schicksal would be working to symptom-treat for at least a month until the ground thawed enough to replace the underground connections to rural communities.
The vast pulse of energy released by the girl's Awakening had grazed the edge of a city or two, but hadn't come close enough to major medical facilities to take them offline. The lights had flickered here and there, but they'd stayed on. And those in the far flung communities had found Schicksal and Anti-Entropy transports arriving in short order with supplies and promises of more in the days to come.
At the moment, the messaging on Wendy's very temporary time in the Will's hold was being presented to show her as the victim she truly was. The sad political realities made it impossible to properly hold Otto's feet to the fire for his part in the disaster, but a watered-down version of the truth had been used as a rationale for his stepping down as Overseer.
Helping Wendy to trust herself again was going to be a long process, but a glance at my daughters reminded me that she wouldn't be the first resident of Elysium to face that challenge. And if we were lucky, she might have a friend or two who could truly empathise. It was much of why Einstein and I had been working so hard to find a way to safely extract the Core of Conquest from her. Wind's power was a subtle thing, for all its absurd potential, unlike the scorching, wild fury of Thunders unleashed.
Wendy had the training and basic skills to properly integrate the Core of Desire into her life to come. She might be able to do the same with Conquest, but it would be far more risky. And we already had a very promising candidate to take up that mantle. Mei was certainly young, and it would be a great burden on the child to be granted such power, something that I would only accept as her choice. But the nascent core of will that had mastered lightning in one life was just as present in this here and now. And in this present, she'd never be alone.
It was a good solution, as close to perfect as any of us could come up with. Now we were just hoping that it was the right one. After that, it would just be a matter of observation. Einstein was already working to proliferate the knowledge she'd begun to unravel from the Void Archives, and though it would help billions, we'd have to be ready for the inevitable retaliation. Honkai's power grew in line with that of civilization, and as humanity began to reach in full for the bright star of the Previous Era's technology, Honkai's responses would adapt and evolve to match them.
Match us?
I still wasn't sure which term was correct. I knew that I had been a human before, and could remember Ely being told that she'd succeeded in becoming one. Yet for all that…sometimes it was hard to be sure.
I laid the reports on Wendy to one side, a bittersweet smile on my lips as I turned to the next set. Almost every child I'd brought to Elysium to help, I knew how to support. Most of it was a matter of training, preparation and low level observation to make sure that none of them ended up suffering through an uncontrolled Awakening like Wendy had. Exactly how we were going to get around the other side of that coin, however, we still weren't sure.
And, unfortunately, that didn't solve anything for the girl(s) who the current report in my hand was about. The solution I'd given to the Seele of the Previous Era was only a band-aid. To actually help the Seeles, we needed more than my half-remembered overrides. We'd tried to do keyword searches within the Archives for more data, but everything we'd found had been heavily incomplete. Whatever the geniuses of MOTH had done to create Seele's unique Stigmata, it had either been filed under a less obvious project title or never committed to the Archive's memory.
There was a plan in motion to resolve that issue, but it was going to take a while longer to produce results. After everything with Wendy, I wanted any immediate issues properly resolved before leaving Elysium again. Though, that was getting a little harder to justify, as I caught a flicker of purple light engulf a bottle of lemonade I'd left out on the counter.
"Sirin?" I called sweetly. I looked around to see my daughter pouring lemonade into the empty glasses next to her and her sister's homework. She made a high pitched sound of surprise, but at least this time didn't jerk the bottle over the paper of her assignment.
"Um…yes mom?" She asked, clutching the bottle as she looked back at me. It was really hard to be annoyed at her when she was trying so hard to not look guilty. Even when doing so made it so obvious.
"What have I said about portals in the house for now?" It wasn't as if I was planning on restricting her power completely, that would be the height of cruelty. But until she had a proper handle on her portals, I'd felt it better to encourage a degree of caution.
Sirin's eyes dropped to the bottle clutched to her chest, and her cheeks flushed. "Oh."
"Yes, oh," I said, softening sternness with a gentle smile. "Just bring it back when you're done, okay? With your feet this time." I teased at the last.
"O…okay," she murmured, turning back to pour the other glass. It was a major step for her to be able to do that without falling into a fear spiral, sad as it was to admit. So whilst I needed to keep her honest, I also had to be careful not to push on that trauma.
Bella smiled past her sister at me, a thankful gleam in her silver eyes that softened my heart without any input on my part. Children, they really did bring out so much of who you were. Then she shooed her purple-haired sister up from the table to return the bottle. If I just so happened to catch the younger girl in a crushing hug as she passed me, well, I was a mom. Doing that to my kids was my prerogative - or even a requirement!
And as she returned to her work, I turned back to mine. At this point, my foreknowledge had largely been rendered moot beyond what I knew of the Herrscher candidate list. And that left, ugh, hard work as the only solution to the problems ahead. Why, oh why, had I gotten myself so involved? I just wanted to raise my kids and spend impossible amounts of time in bed with my wonderful scientist girlfriend. Was that too much to ask?
Reality seemed to think so. Reality was also a spoilsport of the highest order. But at the same time, could I really complain? This pattern of steady days, brightened by the children I'd brought into my life and the friends and more I'd made around them. It was good, in a way that matched the most idyllic times of my shared memories. But at the same time…I knew it had an expiration date.
Perhaps that was the greatest curse of my knowledge? Despite everything I did, these beautiful times would come to an end, even if it was only for a little while. The Awakenings would tear at the fabric of the peaceful reality I was trying to help create. And even if we conquered all of them, there would still be what was to come. The ultimate test, that for all my unflagging faith in humanity, I wasn't sure how to overcome.
"You're thinking heavy thoughts," Einstein said from behind me, in the same moment as I felt the woman's hand land on my shoulder. "You always get a particular furrow in your brow when that happens."
"Eins!" One moment I was seated with her behind me. The next I'd spun the chair completely, without hitting her with it, and was hugging the wonderful woman tightly. "You're home early!"
"I did make a promise," she reminded, running a caring hand through my hair whilst I nestled in just around the level of her breasts. "Did you think I'd forget?"
"Noo," the word stretched as she poked me teasingly on one cheek. "I was just worried that things might come up, y'know?"
The bluette laughed, a welcome smile on her often impassive face. "Well, I'm here now," she told me. Her smile turned a little sly. "And I've got the morning off too."
My eyes widened before I could catch myself, and I flushed suddenly as more honest laughter blossomed between us. "That's not fair," I muttered around my pouting smile. "I know you like our time together just as much."
"I do," Einstein agreed. "But you know how fun it is to tease you."
And I couldn't even argue that. Because I truly did know, just as I knew that Einstein welcomed how we gave as good as we got. She'd just caught me on the backfoot this time, and so unfairly too. There would be a reckoning for this, I swore by her prettiest smile.
"Come on, then," I said, reaching up and pulling on her shoulders to help me to my feet, snagging a kiss on my way up. "Let's get dinner done. Then we can get to enhancing your morning."
Her squawk of outrage set me off into hopeless giggling. How we got dinner ready on time that evening, neither of us ever knew.
The memory of that night was a warm blanket around me as I stood in a vaulting throne room deep beneath the earth, cloaked in shadows and cold. A single, tall throne anchored the wall before me, the emblem of World Serpent carved into the pale stone. One day, there would have been cloth there. And a group of operatives, who now would never be, welcoming back a man trapped in the chaos beyond our reality. Maybe, once this was done, we could think about freeing him.
For now, I stared down the tunnel past the throne, as if I could unravel the shadows that cloaked the path ahead if I stared hard enough. I wasn't sure how long I'd been staring, really. It had taken a great deal of work to find this place, and it was only thanks to Hua's memories narrowing the area down that we'd found an entrance in weeks rather than months or years.
But that had given me time to handle any lingering issues at Elysium. And for my daughters to find enough strength in themselves to be able to accept my being gone for…well, I couldn't be sure.
Mei's birthday had come and gone, and her acceptance had allowed us to move forward on extracting and relocating the Core of Conquest from Wendy. That process was proceeding as planned, but with Cecilia and so many others easily on hand, it was considered safe for me to move onto the next step of our plans. The one involving questions that even the Void Archives couldn't give us proper answers to.
And also a chance for part of me, a big part of the me that now existed, to see old friends. Maybe even…bring some of them back. I wasn't sure how possible that would be, for any of them. But what Otto had done, that technology was replicable. If it hadn't been, he'd never have been able to construct so many avatars.
For a moment, I let the possibilities dance in my mind. Maybe one in particular. You couldn't prove anything. Then I sighed, steeled myself, and stepped past the throne into the tunnel that, somehow, felt like it had been waiting for me ever since I woke up in the Siberian winter. Maybe it had.
No one had appeared to stop me from entering the shrine, or even greet me, but that wasn't entirely surprising. If I was going to meet anyone here, it would be on this path. And as the more modern stonework gave way to truly ancient ruins, I found myself vindicated.
"Lady Elysia." The hooded figure had been waiting for me in the shadows of the tunnel, and their mask gleamed as they stepped into the light of one of the wall lamps. A single exposed eye glowed crimson, and he held the umbrella that I remembered being so typical to his appearances. Even inside. What a barbarian.
"Hi hi~" It truly was a reflex at this point, together with the tilt of my head and coquettish wink. There were worse things to have as habits. Grey Serpent was unmoved. "I think you know why I'm here."
"It is quite obvious," he agreed. "Though you did take your time about it."
"I've had quite a few things to do, you know," I pointed out. I would've been shocked if my actions hadn't been a subject of constant observation after my first few days in the world. "And a mother has to take care of her children."
The artificial life in front of me, no less real for it, considered that before dipping his head in a very slight nod. "It has been noted that your maturity has significantly increased compared to previous baselines, yes."
Ouch.
"So." Best to just move on than engage a distributed intelligence in a snark-off. "Are you going to say I can't go?"
"I admit, I have no idea how the Realm will handle your presence," he said. A hint of dry amusement coloured his synthesised tone. "Though it hardly matters. You are of Moth. I can hardly deny you."
"You don't give yourself enough credit," I told him warmly. He went very still, and I slipped a hand across his shoulder as I moved to step past him. "You're more than the directives you were given. No cute girl, but I won't hold that against you."
The mask turned to stare at me. "You are a very confusing human, Lady Elysia."
"You'll get used to me," I told him happily. "You did once before, remember?"
Then I stepped past the platform, continuing into the dark. As I passed beyond the last rays of light, I heard him murmur. "Perhaps I never did."
Then the world was swallowed by darkness, my steps echoing in the nothingness of the transit from the real world to the simulation woven so intricately into the depths of this most sacred of shrines. Somewhere deep inside, I felt Origin stir, recognising what it represented. A place of endings, but also so many beginnings.
I hoped it would let me have just a few more.
Then the darkness cleared away, revealing a sight that I remembered in two lives, and yet brought tears to my eyes all the same. Gentle, golden light poured in through high windows on one side of the vaulting chamber, columns of white stone rising to support the roof, reflecting in the mirror-sheen of the floor.
On a raised platform to my right was a holotable of the Previous Era's creation, a multi-purpose analysis and tactical assessment interface repurposed to aid visitors to the Realm. Various screens had been bolted into places around it, providing more physical area for output, as well as a number of standalone terminals that I'd never been able to touch in my personal memories of this space. Ely, on the other hand, knew what they'd been for. She'd just never really cared about them.
On my left was another raised platform matching the war room, lounge seating in sumptuous red leather, or perhaps velvet, taking up most of the lower wall space. Several portraits hung on the walls above the seats, and one of them was why I had to blink tears away. The image of Eden hadn't ever faded from Ely's mind, but it was still very different to see a proper picture of the woman who'd helped define so much of Elysia's existence.
But none of that drew the lion's share of my attention compared to what was right in front of me.
At the end of the polished floor rose the gateway to the Realm's deeper reaches, a point of dark colours wrapped in gold, held between an ornate podium and hanging pillar, all done in white and gold. The latter was supported by grey metal and the flickering lights of high Previous Era technology. At least, that's what I remembered. My view was a little blocked, currently.
A pink-haired figure was waiting for me at the heart of the space, her mouth hanging open around the greeting she'd clearly been waiting to offer. So Grey Serpent hadn't warned her, and the system itself hadn't either. At least not in time.
I raised a single hand, waving it across the face of my mirror. If that was how I looked when surprised, it was no wonder Einstein tried to do that so often. But that was something for later. For now, I smiled, and words bubbled up unbidden.
"Hi~" I struck a pose, winking at her.
"My other me."
The spring snows turned to rain, and then to brilliant sunshine, illuminating the paradise we had created. It was well-defended almost to the point of paranoia, yet it remained a paradise nonetheless. The schools began to open, the vast academy at the heart of the settlement filling with adults and children alike. I accompanied my daughters there, waiting for them at the gates, listening to their chatter and witnessing their smiles as they were embraced by a world of love and joy.
Today was another one of those days, spent waiting patiently at the gate, passing time in companionable silence with the parents of the other Herrscher candidates. While it was important for the children to forge connections beyond those who might be their comrades in battle one day, I refused to hide that likely reality from their parents. Not all of them had been happy with that, Seele's mother especially. However, in the weeks following those discussions, the regular meetings at the school gates three days out of five had started to help.
"Hey, Ely?" Cecilia called from the other side of the gate, where she'd been chatting amiably with a rose-eyed brunette who smelled of flowers.
The sun had reawakened those plants, filling the air with the scents of life that wove together with those created by humanity into a truly unique whole. Fresh green that swept away the bareness of winter, bringing new life to the world. New futures. And those weren't the only ones. Not nearly.
Ragna Lothbrok was not who I'd have expected Otto to send as a spy, but her deep love of flowers had made her cover as a florist an easy one to sell. Theresa had, of course, told Welt about it once she found out, but Ragna had only been operating as an observer. Her good behaviour there, and the young girl with similar features who I swore shouldn't have been introduced as her daughter, made allowing her to stay an easy point of agreement.
"Yes, Cece?" I replied.
Cecilia returned to Elysium a few days after her departure, this time on official assignment from the organisation's new Overseer, and beside a radiantly happy Siegfried. There were more political concerns in that appointment, too, with Einstein and Tesla having repaired Abyss Flower for Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie. Theresa had used their offer to return it to Cecilia as justification to send her and Siegfried to us as the first formal envoy from Schicksal to Anti-Entropy, with her husband as her bodyguard.
That it just so happened to give them the future they'd always wanted, well, I never heard anyone complaining. The two had fought to make their happy ending real, and now they'd found it.
"Did you remember your present for Mei?" The smile at her lips was almost beyond impish in its teasing intensity. "Your daughters said you were planning something special for her party."
I stared at the woman with flat, dead eyes. Some artistic licence may be required here. But I really did try. Cecilia's lips twitched.
"So mean," I sighed, flouncing artistically. "I'll have it ready for this Thursday, Cecilia. She's having her party after school, so I'll have plenty of time."
I wasn't exactly sure how I'd gotten a reputation for getting everything done last minute. I was pretty sure it was entirely unfair, too. And yet, here I was. I wasn't even involved in handling the paperwork that Cecilia had submitted shortly after arriving back. The returns getting to her late hadn't had anything to do with me!
"Okay," Cecilia said, masterfully restraining her laughter. "Just wanted to be sure."
I muttered several unintelligible somethings under my breath as she turned back to her little group. But I was smiling as I did it.
If all went well in the months ahead, the rest of Squad Snow Wolf would be sent to establish a formal embassy within Elysium. That had been what the paperwork had been for, after all, despite the way my character was being maligned in relation to it. Though it would be easier to consider the request as something that mattered if Theresa didn't seem to spend at least a third of her time in Elysium herself. She'd even considered the idea of moving Shicksal's headquarters to off the West Coast of Scotland, close enough to make transit a simple affair of minutes rather than hours.
There was, of course, pushback from within the organisation and not just on that subject. Otto had passed her total control, nothing less would have been accepted, but that didn't mean there weren't those who saw her new policies as deeply dangerous. Anti-Entropy and Schicksal had been at odds with each other ever since the former broke away from the latter, and some of those wounds still sunk deep. And not just among Schicksal.
Welt had been forced to make it extremely clear to his own followers that this new chapter was not a return to Schicksal control. That would never have been accepted, not after everything the organisation had done to AE under Otto's command. But a reconnection of equals, that could be accepted. Which was exactly why he'd presented it that way.
"I admit, I'm curious what someone of your talents would consider special," a steady, pleasant baritone intruded. Looking up from my thoughts, and in reality, I found Raiden Ryoma standing next to me. His pale purple hair was pulled back in its usual tail, but he'd at least started dressing down a little for these more casual occasions. Trying to look less like a CEO and more like a father.
His question, however, made me want to smile and wince at the same time. Because the answer was rather complicated, despite being so simple. And yet, what was the point in hedging?
"I think I have a way to stabilise her Stigmata," I replied, meeting his eyes steadily. He went very still. Ever since Wendy's Awakening, the younger Raiden's Stigmata had been acting unstable at best, as if the imprint of energy traced across Mei's existence was trying to reach out to something that was no longer there.
"It's not going to be something instant," I added hastily. Not unless Origin decided otherwise, at least, though that I didn't say that, and if I was honest, I didn't want that to happen. Hua had been able to handle the collected reality of her existence being shoved back into her soul in our first meeting, but that had been a result of training and thousands of years of life experience. Mei had none of that. "But I've been talking with Einstein, and we think it's possible."
"I see." Ryoma inclined his head, a questioning motion. "This would involve the circumstances of Miss Barbatos in some way, I assume."
"It would." It was no surprise that Ryoma knew about Wendy. Whilst ME Corp wasn't nearly so involved in Honkai experimentation now than it would have been in coming years under a different head, that didn't mean it was without resources in the field. And Ryoma was well within Anti-Entropy's inner circle, which meant he knew all about at least some of what I could do.
"Our current hope is to execute a transfer between the two girls. It will mean a lot of practice and training with Mei, both before and after the procedure, but we're confide-" the sound of the Academy's closing bell cut me off mid-word. "Ah, why don't you come around to the labs tomorrow? We can go through the process with you."
"That would be appreciated," the man said, a rare smile touching his youthful face. "I know Mei has been having to work much harder in the past few weeks to control her own output. I worry about how much of a toll it might be taking on her here."
"Well," I said brightly, turning to see the small flood of children breaching the Academy's younger education levels, splitting out to the various gates of the institute. "You know how much I love to help girls smile. I hope this will be just as much of a success!"
And if it would help immensely for Einstein to be there, explaining things scientifically in a way that I knew I just couldn't? That was something that the world could keep secret for me. Ryoma smiled faintly again, and bowed his head more fully.
"If you can truly do what you believe is possible, then it would be my privilege to see it done."
"Tomorrow, then." Ahead of me, I saw the purple and silver hair of my girls resolve itself out of the small tributary of children heading in our direction. Something warm bubbled in my heart as I saw their smiles.
"Of course." He stepped away to wait for his daughter, and let the hurricane of happy children envelop me.
The weather didn't fully clear until we were all the way home, with Sirin and Bella comfortably ensconced by the fire. I was pretty sure it was safe to put them there, given that they had homework to do. It was nice to be confident that Bella would prevent her sister from throwing any annoying questions into the flames, though I would probably have to make it up to her at dinner time.
I'd have to check the cookie box.
For now, though, I sat at the big, wooden kitchen table with several sheaves of paper scattered around me. A cup of steaming tea sat on a coaster nearby, untouched but for a first sip. I could and would protest my involvement with Cecilia's late paperwork, but not even Ely's powers had been able to save me from the creeping doom of reports. The one devouring my focus right now, though, was one I'd wanted to see.
Wendy's situation had improved significantly since the Battle of Elysium, but the purging of the Will's influence hadn't been without deleterious effects. The pain that had been a regular part of her world before Awakening in Norway was gone, as well as any sign of Otto's control circuits, rendering her clear-headed for the first time in months. But being clear-headed meant she was able to properly examine her actions.
Guilt had buried the girl in the first few days after she'd woken up after the battle, and it was only through the regular presence of Theresa that the girl had even been capable of registering Cecilia's gentle forgiveness. Which she still hadn't accepted. I hoped she was talking about at least some of it with her therapist, but if I'd had access to anything more than abstract reporting on that, I'd have fired them myself.
On the public-facing side, Schicksal and Anti-Entropy had come together in a media blitz to shield Wendy from negative perceptions. And there, we caught a lucky break. Tesla had upgraded all of her mechs in recent months to operate remotely and, thanks to that, we could accurately report that her actions whilst under the sway of Honkai had inflicted zero deaths.
There'd been a vast amount of damage, of course, but that was par the course. But the original Welt's awakening had levelled large portions of Berlin, killing hundreds of thousands, and today's inheritor of his legacy moved in the highest circles of power. Wendy, by comparison, had done damage in two primary forms.
One was the emotional impact of Elysium coming under attack, the wounds to Seigfried, Cecilia and even Bella. For most of the civilians present, they were just happy to find that the much praised defence systems of the valley had worked as promised. The other major point of harm had been to Norwegian infrastructure, something that Anti-Entropy and Schicksal would be working to symptom-treat for at least a month until the ground thawed enough to replace the underground connections to rural communities.
The vast pulse of energy released by the girl's Awakening had grazed the edge of a city or two, but hadn't come close enough to major medical facilities to take them offline. The lights had flickered here and there, but they'd stayed on. And those in the far flung communities had found Schicksal and Anti-Entropy transports arriving in short order with supplies and promises of more in the days to come.
At the moment, the messaging on Wendy's very temporary time in the Will's hold was being presented to show her as the victim she truly was. The sad political realities made it impossible to properly hold Otto's feet to the fire for his part in the disaster, but a watered-down version of the truth had been used as a rationale for his stepping down as Overseer.
Helping Wendy to trust herself again was going to be a long process, but a glance at my daughters reminded me that she wouldn't be the first resident of Elysium to face that challenge. And if we were lucky, she might have a friend or two who could truly empathise. It was much of why Einstein and I had been working so hard to find a way to safely extract the Core of Conquest from her. Wind's power was a subtle thing, for all its absurd potential, unlike the scorching, wild fury of Thunders unleashed.
Wendy had the training and basic skills to properly integrate the Core of Desire into her life to come. She might be able to do the same with Conquest, but it would be far more risky. And we already had a very promising candidate to take up that mantle. Mei was certainly young, and it would be a great burden on the child to be granted such power, something that I would only accept as her choice. But the nascent core of will that had mastered lightning in one life was just as present in this here and now. And in this present, she'd never be alone.
It was a good solution, as close to perfect as any of us could come up with. Now we were just hoping that it was the right one. After that, it would just be a matter of observation. Einstein was already working to proliferate the knowledge she'd begun to unravel from the Void Archives, and though it would help billions, we'd have to be ready for the inevitable retaliation. Honkai's power grew in line with that of civilization, and as humanity began to reach in full for the bright star of the Previous Era's technology, Honkai's responses would adapt and evolve to match them.
Match us?
I still wasn't sure which term was correct. I knew that I had been a human before, and could remember Ely being told that she'd succeeded in becoming one. Yet for all that…sometimes it was hard to be sure.
I laid the reports on Wendy to one side, a bittersweet smile on my lips as I turned to the next set. Almost every child I'd brought to Elysium to help, I knew how to support. Most of it was a matter of training, preparation and low level observation to make sure that none of them ended up suffering through an uncontrolled Awakening like Wendy had. Exactly how we were going to get around the other side of that coin, however, we still weren't sure.
And, unfortunately, that didn't solve anything for the girl(s) who the current report in my hand was about. The solution I'd given to the Seele of the Previous Era was only a band-aid. To actually help the Seeles, we needed more than my half-remembered overrides. We'd tried to do keyword searches within the Archives for more data, but everything we'd found had been heavily incomplete. Whatever the geniuses of MOTH had done to create Seele's unique Stigmata, it had either been filed under a less obvious project title or never committed to the Archive's memory.
There was a plan in motion to resolve that issue, but it was going to take a while longer to produce results. After everything with Wendy, I wanted any immediate issues properly resolved before leaving Elysium again. Though, that was getting a little harder to justify, as I caught a flicker of purple light engulf a bottle of lemonade I'd left out on the counter.
"Sirin?" I called sweetly. I looked around to see my daughter pouring lemonade into the empty glasses next to her and her sister's homework. She made a high pitched sound of surprise, but at least this time didn't jerk the bottle over the paper of her assignment.
"Um…yes mom?" She asked, clutching the bottle as she looked back at me. It was really hard to be annoyed at her when she was trying so hard to not look guilty. Even when doing so made it so obvious.
"What have I said about portals in the house for now?" It wasn't as if I was planning on restricting her power completely, that would be the height of cruelty. But until she had a proper handle on her portals, I'd felt it better to encourage a degree of caution.
Sirin's eyes dropped to the bottle clutched to her chest, and her cheeks flushed. "Oh."
"Yes, oh," I said, softening sternness with a gentle smile. "Just bring it back when you're done, okay? With your feet this time." I teased at the last.
"O…okay," she murmured, turning back to pour the other glass. It was a major step for her to be able to do that without falling into a fear spiral, sad as it was to admit. So whilst I needed to keep her honest, I also had to be careful not to push on that trauma.
Bella smiled past her sister at me, a thankful gleam in her silver eyes that softened my heart without any input on my part. Children, they really did bring out so much of who you were. Then she shooed her purple-haired sister up from the table to return the bottle. If I just so happened to catch the younger girl in a crushing hug as she passed me, well, I was a mom. Doing that to my kids was my prerogative - or even a requirement!
And as she returned to her work, I turned back to mine. At this point, my foreknowledge had largely been rendered moot beyond what I knew of the Herrscher candidate list. And that left, ugh, hard work as the only solution to the problems ahead. Why, oh why, had I gotten myself so involved? I just wanted to raise my kids and spend impossible amounts of time in bed with my wonderful scientist girlfriend. Was that too much to ask?
Reality seemed to think so. Reality was also a spoilsport of the highest order. But at the same time, could I really complain? This pattern of steady days, brightened by the children I'd brought into my life and the friends and more I'd made around them. It was good, in a way that matched the most idyllic times of my shared memories. But at the same time…I knew it had an expiration date.
Perhaps that was the greatest curse of my knowledge? Despite everything I did, these beautiful times would come to an end, even if it was only for a little while. The Awakenings would tear at the fabric of the peaceful reality I was trying to help create. And even if we conquered all of them, there would still be what was to come. The ultimate test, that for all my unflagging faith in humanity, I wasn't sure how to overcome.
"You're thinking heavy thoughts," Einstein said from behind me, in the same moment as I felt the woman's hand land on my shoulder. "You always get a particular furrow in your brow when that happens."
"Eins!" One moment I was seated with her behind me. The next I'd spun the chair completely, without hitting her with it, and was hugging the wonderful woman tightly. "You're home early!"
"I did make a promise," she reminded, running a caring hand through my hair whilst I nestled in just around the level of her breasts. "Did you think I'd forget?"
"Noo," the word stretched as she poked me teasingly on one cheek. "I was just worried that things might come up, y'know?"
The bluette laughed, a welcome smile on her often impassive face. "Well, I'm here now," she told me. Her smile turned a little sly. "And I've got the morning off too."
My eyes widened before I could catch myself, and I flushed suddenly as more honest laughter blossomed between us. "That's not fair," I muttered around my pouting smile. "I know you like our time together just as much."
"I do," Einstein agreed. "But you know how fun it is to tease you."
And I couldn't even argue that. Because I truly did know, just as I knew that Einstein welcomed how we gave as good as we got. She'd just caught me on the backfoot this time, and so unfairly too. There would be a reckoning for this, I swore by her prettiest smile.
"Come on, then," I said, reaching up and pulling on her shoulders to help me to my feet, snagging a kiss on my way up. "Let's get dinner done. Then we can get to enhancing your morning."
Her squawk of outrage set me off into hopeless giggling. How we got dinner ready on time that evening, neither of us ever knew.
The memory of that night was a warm blanket around me as I stood in a vaulting throne room deep beneath the earth, cloaked in shadows and cold. A single, tall throne anchored the wall before me, the emblem of World Serpent carved into the pale stone. One day, there would have been cloth there. And a group of operatives, who now would never be, welcoming back a man trapped in the chaos beyond our reality. Maybe, once this was done, we could think about freeing him.
For now, I stared down the tunnel past the throne, as if I could unravel the shadows that cloaked the path ahead if I stared hard enough. I wasn't sure how long I'd been staring, really. It had taken a great deal of work to find this place, and it was only thanks to Hua's memories narrowing the area down that we'd found an entrance in weeks rather than months or years.
But that had given me time to handle any lingering issues at Elysium. And for my daughters to find enough strength in themselves to be able to accept my being gone for…well, I couldn't be sure.
Mei's birthday had come and gone, and her acceptance had allowed us to move forward on extracting and relocating the Core of Conquest from Wendy. That process was proceeding as planned, but with Cecilia and so many others easily on hand, it was considered safe for me to move onto the next step of our plans. The one involving questions that even the Void Archives couldn't give us proper answers to.
And also a chance for part of me, a big part of the me that now existed, to see old friends. Maybe even…bring some of them back. I wasn't sure how possible that would be, for any of them. But what Otto had done, that technology was replicable. If it hadn't been, he'd never have been able to construct so many avatars.
For a moment, I let the possibilities dance in my mind. Maybe one in particular. You couldn't prove anything. Then I sighed, steeled myself, and stepped past the throne into the tunnel that, somehow, felt like it had been waiting for me ever since I woke up in the Siberian winter. Maybe it had.
No one had appeared to stop me from entering the shrine, or even greet me, but that wasn't entirely surprising. If I was going to meet anyone here, it would be on this path. And as the more modern stonework gave way to truly ancient ruins, I found myself vindicated.
"Lady Elysia." The hooded figure had been waiting for me in the shadows of the tunnel, and their mask gleamed as they stepped into the light of one of the wall lamps. A single exposed eye glowed crimson, and he held the umbrella that I remembered being so typical to his appearances. Even inside. What a barbarian.
"Hi hi~" It truly was a reflex at this point, together with the tilt of my head and coquettish wink. There were worse things to have as habits. Grey Serpent was unmoved. "I think you know why I'm here."
"It is quite obvious," he agreed. "Though you did take your time about it."
"I've had quite a few things to do, you know," I pointed out. I would've been shocked if my actions hadn't been a subject of constant observation after my first few days in the world. "And a mother has to take care of her children."
The artificial life in front of me, no less real for it, considered that before dipping his head in a very slight nod. "It has been noted that your maturity has significantly increased compared to previous baselines, yes."
Ouch.
"So." Best to just move on than engage a distributed intelligence in a snark-off. "Are you going to say I can't go?"
"I admit, I have no idea how the Realm will handle your presence," he said. A hint of dry amusement coloured his synthesised tone. "Though it hardly matters. You are of Moth. I can hardly deny you."
"You don't give yourself enough credit," I told him warmly. He went very still, and I slipped a hand across his shoulder as I moved to step past him. "You're more than the directives you were given. No cute girl, but I won't hold that against you."
The mask turned to stare at me. "You are a very confusing human, Lady Elysia."
"You'll get used to me," I told him happily. "You did once before, remember?"
Then I stepped past the platform, continuing into the dark. As I passed beyond the last rays of light, I heard him murmur. "Perhaps I never did."
Then the world was swallowed by darkness, my steps echoing in the nothingness of the transit from the real world to the simulation woven so intricately into the depths of this most sacred of shrines. Somewhere deep inside, I felt Origin stir, recognising what it represented. A place of endings, but also so many beginnings.
I hoped it would let me have just a few more.
Then the darkness cleared away, revealing a sight that I remembered in two lives, and yet brought tears to my eyes all the same. Gentle, golden light poured in through high windows on one side of the vaulting chamber, columns of white stone rising to support the roof, reflecting in the mirror-sheen of the floor.
On a raised platform to my right was a holotable of the Previous Era's creation, a multi-purpose analysis and tactical assessment interface repurposed to aid visitors to the Realm. Various screens had been bolted into places around it, providing more physical area for output, as well as a number of standalone terminals that I'd never been able to touch in my personal memories of this space. Ely, on the other hand, knew what they'd been for. She'd just never really cared about them.
On my left was another raised platform matching the war room, lounge seating in sumptuous red leather, or perhaps velvet, taking up most of the lower wall space. Several portraits hung on the walls above the seats, and one of them was why I had to blink tears away. The image of Eden hadn't ever faded from Ely's mind, but it was still very different to see a proper picture of the woman who'd helped define so much of Elysia's existence.
But none of that drew the lion's share of my attention compared to what was right in front of me.
At the end of the polished floor rose the gateway to the Realm's deeper reaches, a point of dark colours wrapped in gold, held between an ornate podium and hanging pillar, all done in white and gold. The latter was supported by grey metal and the flickering lights of high Previous Era technology. At least, that's what I remembered. My view was a little blocked, currently.
A pink-haired figure was waiting for me at the heart of the space, her mouth hanging open around the greeting she'd clearly been waiting to offer. So Grey Serpent hadn't warned her, and the system itself hadn't either. At least not in time.
I raised a single hand, waving it across the face of my mirror. If that was how I looked when surprised, it was no wonder Einstein tried to do that so often. But that was something for later. For now, I smiled, and words bubbled up unbidden.
"Hi~" I struck a pose, winking at her.
"My other me."
Origin of Ego - End
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
First off, this hasn't been betaed. I wrote it stream of consciousness across the last day or two whilst on holiday and on finishing it I just wanted to get it out so I can call this done. Not for any negative reason, mind, I just felt like if I didn't I'd start to doubt my own writing. And this...I think I have every right to be happy with this. At least I hope so. I suppose you'll be the real judge of that. Please judge any errors kindly, and let me know if you see any. With that, however, I guess it's time for that strange moment of thankful sadness.
I've not completed many writing projects. And honestly, I don't think the feeling of doing so will get any less bittersweet going forward - I actually hope it doesn't. But this really has come a long way from a cracky little piece of insanity that came up in quiet Discord channel a year and a half ago. And man, has it come far from there.
I'd like to give my dearest thanks to Baughn and SAB for their help in the early days of this piece, and also to various members of the Honkai fanfic Discord who have been tirelessly supportive even after I threw late-game canon out the window. Not that it truly matters for what I've done here, but some detail was needed to work out how events would unfold in this story, particularly with the Wendy arc. As to what comes next in this story, well, I think I'll leave that to you. I could write the eventual throwdown of Honkai against the Heroes of Elysium, but I'm not sure it's needed. You can all look at what Snowlysia has done, and with everyone who is now alive, healed or just still whole...the world's in such a better place compared to canon. And really, that's what this story was always about - there's a reason I called it Origin of Ego.
So in closing, thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and that it provides a satisfying ending to the story I've been so happy to create since October 2022.
This story begins and ends with Elysia.
I've not completed many writing projects. And honestly, I don't think the feeling of doing so will get any less bittersweet going forward - I actually hope it doesn't. But this really has come a long way from a cracky little piece of insanity that came up in quiet Discord channel a year and a half ago. And man, has it come far from there.
I'd like to give my dearest thanks to Baughn and SAB for their help in the early days of this piece, and also to various members of the Honkai fanfic Discord who have been tirelessly supportive even after I threw late-game canon out the window. Not that it truly matters for what I've done here, but some detail was needed to work out how events would unfold in this story, particularly with the Wendy arc. As to what comes next in this story, well, I think I'll leave that to you. I could write the eventual throwdown of Honkai against the Heroes of Elysium, but I'm not sure it's needed. You can all look at what Snowlysia has done, and with everyone who is now alive, healed or just still whole...the world's in such a better place compared to canon. And really, that's what this story was always about - there's a reason I called it Origin of Ego.
So in closing, thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and that it provides a satisfying ending to the story I've been so happy to create since October 2022.
This story begins and ends with Elysia.
It's sad to see it go but it's been wonderful to see the story unfold, thanks so much for writing it Snowfire.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
At some point I may write interlude/snippet type pieces covering some of the world that this story has created, and if I do they'll go up here. But for now, I want to take a break from this story.
I have a quest that has been rather badly neglected in comparison.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
It is always sad and yet satisfying to see a work declared completed.
That's fine, you do you since I prefer authors who do stuff on their terms because it makes the stories feel better and more complete. Also I have bunch of other materials to read while I'm waiting. Also letting you know you were the first honkai impact si author I have read and make a great story, so take pride in that!