But you had prepared for this. In weeks and months poured into learning how to wield words invested with the strength of your soul. The same time again devoured by charting the patterns that bound humanity together, and how to connect yourself to them. And in the last year, you'd found the final piece of what you'd needed to turn that strength into a weapon. Not a shield. After all that time, could you really just leave it be?
:Vega,: the thought thrummed with a calm power that you couldn't quite convince yourself to match, beneath the walls of training.
:I'm going to need everything you can give me, if I'm going to make my voice heard over that.: There was no word to describe the distortion raging beyond the shield of blue-green-and-silver light that surrounded the Two Twenty Three. If you were to Speak in full, you would need to quell that. You could tell it would fight you, in ways and on levels that you'd never faced before. But here and now, you were a soldier in service of humanity, facing those who would tear down the world you sought to protect. And you would not falter against that enemy.
Vega could tell, all of your Heartcircle could, and you could feel their concern blending with hope as they recognised both your intent and the realisation of how much it might cost.
:Are you sure, Amanda?: Lea asked, though the question had no teeth, not after a dozen Aegises almost flickering out.
:I can't see a better way,: you sent back, fully aware that those words were not an answer. They were true, though.
:This isn't like anything we thought we'd face. Insight never saw them. But we can't run now, and the only other way out of this is trying to match strength to strength.:
:I know that might be safer,: you added, sensing the interruption before it could flower.
:I know that Words can be fragile. But I'm the only one who can do either of these things. And I've made my choice. I will not stand by and watch or hope. That isn't in me, and I know it's not in any of you.:
:No,: Elil agreed, his thoughts cast into a fleeting moment of perfect silence.
:No it isn't. I can help you pick the right moment.: Wordless agreement joined his, flowing from the other members of your Heartcircle in steadfast support. Somewhere very far away from what was then your reality, you felt tears creep into the corners of your eyes.
:Thank you.: You knew you didn't have to say it, but that didn't mean you couldn't. For them to stand by your decision, no matter their concerns, meant far more than you could put into words. And yet you'd try, nonetheless. Something in the bond between you, deeper than thought, recognised that. It was enough.
:Let's go.:
Lea didn't so much speak the words as make the thought real. Vega did…something, and the whirlpool of power born of riotous life somehow grew even stronger, the Web itself burning with energy as it flooded from the hopes of humanity into your soul. It filled the air around you, an incense of power and will that reflected the burning light of your soul made manifest. You'd thought you'd seen that last thing before, when Purify had illuminated Sol as a second star. Now you understood the truth. The energies were the same, but the light of a candle is the same as the light of a sun.
As it did, the shield around your formation intensified. Lines of brilliant light ran down and through it, a manifestation of hands held and hopes unbroken. Vega's strength, spreading through the Two Twenty Three to harmonise the power of nearly five hundred souls. Together they would stand against the Shiplord weapons, and give you time to Speak. And even as you thought that, the moment rose, the feeling of it carried by the web that bound the first of the Unisonbound together.
You could feel them as power beyond reckoning poured into your soul, concentrating in your lungs while you sought the right Words for this moment. Searching for what you could say, what Words could be turned to the battle beyond as that old, old melody started to pulse through your veins. The wordless song that you'd found in your memories of Purify, restored.
Most of those with you today recognised at least the echoes of that song, and what it had done once before. With that, came the knowledge of how much more skilled you'd become since then, balanced against the reality of a situation you'd never been able to prepare for. Yet they held. No matter their feelings on the matter, what they might have preferred, they held. That, you thought, was power all of its own.
Then the moment was upon you, and there was no more time for thought.
To Speak of Endings: 47 + 106 (Practice) + 20 (Concert Set) + 25 (A Burning Soul) + 30 (A World in Harmony) – 53 (Soulbreak) = 175. Solid Success!
The pearlescent fire around Vega had lessened to dancing flames, but now it surged forth again in an inferno of cleansing power. It tore a hole in the Shiplord attack far greater than the one your defences had opened, slicing through the discordant pattern and rendering it without life for a handful of precious instants.
Words came together in your mind, their meanings already decided by your soul. Silver-turquoise light bloomed around you, resonating with the song that had made Purify real like a vast tuning fork. Then your throat burned with phantom heat, and a chain of radiant sound burst from your lips.
Words in the Night: 39 + 106 (Practice) + 80 (Unisonbound Ace) + 50 (Mender's Soul) - 86 (Soultear) vs 82 + 45 (Martial) + 30 (Essence Disruption) + 50 (Void Weaponry) = 189 vs 207. Failure.
And, as if they'd been waiting for it, the Shiplord energy patterns intensified impossibly. They slammed the area that Vega had cleared around you back towards your firmer shields. And, as the knots of blazing energy that were all you knew of your Words hit them, the destructive power of those weapons took hold. You felt connections strain, and hurled power down your link to the words, trying to hold them together. But none of you had mastered Speaking at a distance.
Here and there, the patterns of energy bound to verbal concepts started to snap, twisting out of your control, changing the weapon you'd forged of your Focus' power. Something twisted inside you as you saw it happen, and you were at the very centre of the Two Twenty Three's formation. There was no way to get to them in time, even if you could have left the shield you'd forged without-
The feeling of two souls in the link abruptly vanished.
Something struck the words from behind, a vicious pattern of destructive power that tore the patterns bound to them entirely asunder. The energy bound to them let go in scorching bursts that were more than light, yet nothing so terrible as Purify had been. A streak of crimson dived through those minor cataclysms, leaving a trail of utterly lethal not-colour in its wake. The Shiplord weapons refocused as that streak closed, and the person at its centre swung her spear in a deadly arc.
Destructive energy lanced out in a wide cone, yet none of it was trying to fight the Shiplord weaponry. Instead it tore into the pattern those weapons created and ripped it apart, just like they'd done to your Words, and a figure of red silk and dark metal scattered the broken energies behind them like dust in a hurricane.
In the instant it took you to understand what you were seeing, Kalilah slashed between formation of escorts around the ships that had sought you out, and you felt a sudden burst of impossible pain as her Focus lashed out at them. As a Mender, you understood pain in a way few but those like you could understand – to fix something, you had to know what was broken. This, though, was unlike anything you'd ever felt. As if her very soul-
:I'm sorry, Mandy,: Kalilah's mental voice was untouched by the agony that you could feel coursing through her.
:Couldn't let you do it. Not after everything you've done, and how it would have been twisted.:
:That, that's fine, Kalilah,: you sent back, confusion and fear writhing in your breast.
:But why are you there? You should be back here!: Yet even as you asked, you knew.
:Because something has to take their place.: Kalilah told you gently, unlight sweeping out from her Aegis to tear at the Shiplord craft as she dived deeper into their formation.
:And it's not going to be you.:
Crimson light flared at the centre of that field of pure destruction, a field you recognised as what Kalilah had created when she'd synchronised, only tens of thousands times larger. That field had almost broken your Aegis, and you felt the focus of the Shiplords shift away from your formation. If it had any effect you couldn't tell, but the pain lancing through your friend surged higher, and you realised in a flash of horrified insight what she was doing.
:Kalilah, you can't!:
:No, Amanda,: the gentle voice came again, entirely removed from the battle around you both.
:I can. And I must. No one else can do this. And I am the only one who has nothing left of my family to remember.: Something tried to shatter inside of you, but for perhaps the first time in decades, you couldn't find the words. Nothing came, just a whirlwind of feeling that you flung across the link between you…and that Kalilah grounded away effortlessly.
:Please!: You could feel her soul burning, the telltale flicker in a place below what eyes could see. You'd thought it might be possible, for a Potential to let their Focus consume them, but Kalilah had never told you she'd worked out how to do it.
:What about Asi?: You pleaded, seizing on that possibility with both hands. Kalilah cared for her Platform in a way that was hard to describe, a bond that was not family, yet one of the deepest she'd ever allowed to form.
Your only reply was the feeling of a sad smile, and a motion obscured by the ships closing in around her. Before a shrieking missile of Practiced metal and raw power punched through the side opposite you, flinging something away from the Shiplord formation. Golden metal and crystal reflected distant starlight.
:He will find another.: Kalilah said, as you took in the housings for the Unison Intelligence, wrapped around the weapon that Kalilah had taken into battle with her.
:He has given me that promise freely.:
The pain of tears still unshed tore at your soul, their reason changed beyond all recognition, and yet her voice was still the same.
:Do not weep for me. You have given me so much. Now I return what you taught me; that destruction born of loss and hate can save a world full of light.:
You felt her bring her hands together, no fists, her Aegis burning around her despite the lack of her Unison Platform. Bring them together, as if in prayer, to a god or gods she'd never once spoken of. You saw the beginnings of light without end, building in her soul as she reached down into the heart of the well and pulled.
And you saw your friend. Alone. At the heart of a theatre of monsters, and drawing a blade across her throat as you stood holding them back. Except…they weren't focused on you anymore.
:We can hold long enough.: Vega, so quick to realise, and they could, couldn't they. But could you? No, that was the wrong question. Would you be able to protect your friend from her own power unleashed, after failing to master your own? And yet…
:Violence has never been your gift.: The concepts were so elegant that they defied the need for words, yet you heard Vega's voice in them. :
Do what has always been.:
:Save her.:
Kalilah Mishra has dived into the heart of the Shiplord formation seeking to assault the Unisonbound, and is preparing to burn up her soul to fuel a burst of Destruction that will utterly obliterate the fleet currently engaged with you. This burst will fire regardless of which action you pick. What do you do?
[] Sacrifice: Kalilah wants this, and thought it may break Amanda's heart, she can give her this. Stay, and protect the rest of the Unisonbound from the coming storm. Kalilah will die. Due to character influence (OOC: Stop hitting me, damnit!) this vote will require a two-thirds majority to take effect.
[] Save: Dive into the heart of a building storm, through Shiplord weapons and a fire born of a soul of Destruction, to save the one who summons it. Amanda will survive this, and for an action so deeply within her Focus, she has a good chance of saving her friend. But there will be consequences.
There will be a ten hour moratorium on this vote.
