XianaEvermor

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Jade was sitting up with her knees cradled to her chest, staring vacantly at some point past Jemma and Leah as the door opened. She was singing in Romanian as they tumbled in.

[...matches squeezed in my teeth
a weakness held in mirror walls
I bathe in
cold and sweat. I know that from here
I'll never get out
but with a bang
and with broken shards
I want to...]

She stopped abruptly after not seeming to notice them for far too long, and her emerald eyes flicked down to lock gazes with Leah. The whole room was heavy with silence for an uncomfortable eternity, Leah frozen in the middle of trying to wrestle the creature (unsuccessfully) out of the room.

"Its catchy," she explained. Jade blew a wisp of her auburn hair out of her face, and her gaze darted up to Jemma. "Your head grew back...," she whispered eerily, eyes wide, and her irises trembling unnaturally for a fraction of a second. A gust of wind picked up in the room, and then died down. Leah blew out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and relaxed... well... as much as one could given the circumstances.

"Hmmm?" Wolf noted with a raised eyebrow from the periphery, cradling a tall, insulated thermos steaming with the aroma of fresh coffee. It was white, with "I need this long to be sociable" written in bold red letters across the front.

"Wolf, can you do something about this??"

"...Not my bear, not my circus," she muttered back, tapping the words on her thermos.

"WOLF!"

"How's your head?"

"What?" Wolf only nodded over Leah's shoulder while slurping coffee from her thermos. When the physician turned to look she ran into the tall, imposing, hooded figure behind her and squawked awkwardly in surprise as she nearly bounced off.

"Hurts," answered the figure mechanically, from the eyeless black and red kitsune mask. The slither and chitter of shifting metal rippled from beneath her clothes. Though she was perfectly still, from the sound of it, her body was in constant motion. She reached out with her spindly, talon-like fingers from the wide sleeve of her cropped robe to steady Leah. She handled the physician with almost unnatural care, and her sharp digits bent with far too many articulations to avoid cutting the woman, though her other arm remained hidden beneath the folds of her hooded half-cloak. "Sorry."

"Take the day off and get some rest," Wolf insisted. Leah seemed to deflate in exhaustion and nodded. Wolf smiled over the rim over her Thermos. "Page me if you need anything. I'll have it brought to you."

"Thanks," Leah sighed, and extricated herself from the scene as quickly as was polite.

"Violet?" Wolf raised an eyebrow when the hooded woman didn't leave. "That was sort of a general statement. How are you feeling?"

"Hungry." Wolf glanced at Jemma and Jade with a concerned expression for a fraction of a second before returning her attention to Violet.

"Maintenance protocols helping at all?"

"Little," Vi answered, shortly. As if to countermand her statement, a hitching click, and the slow grind of metal on metal slithered from beneath her cloak. "Slows the breakdown."

"I could call..."

"No," interrupted Vi. Her head didn't move, but somehow it was apparent that her gaze was sweeping over the present company. "I'm going to... get take out," she informed, to which Wolf sighed, looking thoughtfully at the floor for a long minute.

"Alright. You want aerial?" Vi shook her head softly. "I'll keep something on standby in case you run into trouble then. Be careful. Confirmed rumors of at least two Templar in the area."

All at once Violet was perfectly still, even the invisible constant slither of metal beneath her clothes suddenly stopped. For a long moment it was quiet enough to hear the soft hiss of Violet's cybernetic lungs forcing air into her frame followed by the slow gust of released carbon dioxide.

"History with the Silver one...," Jade had leaned over to whisper to Jemma, just a little too loudly. "'Take out' doesn't mean food," she continued. Wolf's eyebrows slowly lifted as she maintained what she believed to be eye contact with Violet. After a minute the cyborg's shoulders seemed to uncoil, and the slither of sliding metal resumed. Her head tilted just a little, and a soft giggle escaped her vox.

"Some things are meant to stay secret, little gem."

"Awwwww shit... did thoughts come out of my mouth again? I'm still melty from yesterday," Jade muttered, rubbing her temples. Wolf snorted, and nearly choked on her coffee.

"It's okay. I'll try not to cause too much trouble while I'm out."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Sometimes it was better to just burn the bridge. ID wasn't sure this was one of those times yet, but running into the Queen of Swords in ShieldTown had definitely spooked her. Locklear was at least reasonable. If the Queen of Swords had recognized her, violence would have been unavoidable. Her errand to The Graves was looking more and more favorable in comparison. Pacts not withstanding, if the Queen of Swords intended to stay in ShieldTown for any length of time it might be better to break her promise to return to Dean in the evening... assuming her pact would even allow it.

She guessed it would depend on the Pact's interpretation of "Acting in the Best Interest of the Agreement" when it concerned the zealous Templar. Pact magic was so finicky.

ID's footfalls thumped heavily against the landscape, throwing up periodic plumes of dust. She wasn't moving at her top speed, but the Earth still flew beneath her in a blur. Occasionally a burst of vapor from her mask ignited in a flash of fire and black smoke as it passed through the heat-wake she left behind her. It wasn't subtle, but since ShieldTown and The Den were out of sight, she wasn't worried about being spotted, except maybe by Zolya's corvids.

They weren't supposed to intentionally follow her, and as long as she didn't draw too much open attention to herself news of her deeds shouldn't reach Zolya's ears. ID still detoured wide around them, even though it increased her travel time. By the time she hit the border of The Forges their presence had thinned out considerably, and the region's heat plume did a lot to hide her signature.

ID cut through the Graves region of the sector, keeping the terrain between her and the Black Castle as much as possible and pouring on the speed. Even if she attracted the attention of the resident Tinker and his crew, it was highly unlikely that they'd brave The Graves to give chase. She skipped over the surface of the rivers of molten rock and metal without care like a stone across water. If they did happen to look her way, it was more likely they'd mistake her for one of the Firetail Wyrms that lived in the region than identify her.

A [Dragonscale] Fortification protected her eyes and face from the heat and soot, and the ridges of her crimson scales glowed a dull orange as she crossed the border into the lush Temperate Zone. She dragged a plume of soot and smoke trailing from the cinders clinging to the melted hems of her cloak a half-mile beyond The Forges. Sector six was tranquil, as always, though ID still took care not to spread any unintentional fires.

There wasn't a lot of activity in the Temperate Zone. You either had to brave the smothering heat and toxic fumes of The Forges, or the unforgiving arctic conditions in the Frigid Wastes to get there. Inconvenient... or... convenient, depending on your perspective.

ID had to slow down and take a moment to smother her heat plume as she approached the rapidly cooling border of the Frigid Waste. If she wasn't careful she'd thermal shock a storm into existence, or have her position given away by a massive geyser of steam. The air condensed into voluminous clouds as it struck her hot skin regardless of her efforts, though the shrill wind made sure they were disbursed swiftly.

Rendezvous Delta. An outcropping of rock sheltering the entrance to a shallow ice cave twenty or so miles from the Abyss wall. ID was supposed to meet MG outside of ShieldTown, but she'd flagged the other agent off after running into the Queen of Blades and had them make their own way to the sector. It would have been nice to have a ride, but it wasn't worth the risk with the Templar around. Regardless, her detours had made her uncharacteristically late, and she was like to receive an earful from the merc.

"Surtr," she announced through her mask's vox-changer as she approached.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[March 12th, 2045 - 07:07am - Paradox - UnderCity - Stoneworks Interior]

[Day 2]

---

The smell of fresh coffee and toast wafted through the manor. Yue had woken up ravenously hungry, far before anyone else after only grabbing a couple hours of fitful, dreamless sleep. She had ended up on the floor, sitting with her legs folded and her back to the Manor's enormous Cairn Stone. For some reason it stood out as the most natural place to sit and read a magic book.

Yue had opted to read the Silverscale Grimiore in real-time, even though she probably could have thoroughly studied the whole thing while Time Dilated in just a handful of minutes. The idea had, oddly enough, felt like a snub to the spooky moon dragon that had insisted she have this tome... and who was she to tell it "No?" For now, she nibbled her toast while reading, and tried not to drop too many crumbs into the pages.

The lessons contained were very telling, and it had put into perspective many of the things that her father had tried to teach her when she was little and not terribly interested in what she'd thought was a sport. She had fallen back on a lot of those teachings while she learned how to use her powers, since it had seemed to help get them under control. Finding out that her family was Awakened put many things into perspective, father's eccentric martial arts style for one.

The Silver Dragon's Breath is Power and Grace

For the longest time she thought it was just her father's silly reminder to breathe. Breath control did tie closely with her powers, and she didn't miss that lunar phases seemed to have an impact on how easy it was to use them. The book described it as "Tsukuyomi's Breath," in a very literal sense. Classically, red dragons breathe fire; blue dragons breathe lightning. Tsukuyomi's breath was literally power and speed, which shed a lot of light on why her power worked the way it did. However, if she was reading this correctly, Tsukuyomi was basically telling her that the "breath weapon" was just part of being who she was as a Champion, and that she could also do magic on top of that.

Nothing quite like being told "You're doing it wrong" by a spooky moon dragon through a magic book.

Yue crunched her toast as she flipped back and forth through the pages of the first chapter. It was a lot of information to parse, and reminded her of the studying she'd done to get familiar with the lore and cosmology of Final Odyssey. There were differences, and not just surface level ones like Mana being called Aether, but there were a lot of parallels to be drawn. Due, in no small part, to interference by the Olympians, if Archer was to be believed. She'd listened to his stories with a healthy grain of skepticism the night before, but she'd never known him to lie to her.

Well... in a manner of speaking.

The more she read, the more real Archer's stories started to sound, and she couldn't decide if that was spookier than the moon dragon or not.

She closed the book in her lap and gazed out into the room in thought, half eaten toast in one hand, coffee in the other. She focused on the currents end eddies of color flowing throughout the house and beyond. Her other sight. Yue found that she had a much harder time controlling it than she did with her [Dual Nature] perk in the game. Archer had explained to her last night that it was because her Aether... her Astral form was wounded, most likely due to her traumatic awakening.

In the game, the perk was as much of a hindrance as an asset if you weren't careful. For the most part, however, she could focus on specific elements and see only what she wanted to see. She wasn't so lucky with her natural vision. Topside there had only been the occasional "specter or hallucination." Particularly in the Stoneworks, however, her time in the UnderCity had bordered on sensory overload.

The next thing on her mind was how to apply this information in order to not just improve, but protect herself from an entirely new world of threats. Archer mentioned his charge was to protect her from all the stuff she couldn't see. Yue assumed that meant threats from the Exalt... the Awakened World. Having what amounted to the dedicated attention of a Goddess made her feel somewhat guilty. Surely there were more important things that required Archer's attention than her. A quick flip through her tome had revealed that there weren't any what she would consider defined "skills, spells, or features" to learn.

No two Awakened are alike in the way they craft their magic.

The book responded in shimmering silver characters to her palpable disappointment. For some reason it came across as smug to her, and she shut the book once again in a huff, munching the rest of her toast in thought.

"Thanks. Useless reptile," she muttered to herself as she cradled her coffee.

The rest of the house would be starting to move soon if they hadn't already, which meant that she could probably guilt Raudd or Archer into making some food that didn't contain carved up monsters.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[???? ??th, ???? - 01:51am, Terminal Asylum, Low Orbit, ?-?]

[A ZombiesAnHyenas / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

I had been learning. It always took time. But I had eternity. I learned in time, always. I knew what they called me, what this thing, still called me. “A-0/A-Zero/Azirro”. All the same, my oldest-newest title. I learned from it. And it would learn, slower of course, from me. How… Tragic.

This small thing, a Tragedy in its making, was learning from me and thus, I learned from it. How to think in new ways.

It was eternal, this little thing; always coming back at a specific rotation of my barren hive. I watched it, sometimes. Observed it in absolute silence, no [INFORMATION] transferred. No [VOIDLIGHT] being spread across its tiny mind. It— She— learned quickly.

She had been on one of the last returns, when I saw the understanding flicker in the cycling [MANA] of her impassable divide. Her thoughts were loud, broadcast like a mourning bell in the silence of the world.

Two final, utter lessons, from me to her.

I screamed again, broadcasting my layered intentions at a lesser power. I could see the lattice of her [COUNTERSPELL] rising up, to shield her. It wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough. But I couldn’t just erase her with the information, she had to lead me, after all, and if she became convinced that she could not hold me back…? I would never leave. I would starve in eternal boredom.

This was, and is, untenable.

So I pulled back. Let my [VOICE] crash against her defenses like a whispering tide. I let her see her efforts work for the first time. The only thing to kill her was the subject of my final lesson.

[HAZE] would catch us all, we things of [MANA] and [UNDERSTANDING]. I witnessed the ‘Archmages’ of this world fail in their slaying of me, simply due to the cost of [WEAVING] against me.

I would let this one, this play-pretend mage tainted by my glory think she had found a way to stop me. To finally escape from me. Another, terminal, lesson for her to learn later… My gaze will reach forever far. Nothing could hide from me. Nothing.

Her secrets will be mine.

So I waited for her to awaken, to rise, again.

Hard Reset. My eyes fluttered open. There was a new fire in my chest. Anger. Determination. Somehow I felt A-Zero shrink away. I could see my breath. The entrance to my room was still scored with frost. The life support systems hadn’t quite recovered, and the chill air pricked at my exposed skin. I sat up, gazing for too long at my palms.

There was a tickle at the edge of my mind. Were those my thoughts? They faded like a forgotten dream, slipping from my grasp faster the tighter I tried to hold them. It was a jumble I didn’t have the time to parse.

Was there even time enough to figure out how to wield this power safely? All of my powers were dangerous: no safeguards. Few limitations, but no safeguards. I’d have to learn it the way I learned everything else. Trial. Error. Death. My immortality allowed me to push the boundaries of my powers in ways nobody else could.

Start with what I know. It was more than just darkness. It created a void, like the void of space. It ate heat and energy at a rapid pace, fast enough to flash-freeze the room, myself included. It whittled bonds and barriers down to nothing. Could I direct that somehow? Wait. Math, Arrays, Formulas, Physics. Recalling the information sent a searing needle of pain through my temples and down my spine, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Ratios. All the pieces had to add up and still be one whole. In my desperation I’d thrown off the balance. This wasn’t a sword, it was a scalpel. A precision instrument that would explode violently if mishandled, but a scalpel nonetheless. Carefully, I summoned a sphere. A small one for experimentation, evenly mixed. The air in the room shuddered, and the temperature began to swiftly drop. [66:1:33]. The temperature stabilized, and the darkness solidified. It was cold, almost firm to the touch, and my hand sunk in with some effort. When I pulled it out, my fingers were cold and red but not frozen. My skin was dry and stretched thin.

I sensed a hesitation from A-Zero. Fear? Or Anticipation? Are you going to give me a moment to collect my thoughts, you monster?

A-Zero said “No.”

Hard Reset. This one’s different. My body is erased, but my consciousness remains aware in the void between lives. The solitude is oddly peaceful. A-Zero fucked up: now I had time. 24 hours to study, and I did. I reviewed the theory, parsed and organized the fragmented ideas that jumbled up into the corners of my traumatized brain so that I could make sense of them.

I realized that the arrays and formulas were more than just part of my intuitive understanding, and there were many new options available to me. It would take practice and application to figure it all out enough to weaponize it, but that’s okay. It’s how I learned the fastest.

I still had hours until I’d be back in my body. I used the time to map out my plan. My chambers were just outside the War Room: I always wanted to be close in case something was happening. Eighty-three feet from the bed to the War Room console. Have to talk to Monarch: she has information I need. Then I’ll have to survive at least fifteen seconds while the Conduit charges. With my plan in order all that’s left is to wait… I can be patient too, bitch.

3…

2…

01:51a. My eyes fluttered open. I came out swinging, leaping out of bed. My body wasn’t even fully materialized yet, and cold tendrils of void still clung to my skin as I strode with purpose. My first thought was to shield the whole station, but it’s too big and I didn’t have that kind of control yet. Something smaller. Simple shapes… a wall. No, a dome: I didn’t know if A-Zero’s attack was directional or if I could get caught by a reflection.

The void manifested around me. I put it up in layers, creating a negative space of absolute cold between a weakening barrier, and an insulating dome of solid darkness. I couldn’t see through it, but I knew the layout of the Terminal pretty well. The other two problems manifested as I started to move.

A-Zero was on top of me immediately. Her voice slammed into my barriers and I felt them splinter; the force of it knocked me to the ground. I was dazed,but not dead. Thankfully the Void ate sound, and the cacophonous scream of the creature was just a dull roar of white noise inside my bubble. The rest worked as intended: [Weakness] blunted the attack, [Cold] sapped its energy, and everything else was muted by the [Void]... I still couldn’t parse why [Cold] was different from “cold” in my mind and what had changed in the past weeks to make it that way.

Stop. Don’t get distracted by frivolous minutia. My brain was still jangled from the constant barrage of psyche rending attacks from A-Zero, and it was hard to focus.

The second problem was that the negative space zone of my bubble had frozen the Terminal’s floor plating. I somehow knew instinctively that my feet would freeze to it, and in the best case scenario it would only rip my skin clean off. I tried to re-shape the [Void] layer and slip it beneath the other layers, like a dustpan, or a Dolley. The whole structure buckled and threatened to collapse, and I stopped. The concentrated effort of maintaining the separate layers stung my insides in a way I’d never experienced. It was like fatiguing a muscle I didn’t know I had, and a strange haze of heat had begun to build up beneath my sternum. If I teleported, would the bubble come with me? Something to test in a safer environment.

Simple shapes. What about… stacked bowls? I adjusted the [Void] layer so that it was slightly larger than the others, and gently lifted them off the floor. This still buckled my concentration some, but it was easier than trying to fold one layer beneath the others. A-Zero’s shrieking rattled through the gap, tearing at the edges of my consciousness. It was still manageable.

After I reinforced the cracks, I pressed as quickly as I dared to the console. The hard part would be slipping it through the bubble without making the console useless.

I watched the human move. My spawn watched as well, changing position each time she was shunted to the [VOID] between existing in death, and life. Her ‘mind’ still operated in that in between, and was ironically strong… And weak… in its protection.

How curious! When untethered by [FLESH] and [SOUL], the [MIND] was an all powerful thing. If she would only think it, it would be so. I learned something new from her.

Perhaps this could be utilized for my departure… Later. I had eternity to think. To plan.

She had properly defended herself this time, when she slammed back into [LIFE]. I sent a probing scream, feigning my fear at her ability to ‘shut me out’. Hah. She was MY champion now. The only one in this world, now. My power would flow through her, and through whatever medium she chose to weave with.

The latticework changed as I silently observed. A bowl within a bowl. Rudimentary. Simple. Perfect. Something that, if she had only been born… Well… Time was elusive, even for me. That aspect hadn’t allowed me to consume it. Once its focus was gone? So was its concept. How frustrating. Oh well.

If she had learned and been born sooner, perhaps this wouldn’t be a losing battle on her end.

Ah. She was moving, again! Multitasking like only an [AWAKENED] would, when confronted with spells and a problem.

I would observe until the time was right… She was planning, and I do love her plans. They were… Illuminating.

Perhaps I made a mistake in subsuming the entirety of this plane. I could have learned! How frustrating.

The console wouldn’t survive. It’d be dust. Somehow I knew the intense weakening effect, followed by freezing, and even a gentle nudge from the semi-solid darkness layer would reduce the console to frozen dust. I hesitated for a moment, paying in stamina as my breath came heavier and heavier. Only one chance with the console. It’d take days for the station to print a new one and install it. Nose running. Taste of copper in my mouth. I wiped my nose on my arm, leaving a bloody streak on my skin. No. Today, I would find my limits, and break them if necessary. I didn’t have to worry that it would kill me.

I felt a shudder from A-Zero. Excitement? Or Fear?

The area of the bubble that was taking the most punishment was the area facing A-Zero. Ripples occasionally slapped the sides and rear, but I didn’t think catching one of those would be enough to liquefy my fragile gray matter. Hold off the worst of it… suffer through the rest.

The [Void] didn’t like hard edges or corners, I noticed. It seemed to slip naturally into waves and curves, and fight me to retain its fluidity. The lack of absolutes felt alien, and fighting the Void’s amorphous nature was too much stress for the new muscle I was forming. Cracks and splinters started forming faster than I could reinforce them, and the strength finally left my body. Suddenly, like someone had flipped a switch, my construct shattered, and my body was erased.

Scheiße.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[???? ??st, ???? - 01:51am, Terminal Asylum, Low Orbit, ?-?]

[A ZombiesAnHyenas / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

My eyes fluttered open, squinting reflexively at the brightness of my clock. The lights were dimmed, per my sensitivity settings, but my eyes had never seen light. The dull ache stabbed deep into my skull.

01:51a. Hard Reset.

I had died again. As I had a dozen times since that accursed witch sent me to this Hell. As I would many more times it seemed, rebuffed by the demonic, alien, eldritch god-monster that had devoured my Sun, Moon, and Earth.

Entity Designation A-Zero. The progenitor. It had spawned many different A-series creatures as it devoured aspects of my world and made them its own, but A-Zero was the first.

We skipped A-One. Everyone agreed we’d be an embarrassment to the Multiverse if it sounded like steak sauce destroyed our world. Well… most everyone: Alchemist had found the notion particularly hilarious, mainly because Enchanter had been so vehemently opposed. Those two were always in opposition, rivals in some form in every dimension that I visited. It was practically a universal constant.

Normally I would fight, tooth and nail to escape each time I woke up. Fight to keep moving, because stopping was death. Worse than death. This time I stared vacantly at the ceiling in the pools of blood, liquefied organs, and other viscera that had begun to accumulate on the bed from my repeated deaths. I’d noticed something.

The intensity was lessening with each pulse. Or I was building up a tolerance… in-so-much as someone whose body regenerated to a state completely untouched by time, stimulus, or sensation after each death could even have a “tolerance.” Now that it wasn’t drowned out by the sheer magnitude of the scream, I discovered that there was information carried along with each wave… just a little bit. Snippets of a revelation I was on the cusp of understanding if I could be patient and get just a little more.

Was there always knowledge buried in these screams? Was A-Zero communicating with me? Or did it finally let something slip? Something I could use… a weapon? Was it knowledge from the monstrosity? Or the inherent understanding of a thing born from a trauma induced second trigger event?

It came as a ripple, this time. Leaping across miles and miles and miles of open, dead, air. A far off scream, wavering and warbling. The sky, usually filled with the pin-pricks of stars, shimmered as the ripple passed. Colors exploded across the dappled skein of otherwise nearly perfect black.

The ‘sun’ shifted. Shivering in place before abruptly vanishing. The lines and lines of ‘script’ that stretched out from its pitch-black disk turned to dust, and began to fall in a terrible parody of snow.

Droplets of prismatic oil fell, from the ripple, landing on the powdered surface of a once living planet. Each droplet slowly rose, becoming a towering pillar of marble-white, each with cracks of rainbow light spreading across its entirety.

Eyes opened on each pillar, scattered across the surface.

The ripple passed under the uncrossable barrier, blindingly bright as it went. Silence roared in the space traveled by the waves. Nothing else changed.

Then… yet another scream came; bursting forth from a horizon that was simultaneously much too far, and far too close. The pillars on the surface screamed as well, lending a cacophonous chorus to the already deafening shriek.

Information was exchanged, as a singular, massive, golden-green-grey-pink eye burned itself into any mind still living within the dimension.

Perhaps she was right, this minuscule light hanging above a bleak, blank, tapestry. Maybe It was getting weaker. Maybe It had always been screaming information. It didn’t matter, she was learning, this tiny light, and so was It. It had already had countless thoughts of the multitudes of avenues by which she would utilize her newfound gifts. Gifts that It had forced upon her, ripping open invisible eyes sealed shut. And each thought was thrown across the heavens, endlessly screamed for the briefest moment.

The shriek rolled through the uncrossable barrier, slamming through stone and concrete and steel and—

It waited for her light to go out again. It would wait for however long It had to. She was learning, and It was a patient teacher. The information was always given as ‘an accident’.

It rarely makes mistakes. But she didn’t need to know that.

I couldn’t help but pay attention, even as blinding white erupted across every nerve as it felt its first pain and my consciousness was abrasively shredded back into the void.

Void.

[VOID].

Darkness. The bleak nothing. That brief and gentle respite from the pain, trauma, and mounting frustration that this wasn’t an error I could learn from. Or was it? A new concept stuck in my mind, an aspect that blanketed the in-between, just out of reach. Far too long, and not nearly long enough.

My eyes fluttered open, squinting reflexively at the brightness of my clock. The lights were dimmed, per my sensitivity settings, but my eyes had never seen light. The dull ache stabbed deep into my skull.

01:51a. Hard Reset.

My bed was becoming soggy, and the squelch of fluids I could only guess pressing my ruined Tinker-Silk sheets cloyingly against my skin made me shiver. My insides grated against my skin like coarse sandpaper against a sheet of Medium Density Fiber.

I grasped reflexively at that concept at the edge of my mind; tried to pull it over myself like a security blanket. For a fraction of a moment something… nothing flickered into existence, blotting out the cold, unforgiving interior of the station that was supposed to be our sanctuary. It wasn’t enough. It was incomplete, and shattered against the shriek of information that was getting drilled into my psyche.

[COLD] The absence of energy, the inverse of Heat. The biting, piercing, persistent frigidity that saps life from all things. [WEAKNESS] Fragility, the inverse of Strength. The breakdown of bonds, the wearing of time, the thinnest gossamer of glass crumbling at the touch.

Three parts of a whole, a [Voidlight]. These concepts stuck bluntly, and I could sense there was more, more information, more nuance. More… more, before I was scrubbed out of consciousness once again.

01:51a. Hard Reset.

The stress was taking its toll. I felt exhausted, though my body should be young, vibrant, and full of energy. I could only hang on to the essentials, the nuances were lost. I sensed Monarch’s cold, clinical gaze observing me, awaiting my input. More information.

How to “Cast.” How to “Weave” lattices of energy. Hard Reset.

Tapestries of arrays, formulas, chemicals? Math. Was this science? Physics? Faster. Hard Reset.

Transmuting matter, warping the latticework of physics, bending the laws, breaking them. Breaking the bonds that held the curtains between worlds and dimensions together. Hard Reset.

The universe was suddenly such a tiny thing against the vastness of my understanding, my senses expanded. Energy was everywhere, everything, in everything, between everything. Building blocks, waiting to be stacked. Rivulets of [Black] shuddered against my awareness, bathed in halos of [Blue] and fading to a sickly [Green].

I leapt out of bed, the ruined sheets slashed painfully at my skin. I reached, grasping recklessly to throw anything in the way of the next wave.

"SHUT UP!" I shrieked. The void responded, splashing up in a haphazard lattice between me and A-Zero. I felt it’s stream of consciousness splash against it… The station’s tenuous warmth was ripped out of the room, and my breath hitched. Frost shredded against my lungs, my skin burned cold.

"Temperature anomaly," Monarch parroted my voice back at me. A crack lanced through me from hip to shoulder, the last thing I felt.

A sword that cuts both ways.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Oh that's the wonderful thing about Magic," Archer snickered. "You can't ever truly escape it. Even in this place, low levels of Mana seep into the area from the plants, water, stone, and local fauna. Even the air you breathe carries trace amounts," he explained, taking the final drag on his cigarette and putting it out in his foil pouch.

"The ripples in the pond from acute manipulation will settle quickly, and my ability doesn't produce any Haze so there won't be any lingering disturbance... you have more to worry from our guest here, who involuntarily burns Mana and constantly produces a low Haze, even in her sleep," Archer grinned. Yue immediately blushed, flinching like she'd been struck at the realization she was polluting Raudd's sanctuary.

"Oh fuck! I'm sorry, I-I didn't- I can't turn it off, I just needed to be someplace... 'dim' to collect my thoughts, I didn't even think," Yue flustered as she hurried to get up. Archer laughed. "It's not funny!"

"Settle down," he chirped. "Part of the reason I came out was to help clean up. Wouldn't do for us to leave our trash laying around this beautiful garden."

Yue paused and took a deep breath to settle her spike of anxiety. She resumed walking back towards the house after a moment, flicking Archer in the back of the head as she passed, eliciting a smirk from the man.

"Well. Regardless, it's getting late. I don't know if I will sleep, but some quiet time to read is in order at the very least. New book and all, you know how it is," she teased. "Good night."

Archer stood up, dusting himself off and stretching for a moment before he lifted his hand towards the center of the garden. A breeze picked up, rustling the leaves of groomed trees and shrubs, and blowing ripples across the pond below them. The leaves, grass, flowers, stone, and water all seemed to respond. For a fraction of a moment [Artemis] was there, at the center of the gentle vortex. Nature's primal beauty, and visceral danger pulled Yue's lingering haze to [her] palm where it formed into an arrow.

[She] pointed a finger, and the tattoo on the back of his hand pulsed, an intangible bow flickering into existence for just a moment, just long enough to loose [her] shot. Unerring, the arrow carved a path over the garden and through the door to the manor, navigated the 90 degree turn and whipped out of sight nearly faster than the eye could track. A fraction of a second later the crystal chime of the arrow striking the Manor's Arcane Drain and Yue's "Ooh!" of wonder echoed softly into the garden.

Archer snapped his fingers. It resonated through the [Immaterial] as he sat down, and the Astral Sea surrounding the garden, and for some distance beyond became as tranquil as though it had been untouched and unexplored for years. Even Archer's presence was difficult to detect: if you weren't looking directly at him, one could easily forget he was there.

"I don't think you'll need to worry about Hera," he chimed in after a long minute of silence where he just gazed out over the manor at the cloying darkness overhead, probably longing for the days when the curtain of night wasn't blotted out by the progress of mortals. "Our tree has since been relocated to Elysium," he gestured above them in the direction of the tower.

"And if you really are serious about marrying into the pantheon I'm pretty sure Apollo is single right now," he grinned, unable to hide the expression of amused mirth spreading across his face. "He doesn't usually go for the outdoorsy handsome type, but he might come around once he finds out you're immune to the relationship ending by dying horribly."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"I also said not to run your mouth about that," Wolf quipped with a grin. She forced her ears to stay up and recording in spite of the fact that what her implants were picking up sent chills slithering beneath her skin. Oddly, the phantom sensation even traveled the length of her cybernetic arm. She normally felt cold void when the sensors on her steel palm and fingertips weren't telling the lizard part of her brain that registered touch she was, indeed, holding something and it was [71.1 degrees Celsius]. Wolf set down the coffee she didn't remember picking up back on the nightstand.

"If Alex caught wind that I was threatening to castrate people in ShieldTown, he'd make the 'Upsetti-Spaghetti' face, and I just wouldn't be able to cope."

"Hey hey," Wolf comforted, pushing herself off the bed after a moment of hesitation where here eyes flicked up and to the right as if that would make the voice-print confirmation and HK's message in the corner of her HUD that her target was [75% Emotionally Distressed] easier to read. "You're in a safe place. I'll make sure nobody can hurt you here uh," Wolf paused, taking an involuntary glance back towards Jade's room as she slowly approached Jemma. "Jade is new and doesn't really have a handle on her new abilities yet, you'll have to forgive her."

"Vi is another new face... well... she never takes her fox mask off, so she'll be a new mask and... she has lots of chrome for you to work on! I'm sure she'd appreciate your expertise, and... Hey," Wolf stopped a few paces away and held her arms open loosely, inviting Jemma in for an embrace, ignoring the [Warning] that HK flashed in her HUD. Clearly there was something more there than just the Dove she knew, but they hadn't told anyone about the ex-boyfriend incident. There was enough of Dove there for her to justify the risk.

"We don't have to talk about all that right now. There's a safe haven for you here for as long as you need it."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Th physician's limp thud from the adjacent room drew Wolf's attention as she comforted Jade, allowing her enough time to watch as the dead girl propped herself up, dissolved her severed head, and then grew a whole new one. Wolf felt the stinging heat of HK's processes running behind her right eye as she stood up and leaned against the door frame. Things were never dull in the Den. HK was taking an uncharacteristically long time to feed any information into her HUD. "[Processes Running] . . ." burned into her retina long enough to leave an artifact in her vision when it finally blinked out.

[Appropriating Resources]
[Searching Archives] . . .

[Run Facial Recognition] . . .

[Considering New Parameters.]
[Processing] . . .

[Subject Identified - ShieldTown-ResidentFixer-Dove - Visual Match]
[Returning Host Processes] . . .|

Wolf raised an eyebrow. "Dove" was ShieldTown's Chrome-Fixer, and a friend of Alex's. She'd disappeared about two years previous. Wolf knew this because because Dove used to regularly help maintain her cybernetics, and HK had sent the Interceptor to follow her after calculating that there was a high probability that she'd been headed towards the Graves. The Interceptor was fast but had limited range, and hadn't been fully fueled yet from its most recent sortie. A second drone was dispatched to cover Dove, one with the range and armaments to cover her for a long time, but there was a gap in the coverage between when the Interceptor had to return and Albatross 2 arrived on site.

It couldn't have been more than ten minutes or so... but that was all it had taken for Dove to vanish into the Graves. She'd patrolled the area both in person and with her suite of drones for days, but eventually had to be called away to prepare for the impending Hunt.

"Good news, Jade! You didn't kill anybody," Wolf chirped.

"Oh lovely... Good news, good...," Jade trailed off as the tension audibly left her body and she fell into exhausted unconsciousness. Wolf quietly dimmed the lights in Jade's room and shut the door behind her.

"Pardon," she approached Jemma, nudging the physician with a toe once before stooping to lift her up and put her on one of the other infirmary beds. She sat down on an open bed with a sigh and let her legs swing for a long moment. Her black furred ears perked up and turned towards the girl, cyber-cochlear implants listening for and recording any involuntary sounds her body made... Wolf already knew she didn't really have vitals, which wasn't concerning in the least. Nope.

[Vocal Analysis Standing By] . . .

"Dove?" Wolf asked pointedly... no point in hesitating: if this was a Stranger, both HK and she would know pretty quick. The red of HK's attention glowed dimly behind the blue of Wolf's right eye. "Do you remember who I am?"

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[The Den - Infirmary]

---

"Ugh," Jade winced as Jemma's voice began to pick up. "I-It's- You're in The Den you were... y-yes-I mean no? Probably no... agh- yelling- yelling in my head, inside voices inside," Jade stammered, clutching her ears as fresh blood weeped from her eyes.

"I-I can't! I c-can't! I can't touch I can't," Jade muttered in response to Jemma's pleas to be released, shaking in place, too stunned to back away, and doing her best to avoid eye contact. "Alex... yes? No. B-big big man, big man, no yelling, I can't touch, inside voice inside," Jade groaned against the assault, clutching her head.

Blood dribbled freely from Jade's nostrils as Jemma's shriek... it was loud, and grated against her ears through the crushing grip of her palms, and shredded her already frayed mindspace. Her eyes snapped wide to meet Jemma's gaze as their foreheads collided, bloody tears streaking down her cheeks in that tangible moment of silence.

"N-," Jade squeaked, trying to jerk away.

Psionic energy crackled over her skin for a split second, and the whip-crack of air violently tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and into her face, causing her to flinch and blink involuntarily. When her eyes opened, only the stump of Jemma's neck remained, sliced with surgical precision as though by a monofilament blade. The door opened to the high pressure spray of ink and viscera splattering against the bulkhead and the violent hiss of an air stream ripping through an impossibly small space at some extreme velocity.

Jade stood there dumbly, staring at the carnage as she was ushered roughly into the adjacent room. Wolf was pushing her, firmly but without malice towards one of the beds, using her organic hand to shield her face from the rapidly multiplying flechette shards of steel being gouged out of her cybernetic arm. Jade flopped limply at the bed, staring at the ceiling vacantly.

"Shit," spat Wolf, as she carefully plucked metal slivers out of her skin. "Jade. Are you okay?" She asked, with uncharacteristic softness, as she sat on an adjacent bed a safe distance away.

"I was, I woke up... new guest, new... (face) she looked cold, I brought her clothes I... I just wanted...," Jade trailed off.

"To help. I know," Wolf sighed, gazing back into the other room at the physician who was standing sheet white over Jemma's headless body. What do you even say to comfort someone after something like that? "Hey hon... you're hurting, inside and out. It's... you saved all our lives yesterday. We're all grateful, focus on that... and get some rest," she ordered softly, pushing herself to her feet and striding into the next room with a deep sigh to help clean up the mess.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[ShieldTown]

---

ID froze as the Templar captured her gaze, and it became noticeably warmer in an instant. Her hand darted to the hilt of a sword that wasn't there. She couldn't suppress the flicker of amber that pushed at the edges of her burgundy irises, nor the near imperceptible slither of crimson scales forming against her spine. ID held her fingers poised to snap a spark from the flint skin of her fingertips.

She hoped a fight wasn't about to start, especially right after she promised she wouldn't cause any trouble in town... however, ID wasn't about to back down from the Queen of Swords if she was threatened. Just as it felt like Dean would have more windows to replace, the Templar apologized and moved past.

"No worries. Happens all the time," she informed in a flat tone, without turning to face Maire. ID hesitated for a couple more moments before continuing down the street, unable to release the tension from her shoulders and back until she'd made it a few blocks away. It was definitely time to leave.

"Wait!" Shrieked Rat, scrambling after Maire. "Born in a barn?! Have to knock! Even Rat knows!!" Rat instructed, knocking at the door hurriedly before poking his head in behind her.

"Lazy-Cap! Rat is here!! With... Guest."