Path of the Immeasurable Swarm [Worm/Cradle]

derivativeoflife · 2021-02-16T22:49:22+00:00

Welcome, new readers and old readers. I originally started Path of the Immeasurable Swarm as a fun little diversion from another project I was working on, expecting to lose interest within a couple of weeks. Instead, it ended up turning into by far the longest story I've ever written. Looking back, I wasn't really happy with how I wrote the characters in the earliest chapters anymore, and I also made a few embarrassing lore mistakes. The first three chapters have been almost completely rewritten, and I'll be making much smaller edits to later chapters. Thanks to everyone who made this fic such a huge success! I woke up. For a few seconds, I hovered in that realm halfway between sleep and consciousness, trying to separate dreams from reality. The ceiling overhead was unfamiliar, dark stone. I had the strong sense I was forgetting something important. Was I late? New York, right; they were swearing me into the Protectorate proper now that I was eighteen. But that had gotten derailed because- I jolted upright, heart hammering, adrenaline flooding my system. I remembered. Jack and the Slaughterhouse clones, Scion, the devastation and the hopeless battles, asking Panacea to modify my powers, and then… Then a blur of horror and violence. I couldn’t remember much of it, more feelings that anything else. That was probably something to be grateful for. There hadn’t been anything remotely human about the thing I’d become at the end, everything that made me me dissolving like a sugar cube in a pot of water. But I remembered that we’d won. And I remembered what had come after. We're so very small, in the end. Contessa. She’d confronted me, on that nameless Earth, and given me back some small measure of myself. She’d given me a name, too. Khepri. A fitting name for the horror I’d turned myself into, to kill an even greater horror. And then… Then she’d given me mercy, in the form of two bullets to the head. Lone hand trembling, I reached up to the back of my head. I found only hair, with no sign of any injury beneath. Could I have hallucinated the entire thing? No. There was something missing beyond my arm. Where there should have been the senses of thousands of insects, there was nothing but silence. That was the price I’d paid to restore my humanity, then. I tried to decide whether I was grateful. Even though I’d failed to save my home, I had saved countless other Earths, and now it was over. I was alive, and I could… live a peaceful life? Go to college? Make new friends, maybe find a boyfriend? It all sounded utterly absurd. There was no place in that kind of life for the person I’d become even before I’d sacrificed my humanity. So what was there for me, in this second chance I’d seemingly been given? As my heart rate slowly settled and my immediate panic faded, I realized that depended entirely on where I’d been exiled to. Looking around, I frowned at the unfamiliar surroundings. The room was slightly larger than my bedroom in Chicago. The walls and ceiling were shiny dark stone, almost like obsidian. The floor was covered by a dark purple carpet embroidered with a fancy pattern, and the blanket on my bed was similar. An armoire stood next to the bed, expertly carved from some dark wood. “Dark” was definitely the theme of the entire room, and rich. Although nothing was of a familiar design, I knew money when I saw it. The room was lit by a pair of lamps hanging from the ceiling, and there was something odd about them. Both were spheres, maybe six inches across, and glowed with a soft blue. The entire globe glowed evenly, with no indication that they were lit by an interior bulb, and I suspected they weren't electric at all. In fact, looking around, there was no indication of any kind of electrical device anywhere. The only other object of interest in the room was a sculpture sitting on a shelf across the room: a silver owl with violet eyes, just the slightest bit translucent. I stared at it for several seconds. It clearly wasn't alive, but I had the distinct impression it was staring back at me. I slowly pushed myself to my feet, surprised by the lack of aches and pains, even old ones that I’d long grown used to. Belatedly, I noticed I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but I could still see clearly. I must have been given the attention of some parahuman healer, although I doubted it had been Panacea. She would have been more likely to melt all my organs than regrow my arm. I was also wearing a purple robe, closed at the front. Wherever Contessa had exiled me, at least she’d arranged for me to be taken care of. With nothing else of interest in the room, I approached the silver owl. I wasn’t overly surprised when its head turned to follow me. “Can your projection speak?” I asked it. "It can," the owl replied. Its voice was female, although I couldn't tell anything else about it. "Where am I? And who are you?" "You are in the city of Moongrave on the Southern Ashwind Continent, and I am the Sage of the Silver Heart," it replied. There was something strange about its voice. I'd understood what it had said, but the words I'd heard weren't English. "If my suspicions are correct, neither of those things will mean anything to you," it continued. "There are clothes in the armoire behind you, and a guard waits outside your room to guide you. Dress, and then we will speak." With that, the projection dissolved into purple and black mist. Whatever Earth I’d been exiled to, they obviously had parahumans here. I turned back to the armoire and opened it. The clothes inside weren't in any style I recognized; they reminded me vaguely of a martial arts uniform. Hoping I wasn't still being watched, I pulled off the robe I'd slept in and put on the new clothes. I was fairly sure I'd put them on right; it seemed pretty intuitive, although tying the belt to keep the tunic closed was a hassle with only one arm. On the plus side, the sleeves were short, so there was no empty sleeve awkwardly hanging over the missing arm. I gave the room another quick once-over, but didn't find anything else, certainly none of my old possessions. With a deep breath, I opened the door. As promised, a guard was standing just outside. At least, I assumed he was a guard, as he was dressed similarly to me and didn't have any obvious weapons. Then I noticed his fingers ended in black, razor-sharp claws. Another cape, then, and being used for guard duty, no less. That implied whoever had picked me up was a force to be reckoned with. I also noticed the lack of a mask, which probably meant the culture surrounding parahumans on this Earth was quite different than what I was used to. The guard stared at me for a moment, then spoke a word which I didn't understand. Since he then turned and started walking away, I assumed it was some variant of "follow." Whatever had allowed me to understand the Sage of the Silver Heart must be an aspect of her power. I didn’t like being so dependent on her good will in multiple ways, but I didn’t really have a choice for now. The corridor he led me down was more of that black stone, lit with the same blue lamps. I was fairly sure I was in some kind of palace or castle. A pre-industrial world? It seemed likely. Without modern technology, especially guns, capes would probably dominate this society to an even greater extent. I wasn’t sure why Contessa had sent me here; if she’d meant to do me a favor, sending me to a modern world without capes would have made more sense now that my own powers were gone. More likely, it was just another one of her schemes. Hopefully her intentions would become clearer once I learned more about the world I found myself on. As we walked further, I began to wonder just how big this place was. The first corridor turned into a second larger one, extending several hundred feet into the distance at least. We had yet to encounter anyone else, not even some kind of maid or servant. Could we be underground? The loss of my powers left me feeling half blind, the pang of loss hitting me all the harder because I couldn’t shuffle it off to my swarm. After several minutes, we turned off onto a set of stairs leading up, lending credence to my theory. But then we reached the top, and I realized I was much further from home than I’d thought. The hall we emerged into had tall windows running all along one side, and the city beyond was a thing out of a fairy tale. Black and blue and violet spires rose up as tall as any skyscraper in Chicago or New York. Every street was lined by tall statues, beautifully carved. A throng of people filled the streets, and above the streets; those were definitely flying carriages, apparently sitting on clouds. More than that, the city was big, so big that the huge, imposing wall which presumably marked its edge was tinted violet by distance. Far from being underground, the only reason I could see it at all was because we were already hundreds of feet in the air. The sky was also tinted violet, and I wondered if that was some sort of local effect or if the atmosphere on this world had a different composition. There was no way one cape could make something like this. It would take thousands, maybe even millions. A whole society of capes working together, all with similar powers. Perhaps a different Entity provided powers here? Or could there be some other mechanism altogether? Hopefully the latter. I had no idea where I’d been sent, but I couldn’t afford to make any assumptions. A sharp word had me turning back towards the guard, who was scowling slightly. He spoke another sentence which I couldn't understand, but which I guessed was something along the lines of, "You can stare later." He jerked his head, and I obediently followed him down the corridor, still snatching glimpses out of windows when we passed them. At last, we encountered more people: A quartet of guards standing in front of a large door. Each of them were dressed the same as the one escorting me, but each had a different deformity. There was one with black veins running down his arms, one with pure black eyes, one whose hair looked like smoke, and the strangest one with an extra pair of black insectile-like arms emerging from his shoulders. More evidence that powers worked very differently here than what I was used to. Several words I couldn't understand were exchanged, and we were waved through. Inside was a spiral staircase leading up a couple of floors. My guide knocked on the door at the far end and spoke a few more words. "Enter," came the response from the other side. I blinked; I was sure the language had been the same, and yet when the woman spoke, I understood it. I shook my head slightly, passing it off as power nonsense, and followed my guide into the room. Inside was an office, lavishly decorated. The themes were similar to the room I'd woken up in, but it was clear that no expense had been spared here. The furniture was inlaid with silver and engraved with incredible detail, and stunningly lifelike carvings sat on shelves around the room. Broad windows gave a breathtaking view out onto the city below. But as impressive as the room was, my eyes were quickly drawn to the woman behind the desk. There was a slight Asian cast to her features, and she appeared young, perhaps only a couple of years older than me. However, I'd known some dangerous people in my life, and I felt sure she ranked near the top of them. The aura of confidence she projected, as though she couldn't imagine the world would be any way except the way she expected it to be, immediately put me in mind of Alexandria. Most strikingly, her eyes were deep purple, the same shade as the owl's had been. A quick glance around showed me two more owls perched around the room. "You may leave us," she said, waving her hand at the guard who’d escorted me. He bowed low and spoke an unintelligible reply, then did as instructed. I stepped forward slightly, unsure if anything would be expected of me, and settled for standing at something approximating parade rest in front of her desk. We regarded each other in silence for several moments. She was the first to break it. "You are not from this world, are you?" she asked. "No," I eventually replied. "Is that a common thing, here?" "Not at all. In fact, it is forbidden." She let me stew on that for a moment, then continued. "However, you seem to be quite the unusual case. By definition, anyone who possesses the power to travel between worlds is powerful enough to disrupt the flow of Fate by their mere presence. But you, so far as I can tell, are powerless. And given that you arrived unconscious and terribly wounded, my conclusion is that you did not travel here through your own power. Am I correct?" "Yes," I replied after a moment of trying to interpret what she'd said. "I suppose the woman who sent me here did me a favor, in a sense. The alternative would have been to simply kill me. But I can’t say why she exiled me to this world in particular.” The woman nodded. "I suspect there is an interesting story behind that, which I would very much like to hear when time permits. For now, however, I will answer a few of your questions, and ask a few of my own. As I told you before, you are in the city of Moongrave, seat of power of the Akura Clan. I am Akura Charity, Sage of the Silver Heart. The world you find yourself in is known as Cradle. What shall I call you?" "My name is Taylor Hebert." I thought for a moment. "Taylor is my given name, Hebert is my family name. I think it's the reverse of how it is here?" "I am not unfamiliar with the custom," she said. "Now, as I said, you are powerless to the best of my ability to determine. But you did have some rather interesting items in your possession when you arrived, particularly your flying construct. Its function isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but the principles it operates on are clearly foreign to this world. In addition, you immediately identified my owl as a Forger technique and determined that I could perceive you through it. So I must ask: Are you in fact as powerless as you appear?" I noticed she didn't appear even slightly intimidated by having a visitor from a different dimension with potentially unknown powers in her office. Whatever powers I might have been hiding, she seemed utterly confident that she could take me. "I am," I admitted after a moment. Bluffing was pointless when she could just call me on it immediately. "The wounds in my head, which I assume you must have healed, crippled my former power.” "The truth," she said, nodding. Did her power have a lie detecting aspect as well? I'd need to walk very, very carefully, here. "Interesting. That is both fortunate and unfortunate for you. Fortunate, in that you are unlikely to draw the ire of the Abidan. Unfortunate, because Cradle is not a kind world to the powerless. Though I suspect that may be a more universal truth." I nodded. Earth Bet hadn't been particularly kind towards baseline humans either, especially towards the end. "The Abidan?" I asked after a moment. "They style themselves as the guardians of Fate," said Charity. "They do not permit interference between worlds. Were one such as I to leave this world, they would not allow me to enter another. But your impact on Fate will likely be negligible enough to escape their notice." I slowly nodded again. The way she said Fate made me think there might be more to the word than I was used to. "What can you tell me about this world?" I asked eventually. "A broad question, but I will endeavor to give a concise answer,” she said. “Cradle is a world of the Sacred Arts. To be a sacred artist is to gain mastery over the world by gaining mastery over yourself. All our lives revolve around the Sacred Arts, from the humblest farmer to the greatest Monarch. At its base, the Sacred Arts are the practice of refining your own spirit through the vital aura of the world around you. I have heard that the Sacred Arts are unique among all worlds. Is it true?" I shrugged. "It certainly doesn't sound anything like my world. In my world, only a small handful of people gained powers, and they were always fixed. You could become more experienced in using your power, but the nature of the power itself never changed or grew, except under very rare circumstances." "Curious," mused Charity. "Power without effort. The Sacred Arts are quite different. They require the utmost dedication to master. Every child in Cradle is taught the basics of the Sacred Arts, and nearly all adults are at least moderately competent, but few possess the determination to travel far on their Path." "What can you do with the Sacred Arts?" "You can reshape the world as you see fit," said Charity. She gestured. I felt a tingling on my skin, and suddenly we were somewhere else. We stood a field surrounded by mountains. Dark clouds swirled overhead, lit by occasional flashes of purple lightning. Forests blanketed the slopes around us, except for a huge, hulking black castle in the distance. I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening slightly; again, I missed being able to push my emotions off into my swarm. "A mere illusion," said Charity. She gestured again, and we were back in her office. "My Path is well suited to them. However, I could take us there in truth, if I were willing to expend the effort. Different Paths lend themselves to different abilities, but in the end they all lead to the same place." "And everyone here can do this sort of thing?" "Yes and no. As I said, few possess the discipline to travel far on their Path. However, for you, the difference between a Lowgold and a Sage is academic. As you are, even a child would have little trouble defeating you. The weakest adult sacred artist could kill you as easily as swatting a fly." As unpleasant as that news was, I couldn’t say I was surprised. When had things ever been made easy for me? I asked the obvious question. "Can I learn the Sacred Arts?" She gave a minute smile, the first expression I’d seen on her face. "Perhaps. You have a core, although it is very small and diffuse, like that of a newborn. To be expected, if your world does not produce vital aura. There are ways in which your core can be rapidly expanded and refined, elixirs and spirit fruits. However, these things are not given away frivolously." Well, that was fairly unsubtle. "What do you want from me?" "Nothing as simple as you perhaps think. In the short term, I find you interesting. I would enjoy hearing about your world, when I have a spare moment of time. In exchange, you may stay in my palace for as long as you like. It costs me little enough, and I do like to live up to my name when I can. However, until and unless you learn something of the Sacred Arts, it will not be safe for you to leave." "In the long term… Your aptitude for the Sacred Arts will be tested. It may be that your background makes you incapable of learning them, in which case you will likely have no choice but to spend the rest of your life here. You may rest assured that you will at least live in comfort. It may be that you have some aptitude for them, in which case an appropriate teacher for you will be found, and you will eventually be free to go and live your own life in whatever way you please. However… I have seen countless thousands of young sacred artists in my life, and I have learned to recognize those with potential. It is too early to say for certain, but I suspect you may have that potential. If my suspicions are correct, and if you wish it, the Akura Clan will sponsor your advancement, taking you far further along whatever Path you choose than you could travel on your own. You would become part of the clan." A recruitment pitch. Not what I had expected, and not one I was willing to accept until I'd learned more about this Akura Clan. "I appreciate your offer, but I’ll need time to consider it before I can make a decision.” "Of course. This is all merely hypothetical at the moment. You have yet to learn even the most basic of cycling techniques. I will have books and dream tablets sent to your room, so you may begin your education. But first, we must see if you are able to sense your core at all. Step closer." I hesitated for a moment, then did as instructed. "I will inject a tiny amount of my own madra into your core. Not enough to damage it, but enough that you will feel it." "Madra?" I asked. She tilted her head slightly. "Perhaps there is no equivalent word in your language. It is the stuff from which souls are made, the energy which powers the Sacred Arts. It resides primarily in your core, here." She reached out and tapped me just below my navel. "But with luck, you will be able to learn to cycle it throughout your body. Now, focus. Close your eyes, and pay attention to your body. Feel the natural rhythms, the beating of your heart." I tried to do as she told me, although I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for. Honestly, it all sounded like a bunch of new-agey bullshit, but bullshit didn't make flying carriages. I tried to set my thoughts aside and focus. Another tap just below my navel, but this one was… more. It felt like a shock of static electricity, except it stayed in me. Electricity wasn't the right word, either. It tingled, but it also somehow had a taste to it, something I couldn't quite describe. If someone had made midnight flavored icecream, it would have tasted like this. The tingle spread, and it wasn't pleasant. It felt a bit like bugs skittering beneath my skin, and it was a good thing I'd long ago gotten over any fear of insects. It felt foreign. I tried to get rid of it, and to my surprise, it sort of worked. The tingling sensation spread through my body, but as it spread, it faded, like it was being diluted. After maybe half a minute, the sensation was gone. I opened my eyes to find Charity smiling, slightly broader than before. "Excellent. You have an innate sense of how to cycle your madra." "Then I can learn the Sacred Arts?" "Indeed. But remember that how far you go is up to you. You wish to learn the Sacred Arts so that you are no longer powerless, and at the mercy of others. An entirely understandable motivation. But what is it that you truly want?" I tilted my head slightly, considering how to answer, and if I even knew what the answer was myself. For two years, every aspect of my life had been dedicated to preventing the end of the world. Now it had ended, and I was still alive. What could possibly come next? And there were also things I hadn’t let myself think about yet, wouldn’t until I could break down in privacy. “What I truly want, I can’t have,” I said eventually. “Even if I could go home, they’d probably kill me on sight. So instead, I want the power to make sure that what happened to my home never happens again.” "Then we may just make a true sacred artist out of you, yet."

Thread starter derivativeoflife
Start date Feb 16, 2021
Crossover
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cradle worm isekai infinite bugs technique

Created: Feb 16, 2021

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Post-GM Taylor gets isekai'd into Cradle

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Jan 14, 2024

#1,915

A brief update: The next chapter is 99% done and just needs to be edited. But I started the chapter after that and hit a wall almost immediately, which is usually a sign that something about the plot isn't working. I'm probably going to need to spend at least another week or two poking at it, especially since my writing time is still more limited than I'd like. In the meantime, I've been able to do a lot more with AI lately due to building a new PC (guess what I was doing with all my free time in December