Exorcism 6.9
- Location
- Chula Vista
Exorcism 6.9
April 28th, 2011. 9:00PM
Amy Dallon
I tripped over a rock, and I let out a scream. Where the fuck even was I? Had I seriously lost my way in this insane place?
"Stupid mushroom…" I roared incoherently and was rewarded with a slap from a chitinous arm.
"Not stupid." It talked in a soft toned voice and I groaned. This place was insane and I had met at least half a dozen talking spirits including a cellphone and a damn stripper pole. I was at least getting closer to where the Lord River was, so maybe this would work out if I just kept moving.
It was a good thing that wherever I was let bending work or I'd be screwed. At least a few of the spirits had tried to talk me into killing myself, and another wanted to ride me around like a meat puppet. I managed to convince some type of healing spirit to launch him into the ocean. Apparently I had street cred from a lot of the nicer spirits because of how much I heal people.
So my impact was a lot bigger than I thought it was. Because there were a ton of spirits like that, hundreds at least and they all recognized me. I had pretty much been following my guts, as well as the instructions of the local spirits who didn't want to eat my mortal soul.
Why the hell hadn't Basilia done this before? Maybe she didn't have all the time in the world to talk to giant ancient spirits but why couldn't she have done more?
Paper crumpled, and I felt my hand wrap around a sheet of loose paper put inside the pockets hidden away in. I pulled out the paper and read…
Was too dangerous.
Ancient spirits are capricious and unpredictable.
Didn't want you to do this, but had no choice.
She'll get you whatever you want.
She trusts you.
That…wasn't Basilia or Dinah's handwriting…it was Charlotte's…how did she know?
The note crumpled in my hands, and I closed my eyes. I was angry, and I knew why I was angry. I had thought that they didn't trust me, that they thought I was too unstable and too…messed up to help them. But none of this was about me, it was about saving the city from someone who could take everything from us if we let them.
"Then I have to keep going." I wasn't going to let a bunch of stupid crazy spirits get in my way. I had to find that other spirit's brother and convince him to help us, convince him to fight that monster.
I stopped and looked around.
Where was I now?
The weird cityscape had vanished, and I was surrounded by fog, shadowy boats spread all around me in the humid air. I was on the shore of the Lord River and I could feel dread crawl up my spine like horrible thoughts used to crawl up into my brain. I had to take careful steps, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach when I noticed that I was being held up by two large stones and nothing else. One wrong step would be a dip into the frigid waters and I'd probably drown even with waterbending.
I could hear whispers, and more thoughts about how Basilia would suffer for making me do this came to the forefront. I hoped all of this was worth it, because I'm not sure how long Vicky could hold out against a god. She might be my sister and I might love her…but I had no illusions on how long she could last against something like that thing.
I sighed. "Who's there?" The whispers grew louder and more ferocious, and I had to keep calm even as it felt like some wild animal was going to go for my throat.
The river current roared in my ear, and I could see the marks of glaciers that didn't exist in reality. I remember that Taylor had talked about it, that the Lord River had carved out an inlet when the ice age ended. It made Brockton Bay a good place for shipping and harbors until the tanker had been sunk into the ocean. So this was a glimpse of the past, and it was…awe inspiring.
I started to walk, deciding that my airbending should be good enough protection. I hopped from stone to stone and ice floe to ice floe. That caused a chuckle that made me falter and I nearly slipped into the dark waters below. I didn't stop, and I buried the primal fear deep down. If a total dork like Basilia could deal with this nonsense so could I.
I felt Shaper's touch, her power and influence wrapping around me like a cloak. The river turned harsher, and there was something like curiosity(?) in the air. A pressure like my sister's aura but far, far stronger. It was like the weight of the river was pressing down on my shoulders, like I had the entire world looking at me.
I scowled.
I had felt like this before, had felt and put pressure on my shoulders that should never have been mine to take. So a little intimidation wouldn't do jack.
The fog cleared as I made it to the other side of the river on gusts of wind. My bending felt sluggish here but I could still use it. It was a lot better than the Library. The spirit that had thrown us into Basilia's whole deal months ago didn't tolerate fighting in his domain. I had…talked to him a few times, since he had a lot of books on biology and chemistry. He was nice when you weren't a bitch to him, and he was apparently compelled to help provide knowledge since he was the spirit of the library.
But he was just a ripple in comparison to the whirlpool I was going towards like an idiot.
When I stepped away from the bank the fog had cleared completely, and I saw someone sitting down on a block of ice in the shape of a chair. My eyebrows twitched at the loud and obnoxious sipping from a clay cup.
"Well?" The man raised an eyebrow and I found a seat had been prepared in a blink of an eye. I sat down, my eyes burning as reality took a hike. I took a look at the person who had asked me to sit without saying more than one word. I hadn't understood, but Shaper had.
He was a tall man, and looked Native American, like some of the tribes that had lived in Brockton Bay before European settlers had made their homes here. It was hard to see his appearance, and at times I thought he was a she. I was going to stick with male for now…since that felt right at least most of the time.
He offered a drink, and I felt like saying no. The thought didn't last, there wasn't any need to be rude and bitchy. That was for later when I chuck Basilia and Dinah into the bay.
I took the clay cup and without a second thought I took the plunge. It tasted like the best damn coffee in my life, and I very much appreciated the caffeine boost from the cup.
"Thank you." The man smiled, swirling his cup of…juice(?) and exposing teeth that were oddly and disturbingly uniform.
"Good. It seems the shaman has chosen well with her representative, you are attuned to the ways of spirits though lack the grit to commune with us in the way that the Vyasa does." That took me for a loop, and I gulped once I realized who and what was speaking to me.
"You're…"
"The Twisting One, The Riverine Guardian." The list was short and just as melodramatic. "But you may simply call me Lord River." I blinked and I gaped when I saw that his teeth were made out of ice. His clothing was actually a whirling stream of water, and I was having a hard time looking at him.
"Okay." I bowed my head a little like I had seen Basilia do a hundred times over with any spirit that she befriended. "I'm Amy Dallon." I offered a hand, not expecting the spirit to…shake my hand?!
My eyes crossed as contradictory sensory information clouded my thoughts. He was human, he was a fish, he was an assembly of algae, and he was…splashy?
The fuck?
The spirit laughed, and I sighed as I became the entertainment of an ancient spirit.
"Indeed you are. I know you well, your father often brought you to my shores, and many of my court speak fondly of you." I blushed and blanched at the same time. He had known my father? "I did…he often cleaned my shores of his own accord, quite a nice fellow."
He…was a murderous criminal. Then again spirits aren't really very big on having human mindsets.
"That's good isn't it?" I cursed at my lack of confidence, and tried to pretend that I hadn't been too unconfident. That was important for spirits wasn't it?
"Yes. It means that the Shaman knows enough of my temperament to send someone she considers a friend, as well as savvy enough to send a friend to my court to commence our little meeting. You are here to form a pact in Vyasa's place, to seek the aid of the guardians of this land."
"Yes." I went with the blunt approach. "The Mother of Miseries is a threat to us all."
"Is she though?" He tilted his head and I felt cold all of a sudden.
"What do you mean?" His teeth were more like jagged icicles now, and I felt like either running or shoving a blast of cutting air into his chest.
"I have been around for a long time, human. I remember the pressure of the Great Glaciers before they retreated." That was at least 11,000 years ago. "My sister is far older, she sang of life, currents and storms when your ancestors were merely naked apes still learning the ways of fire. If the Mother of Miseries destroys your race what difference does it make? All your kind has done for us is poisoning our land and our children, weakening us with your stupidity, and marking us with your failure to destroy the Leviathan. Tell me then…what do we gain from helping your sick and weak kind?"
"We'll change…" He looked at me intently, and I wondered why I had said that.
"Could you elaborate?" His voice was much more alien and unknowable, and I didn't even blink as wings of water materialized from his back.
"We don't have to pollute your waters, we can find better ways…and if this is about the Boat Graveyard, that's going to be cleared up soon. The inlet will be free to flow again."
"What ways?" He sounded curious and I talked fast.
"Erudition has the tech to clean up pollution, and she was planning to clear the river once she got permission from the city. I can probably make some organisms that could clear everything too." Maybe some type of living net to catch garbage, or pollution eating algae, or little tadpoles that soak up contaminants in their body to be processed?
"Truly? Then perhaps I may reconsider…" There was a but in there. "However even if that is true…it will leave me vulnerable. If you fail to defeat this Interloper I will certainly be destroyed for my actions. Do you have a response for that is well…?"
"I…do." I cleared my throat, my heart hammering in my chest as the spirit tilted his head. "The Mother of Miseries won't leave you alone even if you do nothing or help her. She'll destroy the river, and repurpose you like what she did to a ton of spirits. She isn't out to kill humanity, she's out to kill the Earth. And if you idiots don't recognize how bad this is I'll make you." I felt pissed at the nerve of these spirits that would just leave us to ro—
"I'm convinced."
…
…
"What?" I croaked. He cracked a mischievous smile and there was a feeling of being played.
"You're not a shaman little one, but you would have made a fine one. We were simply testing your resolve."
"We?" The sky turned dark and the other spirit appeared with an oddly sad Eidolon in tow.
"I SEE YOU ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND SHAPER." I almost tried to correct her then thought better of it. "YOU ARE THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE VYASA, A MEMBER OF HER CLAN. THE HIGH PRIEST WAS HERE TO PERFORM A TASK FOR ME." That didn't make me worry any less. "THE HIGH PRIEST IS ALSO A TASTE OF WHAT IS TO COME IN THE HEREAFTER. YOU ARE PROOF THAT OUR FAITH WILL NOT BE MISPLACED. REJOICE AND WAIT FOR OUR ARRIVAL."
They…were giving me the runaround the entire time?!
…
"May I have permission to speak freely?" Lord River nodded and the other unnamed spirit rolled her reptilian eyes.
"YOU MAY." I couldn't stop myself.
"You're all assholes." The river guardian barked out laughter, and his sister rumbled with annoyance.
"BRAVE. BUT I WILL ALLOW IT…SPIRITS AND HUMANS ARE AFTER ALL QUITE DIFFERENT." Soon after she had said that, we were pushed through a rift right back to where we had started. The city was…starting to shimmer with a certain pattern, like a timer set off to blow.
Not yet.
"Panacea." I felt a hand place itself on my shoulder, and I looked up at Eidolon. There was a certain sadness and pressure to him as he talked. "You did a good job, now it's my turn to play my role. I'll pay her back…" Huh?
He floated upwards into the air, and the Rachni Queen flared biotically, her singing getting louder and more directed. I felt reality shift around Eidolon, some type of Shaker power letting him fly, which also generated some form of shield. His hands glowed emerald, and before I could say a thing he unleashed a beam of light at the bubble. Instead of popping, it seemed to lighten my sister's burden…and one hand diverted out into a flashlight that left a shimmer along the island and started to cover the bay itself. There was a third power but I didn't know what it was.
The bubble rippled, and I knew the clock was ticking.
I drifted close to my sister and to Labyrinth and Vista…and flinched.
My sister was pale, her tiara broken and light shining from her skin. Her hands were quivering, and it…looked like she was in pain. Vista and Labyrinth were even worse off, their eyes bloodshot and spittle dripping from their lips. And it looked…crystalline. Biotics surged from Vista, mingling with her power.
Shaper…are you there?
'Oh gods make it stop…WHAT…is this?!' I flinched at her babbling, she didn't seem okay. 'It hurts…it hurts…those poor shards…IT HURTS!' I stumbled at how much pain she seemed to be in, and I tried…to project some sympathy. Was it because she could see biology more clearly? Did…looking at the Mother of Miseries hurt her?
"Don't look at her…don't look at her." I repeated my words like a mantra, and I could feel the power Shaper gave me get weaker. "Don't look at her…look at me." I found a weed growing in the soil and against my better judgement touched it. "Look at this weed…and don't look at her…look at me…and look at this plant." It was hard to convince her, with the shards in the background screaming as they were broken down for energy and matter and quintessence.
The plant grew a flower that bloomed into a fruit with cancer killing properties, and was made sterile without a supply of a specific chemical. Her babbling calmed and I spoke softly, like the way that Basilia or Vicky talked around little kids. I could barely hear anything over the pain that seemingly looking at the bubble caused.
They need to finish up their business…and they need to do it soon.
"I'm not sure how much longer they can hold."
April 28th, 2011. 9:10PM
Basilia Rubio
I blasted fire at a long tendril that had attempted to block us, and wreathed my hand in warp energies. The tendril was reduced to red liquid upon contact with my fists. Legend flew past us, bouncing and searing through dozens of tendrils before coming to a stop. He looked disoriented but managed to stop himself from blasting us with enough firepower to wipe out a building from existence.
"Legend." Alexandria placed a hand on his shoulder, her expression uncertain. He took deep breaths, and I felt uncomfortable at the expressions of almost everyone here. They had all suffered from the machinations of the dark god, and while personally what I had seen would stick with me for life I…wasn't affected in the same way.
I'm not sure I wanted to know why that was, but I doubt I would have a choice once it came to light. There were only a few people remaining, and I could already see Dauntless pulling Myrddin away from another mental prison. The wizard cape formed a dark sigil with his fingers, and a concussive blast broke apart a mass of coagulated mud when it attempted to swallow up Miss Militia. I could hear the loud ominous rumbles and groans as the bubble started to crack.
Almost everyone except for the Wards and the Rachni were here, but I could sense the first group only a few meters short of our final destination. There was something there, something I needed to see for myself.
I leapt in front of everyone and out of my seat, dodging Lisa as she rubbed her arms with uncharacteristic melancholy. She pulled on my arm, her dim expression turning into a glare.
"You knew that we were going to be sealed in here." There was another murmur in the crowds and I grimaced. She had been rather uppity lately, and I wondered if she just didn't like me or if she had been going through a bad day.
I didn't much care though…I just felt sad.
"If I had then I would have done better than this." I simply waved my arms around this place of depression, nihilism and suffering. "All the strategies on how we would pair up capes, and what needed to be done were based on Dinah's Precog. Problem with it is evaluating why those calculations are correct. With some things it's obvious, Echidna's minions would be vulnerable to the machinations of the dark god. Lung has very powerful regeneration, and his power is more resilient to her weapon."
"Erudition." I pulled away from Taylor, and I started to sympathize marginally with Contessa. Precognition was bullshit to both its victims and its users.
"First question was trying to probe for an appropriate container for The Mother of Miseries. I thought we'd get a wall of some kind, but a bubble of nightmares was all that we had time to sort. The second question involved whether obtaining help from two certain spirits would elevate our chances of success."
"Did it?" Miss Militia asked, rubbing her eyes with a slight groan.
"Yes. But the trouble with Precog is that it can be a black box, the sheer amount of data crunching required to make Precognition even possible makes getting an exact list of what causes a specific prediction hard to parse. Hell we only got as far as we did because we pushed her power too far." I rubbed my whole face, pacing quickly as the stress got to me. "The third question was simply whether there was a weakness we could exploit. It's hard to get much with how well the Mother of Miseries fucks with Thinker powers."
"Sorry…" Tattletale looked apologetic to my surprise. "I'm just…tired." I grimaced at what she must have seen even under the protection of Bitch's shamanistic items and Grue's fog. Hallucinations were commonplace here, and while I was immune, the same didn't apply to everyone else. I was already mulling the acquirement of a company therapist both for our normal workers, our engineers and scientists as well as our Parahumans.
"So all of this is…" Dauntless trailed off, looking just as mentally exhausted as everyone else.
"A gigantic clusterfuck due to insufficient information and the clever machinations of an alien demon god yes." I wasn't sure if that could be considered a quip but I didn't care right then.
"You should move on ahead of us." Charlotte tapped into our conversation, her usual shy smile twisted into a grimace. The floor of flesh was writhing, spitting out puppets that moved in jerky but aggressive fashions. There was a hint of intuition, a certain knowledge that she had gained from somewhere.
"I…" I didn't want to leave them, I had already made a mess of things. I…
Taylor was the one who pushed me, her expression unreadable due to her mask. "Go…we need this weakness or this will all have been for nothing. Go."
"O-Okay." The song of the Rachni grew louder, a second energy allowing them to pierce more deeply into the void. I turned to Levantar, softly smiling as I rubbed his front. "Keep them safe…and keep it safe too, I still owe you some scrap metal buddy." He whirred happily, and I leapt past then in a series of biotically and bending enhanced jumps.
I shuddered as the puppets of flesh and broken souls attacked with what little power was directed towards them by their master. There was definitely something there, and I began to pick up the signatures of the Wards, a distinct scent in the air. The closest was Flechette, a distinct tangy orange mixed with spices made out of fragments of reality alteration. That was followed up by Aegis, smelling like a combination of leather and uncooked beef, as a well as a hint of shifting muscles.
Gallant was the most interesting, an upwelling of sweet and sour emotions and the flash of spice and wildness inherent in those who understood the spirits. It wasn't exactly that, but it's like trying to describe color to someone blind, or asking someone with synesthesia what color music was. Which…actually fit very well with how shamans(and Rachni) view the world.
I ran faster when I noticed they were huddled around something small. My mind screamed that this was it, that this was what I was looking for.
My speed alerted the Wards, and I screamed as I narrowly dodged a Sting infused projectile flying at 500+ feet per second. When it landed on the ground, the three foot long arbalest left a twenty meter furrow in the flesh, shredding through all the matter it touched.
I gulped.
"Hi?" I waved awkwardly and I could feel the embarrassment and horror coming off of Flechette in waves.
"Oh god I'm so sorry it's just in this place…"
"It's fine." I waved off her concerns even as I felt jitters shake my legs. "This place is a nightmare, I can understand how it'll leave someone paranoid." It didn't make nearly getting shredded any less traumatizing. I leaned over to what they were crowding around. "We've managed to find everyone except the Rachni…" Their songs pervaded the bubble, and I think they had scattered themselves across several corners. I don't think we needed to find them, they had their own role to play.
Gallant nodded. "Right…well it seems like someone else got caught in the bubble." My heart froze in my chest as they moved. It was a relatively nondescript child, and my shock had broken whatever spell they had been under. They backed away, and I stared at the supposed child.
She was tall and skinny, looking surprisingly like a small Taylor though with a shade of dark blue hair instead of black. Her human skin was peeling away to reveal inky blackness and scales…but I felt no ill intent.
Her dark eyes looked up at me, blank and empty and full of a despair beyond human comparison. The bubble was rippling, and I knew we had between twenty and forty minutes before all hell breaks loose.
"Are you Kala?" I asked directly and I could see the confusion and fear and curiosity in the Wards faces. They were afraid of this supposed child that had been found in this place, in this monument to suffering.
"I was. I suppose you search for answers here little sister?" I stepped back, fear curdling in my stomach. "Yes…a child that has bathed in the blood of dead gods, an attempt to recover the light lost so long ago. In this new age of living gods and limitless potential." The Wards stared at me, and I felt uncomfortable at the strange sympathy and contempt that Kala displayed on her sad youthful face.
"I…yes I am. This is the final option we have left." She hummed quietly, singing a song that felt almost familiar. Yet it was a song I had never heard in any of my days past or present.
"Yes I will tell you…but perhaps you should first protect yourself?" I rapidly comprehended her comment, and ducked my head as a tendril lashed out where I had been. The fighting had followed us, and I could see the capes fighting limited versions of the Parahumans that the Mother of Miseries had consumed.
I grit my teeth, and when I tried to lower into a stance I felt my body protest against the movement. Fuck…I wasn't at a 100% was I?
I circled my arms, and shot out a rapid fire flurry of fire projectiles. There was no water to bend, as the fluid isn't water, there was no earth, and air wouldn't cut it in this bubble. Only fire and biotics had the power to do damage and I was running on empty for biotics. So fire it is…
I managed a lightning bolt, ripping one of the demonic beasts in half with the blast of energy. But there were far too many of the things, and Lung and his kid were not transforming. The capes missed often, and the hallucinations were coming back to bite everyone but me in the ass. Well…Echidna was an exception…barely.
Taylor was moving slowly, and was reduced to mostly using her swarm to great effect. Even so, she only only had so many bugs and for every creature she killed three more popped up in their place.
Fuck.
"Perhaps I can help you?" I glanced over to the girl, her skin cracking further and her expression turning more sad.
"What do you want?" I asked, and she answered bluntly.
"I want this to end. I'm so tired." Her whisper expressed an agony millions of years in the making. "You humans can bring this all to an end…and for that to happen you must learn our history. And that can't happen if you all die so…" Reality bent and instead of being in the prison of corrupted mud and broken minds, we were in a white void as far as the eye could see.
What the fuck?
"What is this place?" Lung growled and I felt horror once I realized how badly he had been injured. The details had gone unnoticed in the dark, and I swallowed bile.
His shirt was long since destroyed, and his skin was anemic and discolored, bruises and poison and bile and blood soaking his broken down body. He was barely holding up as is, and I could see his ribs…and not just through his skin. He seemed to be healing…but incredibly slowly, holding himself together with hopes, dreams and sickly metallic scales.
Kala stared at him and the sickly dragon appeared uneasy. "This place was only possible due to the insects' intervention, she heard the echoes of the songs of my era. Will you care to listen? Will you care to listen to the last of the Makara?"
"Will that help us destroy The Mother of Miseries?" Alexandria was the pragmatic one here, demanding of Kala.
"It is the only way to make this unnatural place between life and death end." Left unsaid was what would happen to her once the end came.
"Then yes…we'll listen." The bitter child smiled, and vanished from sight. The void became a place, a city that I had never seen in my life, with the drone of Machine gods raining down from beyond the darkness.
April 28th, 2011. 9:15PM
Basilia Rubio
The song of a past age played, the final memory of a dead race.
We were standing as the void swirled around us, a city made both out of flesh and metal and spirit spanning for hundreds of miles in every direction. The Makara were everywhere, and in this place I saw what they had once been before their end.
They were scaly skinned but had enough human features to be less than unsettling. Their eyes had a soft glow to them, and feathery hair was braided and combed in many styles.
"What is this…?" Dragon was the only one who spoke, and I could hear the singing grow more intense as they showed us this image of a past long forgotten.
"This is the heyday of the Makara, they who held the bequest of Raava, the holders of the Avatar Spirit." I choked, stumbling into an exhausted Taylor. "The heyday of They Who Were The Makara before the Servants of the Harbinger came for us." The place of beauty turned to one of horror and death and destruction, as the sky filled with the shadows cast by hundreds of god machines some two kilometers tall if not more. Thousands of lesser Reapers escorted them, and I gulped.
Beams of red death shattered city wide kinetic barriers, Slaughterships landing and expelling cybernetic monsters and dark spirits who would bring in more victims. Loud sirens of physical sound and spirit quintessence echoed across the planet, as machines as tall as mountains landed and bent physics over their knees.
"My god…" Miss Militia gasped, and the youngest capes looked away from the sight of a war on a scale that spanned the entire galaxy. New Wave seemed particularly perturbed, and I grimaced at the rope burns on Carol's arms. Lung was silent, eyes distant as later cities were drowned, one Reaper bending an appendage and unleashing a tsunami. Others uplifted volcanoes, or created hurricanes with but a thought.
"These are some of the last echoes of a very old war, a war that birthed countless miracles and countless horrors throughout the ages." Kala's voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere. "An echo so powerful that it birthed every bender, every shaman, and every spirit you will ever see." There was a collective shudder that passed through the group of capes.
It was a realization of how small and how young we were in the greater scheme of things. We were but minnows in a vast cosmic ocean, full of things that were infinitely our greater.
"Why is this important? What even is the Avatar?" Alexandria growled and every cape in the vicinity leaned back. She was angry.
"This is the origin of your enemy." That silenced her. "Her creation was a direct consequence of the Bequest that the Makara had inherited from the many thousands of races that came before them." Why did I feel like I had seen this before? Why didn't I remember why?
"This Avatar right?" Tattletale was the one asking, a brittle grin on her face.
"Yes. The Avatar was the sole enemy that could fight on par with the Servants of the Harbinger, those who proceeded the god machines known as Reapers in the very last cycle. The very greatest of the Ascended held an Indoctrinated Avatar at its core, surrounded and empowered by the souls of their entire race. Each a nation, free of all weakness." The images changed as millions upon millions upon billions of Makara were melted down into genetic slurry, forming the core of a solitary god machine as they were exposed to the Truth, minds molded and shattered into the single will of a Greater Reaper. Lesser races were converted into simpler war platforms, servants to the strongest of the Reapers.
I felt sick.
I blinked as a Makara came on screen, eyes glowing a brilliant unearthly white. All the elements came together as one as she fought against an army of cybernetic abominations. Mountains fell and rose, rivers were diverted with terrifying ease, drowning divisions. Blasts of flame scorched even the exotic hull of a lesser Reaper, and it took a dozen hits from a Dreadnought before falling.
A hurricane shredded all in its path, localized around the most powerful being I had ever seen. A biotic aura exploded around her, and a flare of biotic plasma engulfed thousands in an instant.
I ignored the eyes on me, shaking my head at the sheer power displayed here. It was like a walking god on Earth, destroying the enemy that came from the stars beyond their reach.
It didn't last though…as three High Reapers made their wrath known, one of them lashing out and simply crushing a flagging Dreadnought with a biotic singularity. Three dots fell from the Reapers, and the Avatar's smile disappeared as three individuals landed. They were each different and yet the same, members of other races as well as her own taken and changed and used as vessels for a greater power.
How did I know that?
"But what was one Avatar against the power of thousands?" Their eyes glowed in different colors, but they all felt wrong. Burning sigils…no mandalas burned behind them, energy made manifest as power flooded the drones. They beckoned the elements to their command and I felt horror.
They struck with ferocity and power, beating her down to within an inch of her life. Even the power suffusing her body couldn't protect her, and I winced as limbs snapped like twigs under the strain, healing at horrific rates with potent forceful waterbending. Again and again she healed and fought until her power began to falter and she was left a broken mess.
But as the Reapers reached for her, she shattered one of her own teeth. Uncovered in the fighting, a shielded bomb detonated. Everything within a hundred miles was covered in a wave of plasma, gravitic distortion and hard radiation. The old High Reapers came out unscathed from the enormous blast…but they had lost their precious target.
"The Enemy was born in the final death throes of the Makara, a war of extinction that had lasted a thousand years. Their greatest machines and technologies were destroyed by the hand of a God. Their great fleets were scattered and broken. " The images of cosmic horror and destruction shifted to something smaller. It was a tall lanky teenage Makara, long messy dark blue hair tied back into a ponytail. She lived in a place of rank poverty, a place of such desperation and fear that it sickened even Lung.
None of the capes could speak a word, not even Alexandria could. Echidna had simply bowed her head, bangs covering her eyes.
"What happened to her?" I spoke, my voice shaky as this place of despair surrounded me.
"The Reapers happened." Shards of memories flitted by like butterflies, showing different stages of her life. Her mother crushed under the weight of a freighter being torn asunder by a Lesser Reaper, her father fading away due to depression and then Indoctrinated. "She was the last Avatar of her age, and despite the despair of her life she had hope for the future, hope that with allies from all backgrounds she could combat the Reapers." The girl wore a dark form fitting outfit, a hood and mask obscuring her features.
She was surrounded by friends, a tall handsome male example of her race, a smug pretty girl, a rougher and more wild woman with a harsh smirk. As well as a pretty boy with an easygoing grin. The taller boy loomed over what had to be his sister, a sassy woman that hid in the shadows with a bemused grin.
A moment later the tall man was broken and twisted by the servants of the Reapers. The pretty boy died next, incinerated in the red beam of a Greater Reaper. The smug girl had her mind cracked open by another race fighting the Reapers, and was never found. The youngest member of her team simply vanished without a trace to the point it was like she had never existed.
Kala's voice was twisted and angry. "And she failed, again and again and again. She tried to fight an army that had known victory for more than two billion years. For every Reaper she killed, they killed a million more. She failed like no Avatar had failed before, broken under the weight of her sins made for the 'Greater Good" Alexandria was the most stricken, and I could feel the hate that Kala directed at both her and…Taylor?
I stepped in front of her, and didn't say a thing.
"How did it end?" I spoke numbly, and the world shifted once more. There I could see the woman, hair raggedy and dirty and the strength of her body lost in old age. Around her I could see thousands of maddened soldiers, Shamans and benders and even non benders coming together as one hundred Greater Reapers descended. It would do them little good as their minds shattered under the onslaught of the Reapers.
Her sobs were ugly, and she screamed curses and spoke vehemently against the spirits that had made their empire powerful, demanding of them why her life had been nothing but despair and fear and terror and pain. Demanding of her people on why they had been so weak, so unable to work together at the very end of things. The Wards were looking away, and Kaida had cupped her own ears unable to bear the pain in the alien's voice.
Her expression then shifted and she looked down at her own chest, whispering in the tongue of born shamans and high spirits.
"The last Makara to bear the Avatar Spirit wanted what her inborn power could not give her. Control." Her sobs turned to laughter, and with little fanfare I witnessed the woman beginning to crack, expelling her own spirit.
"It won't end like this! I refuse. I WILL BECOME ALL THE MISERIES IN THIS WORLD TO KILL THEM!" Raava fled but not before giving her a final taste of her light, one final power that she would use for a terrible, terrible final gambit. A mistake in her haste to find a new species to hold her spirit. So that the Reapers would never take her power in full.
Light flooded out from cracks in her skin, the pure white light turning a sickly black as it was tainted with a hatred I hoped I would never get to feel. It spread from the cracks until her entire body was engulfed in energy and light. Her maddened soldiers were dozens of miles away, and they were engulfed in the burning light like she had been.
We flew up from the mountainous base of the final resistance, where perhaps a few million Makara still remained. The mountain range…disappeared as the following deadly explosion swallowed up the continent. The entire world was scoured away, the very fabric of reality vibrating as the Makara's oversoul was snapped in two.
Five Greater Reapers were shredded, and two hundred Lesser Reaper platforms were torn apart by waves of errant dark energy deranging reality into a swirl of rapid spacetime eddies and proton decay.
Hundreds of Reapers came together, and thousands of shapes freed themselves from the boiling atmosphere. Thousands of soldiers were Imbued against their will by the creature that was neither woman nor spirit…simply a wrath embodying all the miseries in the world. An army commanded and mentally dominated by the natural abilities as well as the biosciences of her race. One of the Reapers seemed to be possessed by the hand of something greater, shining down with a golden light as it flew to meet the army in battle that had taken place some eleven billion and two hundred fifty million years ago.
The words swirled in my mind, and I felt my hand wrap around Taylor's wrist. She looked surprised, and I only felt fleeting terror as I realized the true face of our enemy.
"The story of a broken woman attempting to fight what was unfightable, throwing away everything that she was to kill a God. And she failed utterly and completely." Days of battle were skipped as the hand of the Harbinger killed her race, and the last of Raava's light left her. The twisted half of her broken soul fled to the farthest corners of her galaxy, flooding a black pillar with her own mind and the minds of millions of insane Makara. All the while, a city grew and prospered above her. "And became the very thing she wished to destroy."
"You're her other half aren't you?" There was silence and the Parahumans looked appalled.
"I was…" The ghost answered.
"How do we fight something like that?" Kala reappeared, eyes sad and tired.
"We are not like we once were, our connection has been severed with the end of the Cycle…and she burns through her meager supply of power far too quickly. If she had the power of a dark god she would have long since destroyed this world. She simply needs one final push to end it. My assistance will guarantee a high chance of victory."
"What do you get out of this?" Tattletale asked, voice quivering.
Kala's expression was horrifically happy. "If you win I can finally die, and finally see what lies for me in the hereafter." Tattletale scooted away, and I remembered her Trigger Event. Jesus…this needed to end.
The bubble rippled. The container for the Mother of Miseries…for the former Avatar was starting to come down, and we had maybe ten minutes or more before it popped.
"Do you know how to end this…to stop her?"
"You have all the pieces right here." She gestured to us all and beyond.
…
Her intervention bought us time and breathing room, and we set up a rough outline. As we did so I felt the metaphysical space slowly losing steam, the bubble popping right as we finished our…plan.
"I will do what I can…and so shall you…" Were the last words I heard as we were freed, the smell of fresh air refreshing.
There's a general theme I've sorta been trying out. About living in a world of cosmic horror, but also about overcoming those horrors, of learning from the mistakes of the past and moving forward, of going right up to Cthulhu and punching him in the face. I'm not sure I have the skills to getting that down into writing but I'll try.
I could always come back and rewrite this Arc…in a year. Either way 6.11 should be finished up today, and I've worked on both Interludes before it. So once the Interludes are posted I should have a modest buffer, and will return to a three day spacing or 4 if I'm feeling unsure about a chapter.
So enjoy.
April 28th, 2011. 9:00PM
Amy Dallon
I tripped over a rock, and I let out a scream. Where the fuck even was I? Had I seriously lost my way in this insane place?
"Stupid mushroom…" I roared incoherently and was rewarded with a slap from a chitinous arm.
"Not stupid." It talked in a soft toned voice and I groaned. This place was insane and I had met at least half a dozen talking spirits including a cellphone and a damn stripper pole. I was at least getting closer to where the Lord River was, so maybe this would work out if I just kept moving.
It was a good thing that wherever I was let bending work or I'd be screwed. At least a few of the spirits had tried to talk me into killing myself, and another wanted to ride me around like a meat puppet. I managed to convince some type of healing spirit to launch him into the ocean. Apparently I had street cred from a lot of the nicer spirits because of how much I heal people.
So my impact was a lot bigger than I thought it was. Because there were a ton of spirits like that, hundreds at least and they all recognized me. I had pretty much been following my guts, as well as the instructions of the local spirits who didn't want to eat my mortal soul.
Why the hell hadn't Basilia done this before? Maybe she didn't have all the time in the world to talk to giant ancient spirits but why couldn't she have done more?
Paper crumpled, and I felt my hand wrap around a sheet of loose paper put inside the pockets hidden away in. I pulled out the paper and read…
Was too dangerous.
Ancient spirits are capricious and unpredictable.
Didn't want you to do this, but had no choice.
She'll get you whatever you want.
She trusts you.
That…wasn't Basilia or Dinah's handwriting…it was Charlotte's…how did she know?
The note crumpled in my hands, and I closed my eyes. I was angry, and I knew why I was angry. I had thought that they didn't trust me, that they thought I was too unstable and too…messed up to help them. But none of this was about me, it was about saving the city from someone who could take everything from us if we let them.
"Then I have to keep going." I wasn't going to let a bunch of stupid crazy spirits get in my way. I had to find that other spirit's brother and convince him to help us, convince him to fight that monster.
I stopped and looked around.
Where was I now?
The weird cityscape had vanished, and I was surrounded by fog, shadowy boats spread all around me in the humid air. I was on the shore of the Lord River and I could feel dread crawl up my spine like horrible thoughts used to crawl up into my brain. I had to take careful steps, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach when I noticed that I was being held up by two large stones and nothing else. One wrong step would be a dip into the frigid waters and I'd probably drown even with waterbending.
I could hear whispers, and more thoughts about how Basilia would suffer for making me do this came to the forefront. I hoped all of this was worth it, because I'm not sure how long Vicky could hold out against a god. She might be my sister and I might love her…but I had no illusions on how long she could last against something like that thing.
I sighed. "Who's there?" The whispers grew louder and more ferocious, and I had to keep calm even as it felt like some wild animal was going to go for my throat.
The river current roared in my ear, and I could see the marks of glaciers that didn't exist in reality. I remember that Taylor had talked about it, that the Lord River had carved out an inlet when the ice age ended. It made Brockton Bay a good place for shipping and harbors until the tanker had been sunk into the ocean. So this was a glimpse of the past, and it was…awe inspiring.
I started to walk, deciding that my airbending should be good enough protection. I hopped from stone to stone and ice floe to ice floe. That caused a chuckle that made me falter and I nearly slipped into the dark waters below. I didn't stop, and I buried the primal fear deep down. If a total dork like Basilia could deal with this nonsense so could I.
I felt Shaper's touch, her power and influence wrapping around me like a cloak. The river turned harsher, and there was something like curiosity(?) in the air. A pressure like my sister's aura but far, far stronger. It was like the weight of the river was pressing down on my shoulders, like I had the entire world looking at me.
I scowled.
I had felt like this before, had felt and put pressure on my shoulders that should never have been mine to take. So a little intimidation wouldn't do jack.
The fog cleared as I made it to the other side of the river on gusts of wind. My bending felt sluggish here but I could still use it. It was a lot better than the Library. The spirit that had thrown us into Basilia's whole deal months ago didn't tolerate fighting in his domain. I had…talked to him a few times, since he had a lot of books on biology and chemistry. He was nice when you weren't a bitch to him, and he was apparently compelled to help provide knowledge since he was the spirit of the library.
But he was just a ripple in comparison to the whirlpool I was going towards like an idiot.
When I stepped away from the bank the fog had cleared completely, and I saw someone sitting down on a block of ice in the shape of a chair. My eyebrows twitched at the loud and obnoxious sipping from a clay cup.
"Well?" The man raised an eyebrow and I found a seat had been prepared in a blink of an eye. I sat down, my eyes burning as reality took a hike. I took a look at the person who had asked me to sit without saying more than one word. I hadn't understood, but Shaper had.
He was a tall man, and looked Native American, like some of the tribes that had lived in Brockton Bay before European settlers had made their homes here. It was hard to see his appearance, and at times I thought he was a she. I was going to stick with male for now…since that felt right at least most of the time.
He offered a drink, and I felt like saying no. The thought didn't last, there wasn't any need to be rude and bitchy. That was for later when I chuck Basilia and Dinah into the bay.
I took the clay cup and without a second thought I took the plunge. It tasted like the best damn coffee in my life, and I very much appreciated the caffeine boost from the cup.
"Thank you." The man smiled, swirling his cup of…juice(?) and exposing teeth that were oddly and disturbingly uniform.
"Good. It seems the shaman has chosen well with her representative, you are attuned to the ways of spirits though lack the grit to commune with us in the way that the Vyasa does." That took me for a loop, and I gulped once I realized who and what was speaking to me.
"You're…"
"The Twisting One, The Riverine Guardian." The list was short and just as melodramatic. "But you may simply call me Lord River." I blinked and I gaped when I saw that his teeth were made out of ice. His clothing was actually a whirling stream of water, and I was having a hard time looking at him.
"Okay." I bowed my head a little like I had seen Basilia do a hundred times over with any spirit that she befriended. "I'm Amy Dallon." I offered a hand, not expecting the spirit to…shake my hand?!
My eyes crossed as contradictory sensory information clouded my thoughts. He was human, he was a fish, he was an assembly of algae, and he was…splashy?
The fuck?
The spirit laughed, and I sighed as I became the entertainment of an ancient spirit.
"Indeed you are. I know you well, your father often brought you to my shores, and many of my court speak fondly of you." I blushed and blanched at the same time. He had known my father? "I did…he often cleaned my shores of his own accord, quite a nice fellow."
He…was a murderous criminal. Then again spirits aren't really very big on having human mindsets.
"That's good isn't it?" I cursed at my lack of confidence, and tried to pretend that I hadn't been too unconfident. That was important for spirits wasn't it?
"Yes. It means that the Shaman knows enough of my temperament to send someone she considers a friend, as well as savvy enough to send a friend to my court to commence our little meeting. You are here to form a pact in Vyasa's place, to seek the aid of the guardians of this land."
"Yes." I went with the blunt approach. "The Mother of Miseries is a threat to us all."
"Is she though?" He tilted his head and I felt cold all of a sudden.
"What do you mean?" His teeth were more like jagged icicles now, and I felt like either running or shoving a blast of cutting air into his chest.
"I have been around for a long time, human. I remember the pressure of the Great Glaciers before they retreated." That was at least 11,000 years ago. "My sister is far older, she sang of life, currents and storms when your ancestors were merely naked apes still learning the ways of fire. If the Mother of Miseries destroys your race what difference does it make? All your kind has done for us is poisoning our land and our children, weakening us with your stupidity, and marking us with your failure to destroy the Leviathan. Tell me then…what do we gain from helping your sick and weak kind?"
"We'll change…" He looked at me intently, and I wondered why I had said that.
"Could you elaborate?" His voice was much more alien and unknowable, and I didn't even blink as wings of water materialized from his back.
"We don't have to pollute your waters, we can find better ways…and if this is about the Boat Graveyard, that's going to be cleared up soon. The inlet will be free to flow again."
"What ways?" He sounded curious and I talked fast.
"Erudition has the tech to clean up pollution, and she was planning to clear the river once she got permission from the city. I can probably make some organisms that could clear everything too." Maybe some type of living net to catch garbage, or pollution eating algae, or little tadpoles that soak up contaminants in their body to be processed?
"Truly? Then perhaps I may reconsider…" There was a but in there. "However even if that is true…it will leave me vulnerable. If you fail to defeat this Interloper I will certainly be destroyed for my actions. Do you have a response for that is well…?"
"I…do." I cleared my throat, my heart hammering in my chest as the spirit tilted his head. "The Mother of Miseries won't leave you alone even if you do nothing or help her. She'll destroy the river, and repurpose you like what she did to a ton of spirits. She isn't out to kill humanity, she's out to kill the Earth. And if you idiots don't recognize how bad this is I'll make you." I felt pissed at the nerve of these spirits that would just leave us to ro—
"I'm convinced."
…
…
"What?" I croaked. He cracked a mischievous smile and there was a feeling of being played.
"You're not a shaman little one, but you would have made a fine one. We were simply testing your resolve."
"We?" The sky turned dark and the other spirit appeared with an oddly sad Eidolon in tow.
"I SEE YOU ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND SHAPER." I almost tried to correct her then thought better of it. "YOU ARE THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE VYASA, A MEMBER OF HER CLAN. THE HIGH PRIEST WAS HERE TO PERFORM A TASK FOR ME." That didn't make me worry any less. "THE HIGH PRIEST IS ALSO A TASTE OF WHAT IS TO COME IN THE HEREAFTER. YOU ARE PROOF THAT OUR FAITH WILL NOT BE MISPLACED. REJOICE AND WAIT FOR OUR ARRIVAL."
They…were giving me the runaround the entire time?!
…
"May I have permission to speak freely?" Lord River nodded and the other unnamed spirit rolled her reptilian eyes.
"YOU MAY." I couldn't stop myself.
"You're all assholes." The river guardian barked out laughter, and his sister rumbled with annoyance.
"BRAVE. BUT I WILL ALLOW IT…SPIRITS AND HUMANS ARE AFTER ALL QUITE DIFFERENT." Soon after she had said that, we were pushed through a rift right back to where we had started. The city was…starting to shimmer with a certain pattern, like a timer set off to blow.
Not yet.
"Panacea." I felt a hand place itself on my shoulder, and I looked up at Eidolon. There was a certain sadness and pressure to him as he talked. "You did a good job, now it's my turn to play my role. I'll pay her back…" Huh?
He floated upwards into the air, and the Rachni Queen flared biotically, her singing getting louder and more directed. I felt reality shift around Eidolon, some type of Shaker power letting him fly, which also generated some form of shield. His hands glowed emerald, and before I could say a thing he unleashed a beam of light at the bubble. Instead of popping, it seemed to lighten my sister's burden…and one hand diverted out into a flashlight that left a shimmer along the island and started to cover the bay itself. There was a third power but I didn't know what it was.
The bubble rippled, and I knew the clock was ticking.
I drifted close to my sister and to Labyrinth and Vista…and flinched.
My sister was pale, her tiara broken and light shining from her skin. Her hands were quivering, and it…looked like she was in pain. Vista and Labyrinth were even worse off, their eyes bloodshot and spittle dripping from their lips. And it looked…crystalline. Biotics surged from Vista, mingling with her power.
Shaper…are you there?
'Oh gods make it stop…WHAT…is this?!' I flinched at her babbling, she didn't seem okay. 'It hurts…it hurts…those poor shards…IT HURTS!' I stumbled at how much pain she seemed to be in, and I tried…to project some sympathy. Was it because she could see biology more clearly? Did…looking at the Mother of Miseries hurt her?
"Don't look at her…don't look at her." I repeated my words like a mantra, and I could feel the power Shaper gave me get weaker. "Don't look at her…look at me." I found a weed growing in the soil and against my better judgement touched it. "Look at this weed…and don't look at her…look at me…and look at this plant." It was hard to convince her, with the shards in the background screaming as they were broken down for energy and matter and quintessence.
The plant grew a flower that bloomed into a fruit with cancer killing properties, and was made sterile without a supply of a specific chemical. Her babbling calmed and I spoke softly, like the way that Basilia or Vicky talked around little kids. I could barely hear anything over the pain that seemingly looking at the bubble caused.
They need to finish up their business…and they need to do it soon.
"I'm not sure how much longer they can hold."
___
April 28th, 2011. 9:10PM
Basilia Rubio
I blasted fire at a long tendril that had attempted to block us, and wreathed my hand in warp energies. The tendril was reduced to red liquid upon contact with my fists. Legend flew past us, bouncing and searing through dozens of tendrils before coming to a stop. He looked disoriented but managed to stop himself from blasting us with enough firepower to wipe out a building from existence.
"Legend." Alexandria placed a hand on his shoulder, her expression uncertain. He took deep breaths, and I felt uncomfortable at the expressions of almost everyone here. They had all suffered from the machinations of the dark god, and while personally what I had seen would stick with me for life I…wasn't affected in the same way.
I'm not sure I wanted to know why that was, but I doubt I would have a choice once it came to light. There were only a few people remaining, and I could already see Dauntless pulling Myrddin away from another mental prison. The wizard cape formed a dark sigil with his fingers, and a concussive blast broke apart a mass of coagulated mud when it attempted to swallow up Miss Militia. I could hear the loud ominous rumbles and groans as the bubble started to crack.
Almost everyone except for the Wards and the Rachni were here, but I could sense the first group only a few meters short of our final destination. There was something there, something I needed to see for myself.
I leapt in front of everyone and out of my seat, dodging Lisa as she rubbed her arms with uncharacteristic melancholy. She pulled on my arm, her dim expression turning into a glare.
"You knew that we were going to be sealed in here." There was another murmur in the crowds and I grimaced. She had been rather uppity lately, and I wondered if she just didn't like me or if she had been going through a bad day.
I didn't much care though…I just felt sad.
"If I had then I would have done better than this." I simply waved my arms around this place of depression, nihilism and suffering. "All the strategies on how we would pair up capes, and what needed to be done were based on Dinah's Precog. Problem with it is evaluating why those calculations are correct. With some things it's obvious, Echidna's minions would be vulnerable to the machinations of the dark god. Lung has very powerful regeneration, and his power is more resilient to her weapon."
"Erudition." I pulled away from Taylor, and I started to sympathize marginally with Contessa. Precognition was bullshit to both its victims and its users.
"First question was trying to probe for an appropriate container for The Mother of Miseries. I thought we'd get a wall of some kind, but a bubble of nightmares was all that we had time to sort. The second question involved whether obtaining help from two certain spirits would elevate our chances of success."
"Did it?" Miss Militia asked, rubbing her eyes with a slight groan.
"Yes. But the trouble with Precog is that it can be a black box, the sheer amount of data crunching required to make Precognition even possible makes getting an exact list of what causes a specific prediction hard to parse. Hell we only got as far as we did because we pushed her power too far." I rubbed my whole face, pacing quickly as the stress got to me. "The third question was simply whether there was a weakness we could exploit. It's hard to get much with how well the Mother of Miseries fucks with Thinker powers."
"Sorry…" Tattletale looked apologetic to my surprise. "I'm just…tired." I grimaced at what she must have seen even under the protection of Bitch's shamanistic items and Grue's fog. Hallucinations were commonplace here, and while I was immune, the same didn't apply to everyone else. I was already mulling the acquirement of a company therapist both for our normal workers, our engineers and scientists as well as our Parahumans.
"So all of this is…" Dauntless trailed off, looking just as mentally exhausted as everyone else.
"A gigantic clusterfuck due to insufficient information and the clever machinations of an alien demon god yes." I wasn't sure if that could be considered a quip but I didn't care right then.
"You should move on ahead of us." Charlotte tapped into our conversation, her usual shy smile twisted into a grimace. The floor of flesh was writhing, spitting out puppets that moved in jerky but aggressive fashions. There was a hint of intuition, a certain knowledge that she had gained from somewhere.
"I…" I didn't want to leave them, I had already made a mess of things. I…
Taylor was the one who pushed me, her expression unreadable due to her mask. "Go…we need this weakness or this will all have been for nothing. Go."
"O-Okay." The song of the Rachni grew louder, a second energy allowing them to pierce more deeply into the void. I turned to Levantar, softly smiling as I rubbed his front. "Keep them safe…and keep it safe too, I still owe you some scrap metal buddy." He whirred happily, and I leapt past then in a series of biotically and bending enhanced jumps.
I shuddered as the puppets of flesh and broken souls attacked with what little power was directed towards them by their master. There was definitely something there, and I began to pick up the signatures of the Wards, a distinct scent in the air. The closest was Flechette, a distinct tangy orange mixed with spices made out of fragments of reality alteration. That was followed up by Aegis, smelling like a combination of leather and uncooked beef, as a well as a hint of shifting muscles.
Gallant was the most interesting, an upwelling of sweet and sour emotions and the flash of spice and wildness inherent in those who understood the spirits. It wasn't exactly that, but it's like trying to describe color to someone blind, or asking someone with synesthesia what color music was. Which…actually fit very well with how shamans(and Rachni) view the world.
I ran faster when I noticed they were huddled around something small. My mind screamed that this was it, that this was what I was looking for.
My speed alerted the Wards, and I screamed as I narrowly dodged a Sting infused projectile flying at 500+ feet per second. When it landed on the ground, the three foot long arbalest left a twenty meter furrow in the flesh, shredding through all the matter it touched.
I gulped.
"Hi?" I waved awkwardly and I could feel the embarrassment and horror coming off of Flechette in waves.
"Oh god I'm so sorry it's just in this place…"
"It's fine." I waved off her concerns even as I felt jitters shake my legs. "This place is a nightmare, I can understand how it'll leave someone paranoid." It didn't make nearly getting shredded any less traumatizing. I leaned over to what they were crowding around. "We've managed to find everyone except the Rachni…" Their songs pervaded the bubble, and I think they had scattered themselves across several corners. I don't think we needed to find them, they had their own role to play.
Gallant nodded. "Right…well it seems like someone else got caught in the bubble." My heart froze in my chest as they moved. It was a relatively nondescript child, and my shock had broken whatever spell they had been under. They backed away, and I stared at the supposed child.
She was tall and skinny, looking surprisingly like a small Taylor though with a shade of dark blue hair instead of black. Her human skin was peeling away to reveal inky blackness and scales…but I felt no ill intent.
Her dark eyes looked up at me, blank and empty and full of a despair beyond human comparison. The bubble was rippling, and I knew we had between twenty and forty minutes before all hell breaks loose.
"Are you Kala?" I asked directly and I could see the confusion and fear and curiosity in the Wards faces. They were afraid of this supposed child that had been found in this place, in this monument to suffering.
"I was. I suppose you search for answers here little sister?" I stepped back, fear curdling in my stomach. "Yes…a child that has bathed in the blood of dead gods, an attempt to recover the light lost so long ago. In this new age of living gods and limitless potential." The Wards stared at me, and I felt uncomfortable at the strange sympathy and contempt that Kala displayed on her sad youthful face.
"I…yes I am. This is the final option we have left." She hummed quietly, singing a song that felt almost familiar. Yet it was a song I had never heard in any of my days past or present.
"Yes I will tell you…but perhaps you should first protect yourself?" I rapidly comprehended her comment, and ducked my head as a tendril lashed out where I had been. The fighting had followed us, and I could see the capes fighting limited versions of the Parahumans that the Mother of Miseries had consumed.
I grit my teeth, and when I tried to lower into a stance I felt my body protest against the movement. Fuck…I wasn't at a 100% was I?
I circled my arms, and shot out a rapid fire flurry of fire projectiles. There was no water to bend, as the fluid isn't water, there was no earth, and air wouldn't cut it in this bubble. Only fire and biotics had the power to do damage and I was running on empty for biotics. So fire it is…
I managed a lightning bolt, ripping one of the demonic beasts in half with the blast of energy. But there were far too many of the things, and Lung and his kid were not transforming. The capes missed often, and the hallucinations were coming back to bite everyone but me in the ass. Well…Echidna was an exception…barely.
Taylor was moving slowly, and was reduced to mostly using her swarm to great effect. Even so, she only only had so many bugs and for every creature she killed three more popped up in their place.
Fuck.
"Perhaps I can help you?" I glanced over to the girl, her skin cracking further and her expression turning more sad.
"What do you want?" I asked, and she answered bluntly.
"I want this to end. I'm so tired." Her whisper expressed an agony millions of years in the making. "You humans can bring this all to an end…and for that to happen you must learn our history. And that can't happen if you all die so…" Reality bent and instead of being in the prison of corrupted mud and broken minds, we were in a white void as far as the eye could see.
What the fuck?
"What is this place?" Lung growled and I felt horror once I realized how badly he had been injured. The details had gone unnoticed in the dark, and I swallowed bile.
His shirt was long since destroyed, and his skin was anemic and discolored, bruises and poison and bile and blood soaking his broken down body. He was barely holding up as is, and I could see his ribs…and not just through his skin. He seemed to be healing…but incredibly slowly, holding himself together with hopes, dreams and sickly metallic scales.
Kala stared at him and the sickly dragon appeared uneasy. "This place was only possible due to the insects' intervention, she heard the echoes of the songs of my era. Will you care to listen? Will you care to listen to the last of the Makara?"
"Will that help us destroy The Mother of Miseries?" Alexandria was the pragmatic one here, demanding of Kala.
"It is the only way to make this unnatural place between life and death end." Left unsaid was what would happen to her once the end came.
"Then yes…we'll listen." The bitter child smiled, and vanished from sight. The void became a place, a city that I had never seen in my life, with the drone of Machine gods raining down from beyond the darkness.
_
April 28th, 2011. 9:15PM
Basilia Rubio
The song of a past age played, the final memory of a dead race.
We were standing as the void swirled around us, a city made both out of flesh and metal and spirit spanning for hundreds of miles in every direction. The Makara were everywhere, and in this place I saw what they had once been before their end.
They were scaly skinned but had enough human features to be less than unsettling. Their eyes had a soft glow to them, and feathery hair was braided and combed in many styles.
"What is this…?" Dragon was the only one who spoke, and I could hear the singing grow more intense as they showed us this image of a past long forgotten.
"This is the heyday of the Makara, they who held the bequest of Raava, the holders of the Avatar Spirit." I choked, stumbling into an exhausted Taylor. "The heyday of They Who Were The Makara before the Servants of the Harbinger came for us." The place of beauty turned to one of horror and death and destruction, as the sky filled with the shadows cast by hundreds of god machines some two kilometers tall if not more. Thousands of lesser Reapers escorted them, and I gulped.
Beams of red death shattered city wide kinetic barriers, Slaughterships landing and expelling cybernetic monsters and dark spirits who would bring in more victims. Loud sirens of physical sound and spirit quintessence echoed across the planet, as machines as tall as mountains landed and bent physics over their knees.
"My god…" Miss Militia gasped, and the youngest capes looked away from the sight of a war on a scale that spanned the entire galaxy. New Wave seemed particularly perturbed, and I grimaced at the rope burns on Carol's arms. Lung was silent, eyes distant as later cities were drowned, one Reaper bending an appendage and unleashing a tsunami. Others uplifted volcanoes, or created hurricanes with but a thought.
"These are some of the last echoes of a very old war, a war that birthed countless miracles and countless horrors throughout the ages." Kala's voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere. "An echo so powerful that it birthed every bender, every shaman, and every spirit you will ever see." There was a collective shudder that passed through the group of capes.
It was a realization of how small and how young we were in the greater scheme of things. We were but minnows in a vast cosmic ocean, full of things that were infinitely our greater.
"Why is this important? What even is the Avatar?" Alexandria growled and every cape in the vicinity leaned back. She was angry.
"This is the origin of your enemy." That silenced her. "Her creation was a direct consequence of the Bequest that the Makara had inherited from the many thousands of races that came before them." Why did I feel like I had seen this before? Why didn't I remember why?
"This Avatar right?" Tattletale was the one asking, a brittle grin on her face.
"Yes. The Avatar was the sole enemy that could fight on par with the Servants of the Harbinger, those who proceeded the god machines known as Reapers in the very last cycle. The very greatest of the Ascended held an Indoctrinated Avatar at its core, surrounded and empowered by the souls of their entire race. Each a nation, free of all weakness." The images changed as millions upon millions upon billions of Makara were melted down into genetic slurry, forming the core of a solitary god machine as they were exposed to the Truth, minds molded and shattered into the single will of a Greater Reaper. Lesser races were converted into simpler war platforms, servants to the strongest of the Reapers.
I felt sick.
I blinked as a Makara came on screen, eyes glowing a brilliant unearthly white. All the elements came together as one as she fought against an army of cybernetic abominations. Mountains fell and rose, rivers were diverted with terrifying ease, drowning divisions. Blasts of flame scorched even the exotic hull of a lesser Reaper, and it took a dozen hits from a Dreadnought before falling.
A hurricane shredded all in its path, localized around the most powerful being I had ever seen. A biotic aura exploded around her, and a flare of biotic plasma engulfed thousands in an instant.
I ignored the eyes on me, shaking my head at the sheer power displayed here. It was like a walking god on Earth, destroying the enemy that came from the stars beyond their reach.
It didn't last though…as three High Reapers made their wrath known, one of them lashing out and simply crushing a flagging Dreadnought with a biotic singularity. Three dots fell from the Reapers, and the Avatar's smile disappeared as three individuals landed. They were each different and yet the same, members of other races as well as her own taken and changed and used as vessels for a greater power.
How did I know that?
"But what was one Avatar against the power of thousands?" Their eyes glowed in different colors, but they all felt wrong. Burning sigils…no mandalas burned behind them, energy made manifest as power flooded the drones. They beckoned the elements to their command and I felt horror.
They struck with ferocity and power, beating her down to within an inch of her life. Even the power suffusing her body couldn't protect her, and I winced as limbs snapped like twigs under the strain, healing at horrific rates with potent forceful waterbending. Again and again she healed and fought until her power began to falter and she was left a broken mess.
But as the Reapers reached for her, she shattered one of her own teeth. Uncovered in the fighting, a shielded bomb detonated. Everything within a hundred miles was covered in a wave of plasma, gravitic distortion and hard radiation. The old High Reapers came out unscathed from the enormous blast…but they had lost their precious target.
"The Enemy was born in the final death throes of the Makara, a war of extinction that had lasted a thousand years. Their greatest machines and technologies were destroyed by the hand of a God. Their great fleets were scattered and broken. " The images of cosmic horror and destruction shifted to something smaller. It was a tall lanky teenage Makara, long messy dark blue hair tied back into a ponytail. She lived in a place of rank poverty, a place of such desperation and fear that it sickened even Lung.
None of the capes could speak a word, not even Alexandria could. Echidna had simply bowed her head, bangs covering her eyes.
"What happened to her?" I spoke, my voice shaky as this place of despair surrounded me.
"The Reapers happened." Shards of memories flitted by like butterflies, showing different stages of her life. Her mother crushed under the weight of a freighter being torn asunder by a Lesser Reaper, her father fading away due to depression and then Indoctrinated. "She was the last Avatar of her age, and despite the despair of her life she had hope for the future, hope that with allies from all backgrounds she could combat the Reapers." The girl wore a dark form fitting outfit, a hood and mask obscuring her features.
She was surrounded by friends, a tall handsome male example of her race, a smug pretty girl, a rougher and more wild woman with a harsh smirk. As well as a pretty boy with an easygoing grin. The taller boy loomed over what had to be his sister, a sassy woman that hid in the shadows with a bemused grin.
A moment later the tall man was broken and twisted by the servants of the Reapers. The pretty boy died next, incinerated in the red beam of a Greater Reaper. The smug girl had her mind cracked open by another race fighting the Reapers, and was never found. The youngest member of her team simply vanished without a trace to the point it was like she had never existed.
Kala's voice was twisted and angry. "And she failed, again and again and again. She tried to fight an army that had known victory for more than two billion years. For every Reaper she killed, they killed a million more. She failed like no Avatar had failed before, broken under the weight of her sins made for the 'Greater Good" Alexandria was the most stricken, and I could feel the hate that Kala directed at both her and…Taylor?
I stepped in front of her, and didn't say a thing.
"How did it end?" I spoke numbly, and the world shifted once more. There I could see the woman, hair raggedy and dirty and the strength of her body lost in old age. Around her I could see thousands of maddened soldiers, Shamans and benders and even non benders coming together as one hundred Greater Reapers descended. It would do them little good as their minds shattered under the onslaught of the Reapers.
Her sobs were ugly, and she screamed curses and spoke vehemently against the spirits that had made their empire powerful, demanding of them why her life had been nothing but despair and fear and terror and pain. Demanding of her people on why they had been so weak, so unable to work together at the very end of things. The Wards were looking away, and Kaida had cupped her own ears unable to bear the pain in the alien's voice.
Her expression then shifted and she looked down at her own chest, whispering in the tongue of born shamans and high spirits.
"The last Makara to bear the Avatar Spirit wanted what her inborn power could not give her. Control." Her sobs turned to laughter, and with little fanfare I witnessed the woman beginning to crack, expelling her own spirit.
"It won't end like this! I refuse. I WILL BECOME ALL THE MISERIES IN THIS WORLD TO KILL THEM!" Raava fled but not before giving her a final taste of her light, one final power that she would use for a terrible, terrible final gambit. A mistake in her haste to find a new species to hold her spirit. So that the Reapers would never take her power in full.
Light flooded out from cracks in her skin, the pure white light turning a sickly black as it was tainted with a hatred I hoped I would never get to feel. It spread from the cracks until her entire body was engulfed in energy and light. Her maddened soldiers were dozens of miles away, and they were engulfed in the burning light like she had been.
We flew up from the mountainous base of the final resistance, where perhaps a few million Makara still remained. The mountain range…disappeared as the following deadly explosion swallowed up the continent. The entire world was scoured away, the very fabric of reality vibrating as the Makara's oversoul was snapped in two.
Five Greater Reapers were shredded, and two hundred Lesser Reaper platforms were torn apart by waves of errant dark energy deranging reality into a swirl of rapid spacetime eddies and proton decay.
Hundreds of Reapers came together, and thousands of shapes freed themselves from the boiling atmosphere. Thousands of soldiers were Imbued against their will by the creature that was neither woman nor spirit…simply a wrath embodying all the miseries in the world. An army commanded and mentally dominated by the natural abilities as well as the biosciences of her race. One of the Reapers seemed to be possessed by the hand of something greater, shining down with a golden light as it flew to meet the army in battle that had taken place some eleven billion and two hundred fifty million years ago.
This was it. Finally, everyone was working together.
The words swirled in my mind, and I felt my hand wrap around Taylor's wrist. She looked surprised, and I only felt fleeting terror as I realized the true face of our enemy.
"The story of a broken woman attempting to fight what was unfightable, throwing away everything that she was to kill a God. And she failed utterly and completely." Days of battle were skipped as the hand of the Harbinger killed her race, and the last of Raava's light left her. The twisted half of her broken soul fled to the farthest corners of her galaxy, flooding a black pillar with her own mind and the minds of millions of insane Makara. All the while, a city grew and prospered above her. "And became the very thing she wished to destroy."
"You're her other half aren't you?" There was silence and the Parahumans looked appalled.
"I was…" The ghost answered.
"How do we fight something like that?" Kala reappeared, eyes sad and tired.
"We are not like we once were, our connection has been severed with the end of the Cycle…and she burns through her meager supply of power far too quickly. If she had the power of a dark god she would have long since destroyed this world. She simply needs one final push to end it. My assistance will guarantee a high chance of victory."
"What do you get out of this?" Tattletale asked, voice quivering.
Kala's expression was horrifically happy. "If you win I can finally die, and finally see what lies for me in the hereafter." Tattletale scooted away, and I remembered her Trigger Event. Jesus…this needed to end.
The bubble rippled. The container for the Mother of Miseries…for the former Avatar was starting to come down, and we had maybe ten minutes or more before it popped.
"Do you know how to end this…to stop her?"
"You have all the pieces right here." She gestured to us all and beyond.
…
Her intervention bought us time and breathing room, and we set up a rough outline. As we did so I felt the metaphysical space slowly losing steam, the bubble popping right as we finished our…plan.
"I will do what I can…and so shall you…" Were the last words I heard as we were freed, the smell of fresh air refreshing.
___
AN: Okay, I've had this chapter ready for a while now, though I made some small changes here and there. Honesty this chapter and the next are the ones I'm most worried about since 6.11 is basically filler. I've had this background(?) in my head for a long, long time. It does feel highly derivative with what fics inspired me to write this down. Honestly most of the trouble was not wanting it to feel too…edgy? While I'm fine with dabbling in some dark themes, I don't want to go too far to the other end. There's also the feeling of it being too much at once.
There's a general theme I've sorta been trying out. About living in a world of cosmic horror, but also about overcoming those horrors, of learning from the mistakes of the past and moving forward, of going right up to Cthulhu and punching him in the face. I'm not sure I have the skills to getting that down into writing but I'll try.
I could always come back and rewrite this Arc…in a year. Either way 6.11 should be finished up today, and I've worked on both Interludes before it. So once the Interludes are posted I should have a modest buffer, and will return to a three day spacing or 4 if I'm feeling unsure about a chapter.
So enjoy.
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