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Path of the Immeasurable Swarm [Worm/Cradle]

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Ah, how it quieted down since chapters stopped...
Thinking about crazy stunts Taylor could take like (earlier mentioned) awakening Hunger Icon to advance quickly enough, or killing a Monarch with sheer authority of QA, I came up with another one...
How about Taylor Khepri'ing all over the 8 Man Empire? Only one of them at once has Authority of a Monarch and rest are Heralds and Sages, and while they lend out their power they got to be more vounrable... And if you got control over one of them you should be able to stop them from feeding others power...

I feel like with good positioning or quick portals she could be able to take over the whole network, take one of the armors and become a Monarch herself...
 
I wonder if we'll get a Mercy POV after this. There's a lot of interesting stuff from her perspective: reflecting on her choice to risk herself for the golds & her mothers sacrifice, deciding who and how they'll lead the Akura clan in the power vacuum (I'd guess they'd keep Mercy as nominal successor, but announce Charity as regent until Mercy advances, and maybe give Taylor some extra title or just have her make it clear she supports this decision. In theory Taylor could become the leader or regent, but I get the impression that a lot of the inner family might still begrudge her that, even if they wouldn't admit it under the circumstances, versus the much better relationship she's developed with Akura allies & outskirts of the family. But maybe becoming psuedo-monarch overrides that.). I predict Sha Miara will surprise Mercy with an apology, feeling like it was her choice to leave the battlefield too early, rather than Mercy's choice to stay too late, that really cost them. Mercy was also just controlled by Khepri, and while she seems pretty unbothered by it, I imagine she might have some feelings she wants to hide from Taylor - if not fear, then probably shame and frustration, as this runs up pretty hard against "i will do my part, i won't always let others fight my battles" and "I practice the sacred arts to make my mother proud".

Edit: I could see something like "You stayed. Your mother stayed. I left." helping get Mercy into the right headspace.
 
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I don't know much about Cradle besides what is in this story, but Shen's goal is to somehow gain control over the dreadgods, right?

Do you think Taylor's stunt has derailed plans he might have (such as going down the Labyrinth and getting more hands to use as baits/communication method/whatever), and would he be gunning for her now (moreso than he already was, I mean, and no longer to obliterate her from existence)?
 
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Shard_486 said:
I don't know much about Cradle besides what is in this story, but Shen's goal is to somehow gain control over the dreadgods, right?
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Shen really wants to kill the Dreadgods and turn them into weapons to rule over Cradle forever. He was going to kick off that ploy in canon by killing the Slumbering Wraith and taking it core, then using that to deal with the other Dreadgods before Lindon headed that off, then his ploy got fucked over further by the finale of Reaper.
 
Shard_486 said:
Do you think Taylor's stunt has derailed plans he might have (such as going down the Labyrinth and getting more hands to use as baits/communication method/whatever), and would he be gunning for her now (moreso than he already was, I mean, and no longer to obliterate her from existence)?
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If anything, it's going great as far as he's concerned, I'd think. The only difficult point for his plans is that the center of the Labyrinth is under Lindon's home of Sacred Valley, and it's possible Seshethkunaaz and his dragons might try to insist that that's their territory, now. Otherwise, he can just go there now, pretty confident that there's no Malice and no Fury to oppose him as he does. He might have a better chance than in canon to achieve everything he wants to in the Labyrinth—although I suspect that the narrative is going to be about stopping him from getting that.

As far as gunning for Taylor, we're now at the point where she's an acceptable target. She's a Sage who's been irritating and no longer is under the protection of another Monarch. There's nothing in Cradle's unspoken rules of warfare that stops him from using maximum power against her. The only reasonably obvious thing that might slow him down would be if Seshethkunaaz decides he doesn't appreciate her making a fool of his great-granddaughter and wants to personally handle her, instead. Which is not really better.

Shen might instead see "force her to ascend" as an option: if he gets a good idea of what happened with the Bloody Phoenix and the Silent King, he might decide that just killing her is still too much risk and he'd rather have her ascend to the heavens and trust that the Abidan are able to stop her from returning to Cradle. Still not better.

Basically, at this point Shen has every reason to think that his plans are going swimmingly and he should be able to succeed on every point, and it's just a question of clearing up those last few weird little speedbumps, which probably does include Taylor and Mercy given that their efforts at the Uncrowned King tournament were frustrating for him, as well.
 
Ya know, Eithan was in that fight, so the fact that he hasn't been seen is… suspicious. Especially since he's on a short list of people who might be able to realize exactly what Taylor just brought into this world.
 
Panicky EOD Tech said:
Ya know, Eithan was in that fight, so the fact that he hasn't been seen is… suspicious. Especially since he's on a short list of people who might be able to realize exactly what Taylor just brought into this world.
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Again, I don't know much about Cradle except what this story tells us, but I think this might be a rare instance of Eithan being just as confused as everyone else. The strings Eithan sends out (the way Taylor perceive his vision IIRC, which I'm assuming does actually inform upon how he does his thing, and isn't just a poetic thing) weren't able to detect Hera before, and she's been here the whole time (sort of).

While he has the notion of other worlds, the basic conceit of Cradle seems to be, Sacred arts is expected, aura and all that, and their evolved versions via Icons and so on.

What just happened is something big asserted an authority... Then a bunch of unrelated stuff happened, via entirely different methods than sacred arts.

Taylor suddenly did something, and now she just teleported (Hera peeks through, and says "Reality works like this" and teleports the entity way, not the cradle way). Then she does that weird thing, and teleports again.

Then when things start making sense again, when that foreign presence hiding behind Taylor starts doing the expected thing of using aura, asserting authority to do what it wants, and manifesting an Icon and such, it suddenly blasts through established power levels, and despite apparently just getting their Overlord revelation ("I am Queen Administrator"), straight up just takes control of dreadgod, completely, and forces it to attack another.
 
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Shard_486 said:
I think this might be a rare instance of Eithan being just as confused as everyone else
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It's literally 50/50. Eithan will understand half of what happened, the authority aspect, perfectly. What he wont understand is the source of that authority.

Eithan would've had to be far more invasive than normal to notice Hera with his bloodline, which I dont think he would do. On top of that, by the time they met Taylor was at the level where she would have noticed his attempt. That probably would've destroyed any future chance for a relationship and Eithan wouldn't make that kind of mistake.
 
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