XianaEvermor

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Umm!" Yue scrambled to get away from the cairn stone.

"Uh, Yue, hon... for no reason in particular... just how long have you been propped up against the enormous enchanted cairn stone?"

"I dunno... like four hours? ...Why?"

"Hey what's that thing that happens in Final Odyssey when two out-of-control magical storms run into each other?" Archer asked, with far too much amusement in his voice.

"Oh! An Aether Cascade!" Yue answered with a note of excitement. Her eyes widened after a moment, her smile snapping into a frown as she observed the threads of [Crimson-Silver] twisting their way around the base of the stone, threading up through the enchanted runes and forming into a natural lattice that seemed to reinforce the integrity of the enchantment. Tendrils of color shot into the stone from outside like bullets of ideation that have had far too much room to gain velocity.

For a split second Yue thought she recognized a familiar static blue dancing over the stone's surface. The inscription on the stone was searing, nearly too bright for her to look at... seemed like the sort of thing that should have stood out to her. Was she really that absorbed in her book?

"Oh," she muttered, in a much less excited tone. "I... don't think I'm far enough away from this thing," she noted, as a thread of [Silver] peeled out of her skin and joined the spiderweb crawling through and around the litany of runes.

Great... she broke it. Awesome. Smooth job, bonehead.

"Don't touch the card, please, I'd prefer not to have to wear boiling sauce this morning," Archer instructed casually. He balanced a card with the image of a red robed man holding a scepter and crown [IV - The Emperor] on the rim of the pot containing their breakfast. A gentle pulse of Mana rooted the kitchenware firmly in space as if it were held down on all sides by a vice.

The stone pulsed, or thumped rather, like an enormous bass drum. The ripple splashed against the barrier formed by the medallion Yue still clutched in one hand, knocking her down. She grunted as she fell on her ass gracelessly, pressing her lips together with an expression of guilt, horror, and embarrassment in equal measure. A chorus of deep tones washed over the Stoneworks, like the discordant crashing of dozens of Gong cymbals being struck at once followed by the violent groaning and snapping of wood.

Shards of bark and splinters showered the manor from the garden as its carefully manicured trees and shrubs began to explosively grow, twisting in gnarled fractal patterns. The greens of the grass and colors of the flowers were near luminous in their intensity as lawns turned into tangled masses of tall grass in an instant. Tentacles of color spiraled out from the manor's foundation as masses of wildflowers sprouted and flowered, racing down the paths and hills to the borders of the colony and beyond. Tree roots ripped up the ground as saplings rapidly matured and shaded huge swathes of the settlement in arches of intertwined boughs and leaves.

In the span of half a minute, the entirety of the Stoneworks transformed from a neatly curated idyllic garden into a mature, overgrown forest spreading beyond its established borders for roughly a mile in each direction. With the majority of its energy spent, the reaction seemed to slow down, though scattered patches of vegetation were still growing at a visible pace. Archer flicked the card back into his sleeve to return control of the pan to Raudd once the tremors subsided. Yue stared out the window, white faced, for a long time in the deafening silence.

"...," She opened her mouth to speak but couldn't find any appropriate words to say for an awkward second. "Maybe... we should head back to ShieldTown... where... perhaps... there is less sensitive magic for me to break."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Gallus Domesticus...," Yue mouthed the words for a moment before leveling a flat mouthed glare at the kitchen. Chicken. They were chicken eggs. She weathered Zolya's undisguised amusement at her predicament with a sour expression. It was clear she didn't really care for being at the bottom of the skill-cap again, mainly due to the anxiety that this new art would interfere her existing abilities. That... and that it would be another six years before she was a useful and productive member of the Templar again.

"Oh, lots of things that I touch... sing," she explained, addressing Zolya's concern about the unusual noise and trying to brush past the anxiety. "The armor hums, or sometimes growls. The sword Forgemaster gave me makes a sound kind of like a crystal wine glass. The greatsword I fell down here with makes like... a metallic tenor, and my hammer has a bass vibrato. Some of my other gadgets make little songs too but they're usually so quiet that its hard to hear them. What is Sword Song anyway?" She called into the kitchen.

Archer laughed. Yue frowned. He was probably flirting with Raudd. Something about Greek Pantheon fingers being monster meat?

"Archer!!"

"Oh, right," he grinned, twirling a knife in one hand before finishing with the potatoes and rummaging around noisily for a grater. "You learned about Affinity right?"

"Yeah?"

"Sword Song is a kind of extreme affinity for Fortification magic. When affinities go into the extremes, all kinds of weird shit can happen," he explained. Yue grumbled, apparently unsatisfied with his answer.

"Why does it make things-," Yue flipped the medallion into the air, taking a breath and intentionally flooding her body with energy as she caught it. The medallion chimed painfully loud, reverberating off the manor windows for a second. The barrier crackled and sparked as it reformed.

"That's called Mana Acoustic Resonance, its happening all the time all around us, usually at a volume and frequency that's outside the human hearing range," he answered, seemingly unbothered. "You learn about Domains yet?"

"Areas of elevated Aether... uh, Mana. Domains that lean towards a particular element or school are called Aspected Domains."

"I hear the discontent in your voice hon but... you've been a mage for all of a few hours and you're picking this all up very quickly, it's mildly terrifying," he chuckled, over the effort of grating an onion. "Sword Song is an affinity so extreme that you're constantly creating a Fortification Domain. I don't know all particulars (that's a question for your mom) but as I understand it, your Domain magnifies the physical and magical properties of the things it infuses. Acoustic Resonance is a magical property, hence the singing," he answered.

"So... the 'Song' part of Sword Song is what... a happy accident?"

"I mean... kinda? There's more to it that I don't really understand: Mana Acoustic Resonance isn't my area of study. I bet Hestia or Hecate might have some interesting insights into it though," he mused, finishing up with the grating and looking for something else to help with.

"Hmm," Yue grunted, staring at the medallion lost in thought.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

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[The Abyss - Paracausal Research Facility: Muriel - Interior]

[A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

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"There’s supposed to be more than two-hundred staff here at the facility. One-hundred sixty-seven psychically sensitive," ID explained as the elevator slowed, reaching its destination. “Psychically Sensitive” wasn’t technically a lie… since Mana was reactive to both thoughts, and emotions it could technically be considered a psychoactive phenomenon… technically.

A small, empty landing platform with some scattered equipment for moving freight greeted them, along with an enormous reinforced tungsten-steel blast door that was sealed shut. Twenty inches thick, four vacuum insulated, hermetically sealed plates, each weighing somewhere in the tens of thousands of pounds, pressed together both vertically and horizontally. All the emotion drained out of IDs voice as she stepped off the elevator just before it came to a stop, throwing a dull crash echoing out into the darkness behind them.

"The fact that this door is closed does not fill me with confidence. The facility director should be here to greet us," ID whispered, though her voice carried loudly in the void. She studied the facility schemata in silence for a long time in the middle of the landing platform next to an inert forklift.

This whole platform, including the elevator and its tracks retracted into the cliffside, and was EM-shielded and rendered invisible via optical camouflage when it wasn’t in use. The fact that there was equipment out in the open meant something had gone horribly wrong.

ID reached into her pack. She heard MG fidgeting with her gear which generally meant she was ready. There was no way beyond brute force to open the blast door without a command slate, which she pulled from its hiding place in the secret compartment beneath her compressor. ID locked eyes with the lifeless gaze of MG’s sealed helmet.

"I have no idea what to expect when that door opens. It moves funny, looks weird, does anything out of the ordinary, or doesn’t know the proper protocol, you don’t hesitate, you kill it. Does not matter what, or more importantly who it looks like," ID paused. MG knew the drill… ID also knew that when you were dealing with Magic, it never hurt to have a pre-mission refresher that they were stepping into the jaws of the unknown.

"Trust me, not your eyes or ears. Take no chances, KTF," she instructed coldly, tapping the override code into the command slate. A deep thrum echoed throughout The Abyss as seals were undone, and ID slid the command slate back under her compressor.

Kill Them First. Collateral damage was a secondary concern. Other assets could be replaced. The drone of industrial hydraulics began pulling the massive slabs of metal apart. There was another door just like this one on the other side of an enchanted steel iris. ID could already feel the pressure of intense mana through the barrier. It was very likely whatever happened had created a Mana Warp. She grasped the hilt of Ildsjel.

The hiss of pressure normalizing between the irises filled the silence as the heavy blast doors finished their opening sequence. At least there was still power.

*Shunk! The inside iris opened. The outside barrier… its wards and arrays burned brightly. It shuddered, disrupting the plates enough to disrupt the arrays which winked out, leaving artifacts in her vision. ID extended her domain of [Fire/Light], though it was mainly to insulate herself from the Warp she sensed beyond the threshold. A small, high intensity bubble that wouldn’t interfere with MG’s powers so long as she maintained distance. MG wasn’t Mana-Sensitive, so she wouldn’t just immediately get shredded by the astral forces like ID would.

*Shunk!* The outer iris withdrew. ID’s bubble was immediately buffeted by the Warp, and a flurry of… snow(?) spilled out onto the landing platform. No.. it was more like powdered glass, and it was saturated with [Mind] aspected Mana. ID took a step and froze, at the hurried clack of a shotgun being leveled at the back of her head. Nowhere to run but deeper inside…

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

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[Castle on the Clouds]

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Dawn watched the whole ordeal with an amused expression, up until the point Felix started violently expelling the contents of his stomach onto the transparent-aluminum flooring. What was once an optically pristine illusion of transparency: an invisible barrier between them and the sea of clouds below spattered with wet chunks and bile. Was that waffles... and honey? This boy...

Dawn wrinkled her nose.

"Ugh. My immersion is ruined," she droned haughtily, though a smirk tugged the corners of her lips. "It's a good thing I'm not with 'Major Jackass' or you'd be vomiting on his designer carpets, and I don't think that would be a good time for either of us," she said, spearing him with a serious glint in her golden eyes over the rim of her coffee.

"So did your little bird also tell you that I was gonna finally succeed on a long term project today? 'Cause, not gonna lie here, that would've been a real good way to make up the morning beyond also seein' a new friend."

Dawn flinched a little: the term 'friend' seemed to hit her with a fair amount of force. Her gaze drifted away for a bit. Was she being friend-zoned already? Did healthy relationships start with friends? Is that how this was supposed to work? ...Or was it fling, feelings, awkward avoidance, messy breakup? Hopefully this wasn't already turning into one of those legendary misunderstandings that would live on to haunt her future incarnations in history and mythology courses. That's the thing about patterns... Her eyes snapped back to Felix.

Right. He was expecting a response.

"That's not how it works," she answered, breaking the long, awkward silence. "More like... I got the notion that I could avoid some trouble if I showed up to work late, and that you might be thirsty when we met," she smiled.

"Also, until I figure out a more permanent solution, I'm going to have to refresh the... thing... that... shields you... from me," she trailed off, her cheeks flushing as she avoided eye contact with him and suddenly finding the ripples of her coffee extremely interesting.

"Uh. Manually. Through physical contact. Sorry, I didn't really ask this time I just...," she bit the inside of her lips. Why was this so fucking hard? "Didn't want you to feel bad... Uh. Worse when you got here," she amended, her eyes flicking to the spray of vomit floating in space above the sea of clouds.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

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[The Abyss - Paracausal Research Facility: Muriel]

[A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

ID shuffled about the elevator platform on its ten minute descent into the abyss, willing it to move faster. The elevator hung out in space, with the abyss wall behind them and nothing but a rail between them and the endless darkness below. She leaned against the rail, still not quite recovered from the ribbing Nora had given her earlier, if the wisps of steam from the rapidly evaporating moisture in her cloak and boots were any indication. The elevator was near silent, and with naught but the dim glow of the elevator’s control panel, it was nearly pitch as well.

The substructure of the Tower spider-webbed into the darkness as far as she could make out. Networks of conduit and pipe, unsightly bulges and twists that defied the otherwise uniform symmetry of the rest of the tower pressed ever closer to the cliff side as they descended. As she understood, this part of the tower was mainly support facilities. Miles and miles of generators, hydroponics, water and air purification, and tinker-made production foundries of which only a fraction were currently in use.

Theoretically the tower could support a massive population in isolation near perpetually should some world-ending disaster afflict the planet… like that would ever happen. Now the majority of it gathered dust in the Abyss, out of the sight and minds of the people who made it.

ID’s eyes gleamed luminous amber in the darkness as she shifted mana into them; a [Sight] Fortification. The world became monochrome and grainy, but it was better than fumbling around in the pitch darkness.

Triple checking all of her equipment, MG pulled out a combat shotgun and after a few moments of consideration began loading it with the custom buckshot shells she was supplied with. Was the rock salt a needlessly painful addition? No. And it was probably some form of crime to use it. Oh the humanity of it. That probably wasn’t even considering all the other crap that might have gone into them but she didn’t really ask questions. So long as bullets made holes she was happy.

After her force multiplier was sufficiently loaded and a shell racked, Nora took a moment to think before casually stating. " You know, if you're not gonna take a shot at Mr.Muscles maybe I will. If he’s got you acting like this then he’s sure to be a catch . . . Or you know, I could just tell our wonderful boss you have a boyfriend." Nora didn’t even look at ID before closing and locking her helmet with a soft clang.

"WH-!!" ID spluttered, whirling around and spitting syllables for far too long. The control panel screen behind her stuttered and artifacted, and the camera view of the landing chamber flickered with static as an enormous black hound with glowing red eyes strode across the screen, pausing to peer seemingly directly at them. Glitches and artifacts sizzled across the screen and the dog vanished before ID folded her arms in a huff and composed herself.

"Whatever, it’s not like I like him or anything! I said it was purely contractual, and the fact that he’s hot has nothing to do with our working relationship," she quipped, turning back around to check the landing chamber camera. The flush of her cheeks at the edges of her mask was, thankfully, hidden by the gloom… the hot, glowing footprints she left on the elevator floor, however, were not.

MG let out a snort of a laugh. ”So you admit you think he’s hot. Not really helping your case here Hotshot.” she glanced to the floor and clicked her tongue. Maybe now was the time to cut the teasing and get back on track; didn’t want the floor to fall apart like wet clay. Extremely hot wet clay. ID bristled grumpily.

”Getting on topic. I know I’m not usually one to ask questions regarding missions. But the suits don’t tend to send the both of us on simple jobs. She checked her equipment once again. A nervous tick.

A film of frost began to grow out from MG’s feet, creating a hiss of steam as it reached ID but didn’t impede the woman. ” Are we cleared to use excessive force? This shit is already making the hairs on my neck stand up.” The former soldier was not usually one to voice concerns unless something was really bothering her.

"Officially speaking," ID began, slipping back into her mask of controlled composure. She’d learned to trust the Merc’s intuition, and if MG was feeling uneasy then it was time to get serious. The temperature began to normalize.

"We’re here to find out why the facility stopped communicating with Ichabod. Officially speaking, there shouldn’t be any reason to use force… However, facilities don’t typically just go dark without explanation. Also, I strongly suspect that the psychic wave emission that caused so many problems yesterday originated here: it came from this direction, and Muriel is the only facility here," she explained, checking the monitor again.

"So… Officially, this is an investigation… but my ‘educated guess’ is that we’ll run into trouble. I don’t know what to expect so yeah, ‘excessive force’ is authorized. If it’s not immediately dangerous I’d like to try and get a read on the facility before we sterilize it," she noted. Get a read was code for doing some spooky Esper shit.

Oh hell. It was gonna be more of that weird shit, MG just knew it. It wasn’t like she asked or really cared much about what Menagerie was up to: she was just a hired gun for them. A well paid and supplied hired gun, but still. There had been a few times when she had to capture, kill, or stalk something she really didn’t want to. Made some of the beasts down here seem tame on occasion.

The air around MG continued to stay cold as the descent almost finished, her powers took a second to “warm up” and it was better to get that ready now. ”Are we expected to recover anything, no secondary objectives? If it’s any of the weird crap I can’t guarantee I’m not gonna try and scuttle this place on our way out . . . Gods there better be another way out besides this lift or I’m gonna complain your ear off.” She thought she felt the lift lurch for a second suddenly. MG braced and looked to ID to see if that hadn’t just been her.

"I was told to ‘investigate the circumstances’ so… no explicit secondary objective. Not yet, anyway," she said evenly, though she couldn’t ignore the gnawing pit of dread in her stomach. Someone should have contacted them for identification after the elevator had hit the half-way point. The fact that she used an override code to activate the elevator should have whipped the whole facility into a frenzy of how do you do, ma’am’s.

"Oh, I’m sure the facility is full of all kinds of weird, spooky shit," ID chirped, far too cheerily. Her turn to tease. "And unless you have a personal teleporter squirreled away in that rig of yours this is, indeed, the only way out," she informed with a smile.

MG grumbled and affixed a bayonet to her shotgun that was definitely illegal.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Shakshouka?" Yue asked, in a distracted tone, as she tried to pay attention to multiple conversations. She reached up and casually plucked the medallion out of the air with two fingers as though it were moving in slow motion. It uttered a metallic chime, like a tuning fork that had been struck against a table, which made Yue flinch and caused Archer to raise an eyebrow.

"Don't you need eggs for that?" Yue paused, watching tendrils of [Crimson], which had thinned in consistency and color enough for threads of [Silver] to shine through she noticed, rushed into the medallion. "You're not gonna use monster eggs are you?!" The note of panic in her voice overrode her curiosity for a split second. Yue raised an eyebrow as the medallion seemed to grow hot in her hand, and she squinted as the designs and etchings flared to life, and her gaze flicked over to Zolya to try and see what exactly she was doing.

"I don't-"

"Look at that, you're a natural!" Archer interrupted, flicking his finger against her temple. She expected to feel his finger thud against her skin and the accompanying prickle of numbness from a muted pain signal. Instead she was treated to a deep, drum-like thud and a ripple of movement over some... film of [Force] that had materialized over her skin. The medallion flared brighter, and threads of [Crimson-Silver] rushed into it afterwards.

"I... didn't do anything though? That's just what happens when I touch things."

"That's the Sword Song reacting to resonance from an enchanted item," Archer smiled, pushing himself to his feet and taking a moment to smooth out his Final Odyssey pajamas, which were speckled with chibi-anime representations of many of the different iconic classes. "The real trick will be learning how to turn it off," chirped Archer smugly, with far too much amusement in his voice as he trotted towards the kitchen after Raudd. "I'll help!"

Yue blinked, squinting at the medallion as she tried to process what, exactly, he had meant by that. Her gaze snapped up to Zolya, mild horror spreading across her face as she came to the realization that she could, in fact, not "turn it off."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

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[Templar Tower - 52nd Floor - Castle on the Clouds]

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Castle on the Clouds. Possibly the finest diner in the tower. Dawn sat on an enormous balcony protruding from the side of the tower at a table with a yellow umbrella. A dome of transparent-aluminum encircled the vista, perfectly visually corrected so as not to distort the view. Her table was centered on a circular marble dais connected to a winding path which led back towards the restaurant interior. Surrounding the marble was more transparent-aluminum, giving the illusion of a marble rampart sitting in the sea of clouds below.

Her own, personal Mt. Olympus... Insomuch as a restaurant table could be personal at least.

Dawn's golden eyes gazed out at the dappled orange and gold clouds as the sun was just beginning to crest them. She delicately poured cream into her steaming cup, circling the edges, a little shimmy, and finally slice through the middle. Dawn frowned.

OK, so she was bad at this, and it just looked like a cloud of light brown coffee with too much cream. Hmph! The server had made it look so easy when she'd ordered her first cup. When nobody was looking, she dipped one of her nails into the liquid and with a jolt of mana, the cream separated and formed into a stylized sun surrounded by a laurel wreath.

She snapped a picture with a smirk. #FirstTry.

Why here? Right now? This instant, as she was ignoring an "urgent" text from Ares? Dawn was a "Precognitive." She knew things before they happened... in a sense. It was a fickle thing: not so much visions or even precise instructions just... like a strong gut feeling that something would go her way if she did a certain thing.

It had its limits... She couldn't will it to happen, for one, which was incredibly inconvenient at times. The subject of the premonition had to be directly connected to her in some way, and... leaning in to her epithet "Averter of Evil" generally her premonitions had to do with her safety... or the safety of someone close to her.

Iridescence glimmered across her golden eyes, and she picked up her phone just as it chirped.

Felix: Hey, don’t scream! Also good morning!

"Speak of the Devil," she muttered, sipping her coffee and laying her phone down gently.

Dawn scooted her seat over a few feet to her left, taking a moment to smooth out her blouse and skirt, and straighten her hair before she held her arm out to the side with her fingers splayed wide. Moments later Felix appeared in a shower of candlelight sparks, chest pressed against her hand. She maintained contact just long enough to renew the exclusion seal she'd put on him the day previous, and then gestured to the other seat at her table.

"Sit," she smiled, sipping her coffee and then crossing her legs. A glass of ice water was waiting for him, with a small saucer of lemon wedges and a bottle of pomegranate juice. Judging by the condensation on the glass, it couldn't have been served more than a few minutes previous. "I'm supposed to be in the CEO's office right now," she chirped. Her phone vibrated, as if on queue: another text message from "Corpo Asshole."

"Wanna know why I'm not there? A little bird told me you'd be trying something dumb," she explained without waiting for a response, and then just raised an eyebrow at him over the rim of her cup.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Jade made a noise. A rising, wavering wail of insecurity and doubt as Jemma plodded towards her. Jade squished herself against the wall like a nervous rodent, trying (unsuccessfully) to maintain the distance between them, and when that didn't work, scrunching her eyes closed against the inevitability until... *CRACK!* Tufts of fur and splintered bone showered the bed as invisible blades clawed for purchase, scouring the surface of her chitinous armored hide. Wolf barely spared them a glance, apparently much less concerned after Jemma's head grew back the last time.

It would be nice to have someone else around besides Violet that could withstand physical contact with the girl.

"A cybernetics expert?" Chimed Vi in mechanical monotone to Jemma's questions.

"The best," Wolf nodded over the rim of her cup. The metallic chitter rose up in either excitement or agitation before dying back down.

"I'll take it under advisement...," she announced flatly, standing in silence for a long moment like there was more to say before she turned on her heels and walked away down the hall. Her half cloak billowed just enough to reveal the stump of her right arm, which looked as though it had been severed just above the armpit. A small chiropteran drone chittered at them, clawing its way up her rib cage and roosting in the open joint brace. A few others wrapped around her torso shifted as her cloak came back down.

Jade was frozen against the wall, eyes screwed shut against the physical contact and couldn't help but squeak as Jemma's tongue rasped against her skin. A flurry of psionic wind scythed around it, whistling through the segmented plates and searching for flesh. Wolf covered the top of her thermos to protect her coffee from the spray of bone dust. A smile cracked the corners of her lips: Vi had taken a similar shine to the girl.

"Take out? O-Once a month... m-maybe?"

“Speaking of which! Hey! Wolf! Hey! Hey hey hey hey—” Wolf squinted at the... appendage, finding a break in the spray of fur, chitinous dust, and bone fragments to steal a slurp from her thermos. She wasn't sure which end to address, and ultimately settled for the one that was talking. “So can I, like… Leave? Or whatever? You didn’t necessarily make it super clear so…?”

"Leave? Sure. You're free to come and go as you please, just like everyone else. Just respect the airlock: keeping signals and signatures inside The Den helps keep everyone safe," she explained, gesturing down the hall after Vi with her cup. She dug around in one of her pouches and held out a small chip that looked like it had been torn out of a slate phone and kitbashed together with a nano-scale E-Cell.

"Keep this in your...," she was going to say "pocket." "Uh. Keep this... with... you. It'll let you back in whenever you want. In an emergency you can crush it, and we'll come running."

"You should also know," Wolf added, almost as an afterthought. "I haven't told anyone in ShieldTown that you're back, or about... the changes. I can if you want me to."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

ID turned towards the suited giant as she gave the countersign, remaining quiet until she approached. The gentle hum of the compressor beneath her cloak complimented the snowfall for a long moment. It clicked off and the over-pressure of hot gas hissed out of the nostrils of ID's red dragon mask in a voluminous cloud.

She wasn't surprised that MG wasn't waiting exactly where she expected. The merc was clever and careful... and her heavily insulated suit interfered with ID's [Dreamsight], so picking her out as a living signature amongst all the background noise was next to impossible.

"The official report is that I ran into the Queen of Swords and went out of my way to avoid a confrontation," she explained, pulling her hood back and flapping it against her shoulders to remove any gas that had become trapped in it. That's how hair became singed. "Eventful evening too... Off the record," ID added with a huff, as she began the trudge towards the area of the Graves that dropped off into the inky darkness between land, and the Tower's massive sub-structure.

Besides Mother, MG was the only other person in the organization she regularly let her hair down around. In part this was due to the number of operations they'd done together. MG's ability made her the only operative in the entire organization that could work in close proximity to her. ID could be unguarded without worrying that a flash of emotion would irrevocably maim the woman... and the fact that she didn't treat ID like some kind of untouchable eidolon had endeared her to the merc.

"Met some boys in ShieldTown... a geokinetic prankster, and his... friend," ID hesitated, and the snow sizzled under her feet for a moment. She rolled her eyes after a minute, knowing MG wouldn't leave that alone... not after the telltale flash of heat at least.

"I'm pretty sure he invited me over intentionally so that I would catch an eyeful of the dense slab of muscle that lives with him for his own entertainment. I made some promises I probably shouldn't have, and stayed for breakfast," she explained evasively.

ID led them deep into the graves until it became nearly too steep to traverse in the icy conditions. The ground dropped away into the abyss ahead of them not a hundred feet away where it became a near sheer cliff leading down into depths unknown. She paused, pulling on a thread of mana and feeling it traverse through her body and sear uncomfortably behind her left eye and deep into her skull. The steady snowfall slowed to an absolute crawl as she rolled the thread of mana over and between her fingers.

An ethereal library of books and documents manifested in her vision, and she swished through the miles of stacks with a near imperceptible flick of her fingers. 'The Waking World Explained', translated. 'The Secret of Mana', original. 'Perils of the Astral Sea', second edition copy. ID flicked her fingers. Archives. Designs. Weapons and Equipment. Flick. Blueprints. Facility Schemata. Muriel Containment Laboratory.

ID tucked her thumb gently under the thread of mana, tugging the array out into a one handed cradle. The blueprint seared into her eye, and she dismissed the archive. ID had mentioned to Zolya that anything could be enchanted using her technique. It wasn't a false claim, you just needed some creativity, a little out of the box thinking, and some magics Mother warned her not to fool around with. Enchanting her mind with Menagerie's Archive was a brilliant, if impulsive idea that had nearly killed her. She wasn't entirely sure Mother knew what exactly she had done, but she'd been hospitalized for a month so Mother knew she was messing with something she shouldn't have.

The facility schemata was heavily redacted, but still contained useful information about its secret freight elevator and how to activate it, which she studied for a minute before releasing the [Enhanced Perception] Fortification. The blueprint stayed uncomfortably luminous in her eye.

"Looking for a keypad: it'll be covered and embedded in something that doesn't quite belong...," ID trailed off, scanning the area.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"G-gold?!" Yue blanched, wide burgundy eyes flicking down to the last corner of toast perched between her fingers. At least ten seconds passed; from her perspective, twenty minutes of the mind-melting horror that 'Oh God, I just ate gold for a snack! I didn't even butter it, the decadence of this limited underground commodity was wasted on my bland taste! How am I ever going to pay this back?'

And then she finally looked up to see Raudd's mirthful expression.

Yue suppressed the urge to throw the book at him, remembering that the spooky tome was both invisible and intangible to the man, and would do naught but make her get up and fetch it from the other side of the room. Yue huffed, exhaling the breath she'd been holding after taking a moment to recompose herself and crunch the last corner of toast.

"Something like that. When I went looking for spells to learn I was basically told to 'figure it out' and 'good luck.' " she finally answered. "I guess I'm just having a hard time seeing the value of all this new information with no practical way to apply it, compared to the thing I can already do," she sighed, flipping her hair over one shoulder so she could braid it idly in thought.

"And no, I didn't sleep well. I have frequent night terrors. Normally I'd be logged in to Final Odyssey to keep my brain occupied while my body rests. Otherwise I thrash endlessly, wake up in sleep paralysis, or have my 'fight or flight' triggered hard enough to forget where I am. It's better for everyone if I don't sleep, in the traditional sense at least."

"Well, sorcery is an extremely personal journey for everyone," Archer quipped. He had appeared sitting next to her with her coffee in his hands, causing her to flinch and squeak. He stole a quick slurp from her cup and made a face. "You're a barbarian: no cream?"

"That's basically what the book said," she hissed, slapping him in the thigh with a frustrated huff. Archer giggled maniacally for a moment.

"I have a bad habit of repeating the words of other people, it seems," he smirked and endured her withering glare, stealing a second sip before he let her take the cup back.

"How long until this becomes something useful?"

"Depends on what you consider 'useful,'" he answered thoughtfully, rubbing at the stubble that was accumulating on his chin and neck with a distasteful expression. "My opinion, take it as you will, is that the 'thing you can do' already is very powerful, so maybe we focus on supplementing that by expanding your utility. Or shore up some of your weaknesses," he shrugged.

"Hmm," Yue grumbled, suppressing the urge to make a Final Odyssey comparison.