XianaEvermor

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Archer took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to uncoil. It wasn't fair for him to snip at Zolya on account of Yue being difficult. He'd only just caught up with her and now she was running off again. It wasn't even that he thought she couldn't handle herself: it was about the unintentional chaos she might cause and the... other elements whose attention she might attract.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I-," 'shouldn't have lashed out like that,' was what he was going to say before Zolya interrupted by suddenly invading his personal space. Her fingers traced the surface of the expensive linen dress shirt he'd manhandled over his frame which was only slightly rumpled from the previous day's wear. His gaze first traced the path of her touch while his eyebrows crested his hairline, and then clear ocean blue's flicked up to meet her olive green eyes as she brushed past. He couldn't suppress the swirl of luminous emotion in them, nor the rather brilliant flush of his cheeks and the involuntary silly grin that curled at the corners of his mouth.

Deja-Vu.

"If she keeps talking to me like that, your wish to marry into the family might get realized sooner than you think," he grinned, clucking his tongue at Raudd. "East, towards Shieldtown. At least she's speed-limited without her suit, unless-," 'that barrier can protect her from some serious air-resistance,' was what he was going to say before the sharp *CLAP* of an over-pressure wave rolling over the building interrupted him. His eyes darted to meet Raudd's.

"Is that where the Aegis went? What the hell kind of artifact did you guys give her?" He muttered as he focused in on Yue's signature. "She's moving North now?" He informed, while trying to figure out what could be in that area that would have attracted her attention.

---

Yue blinked, eyes following the ravens and their display... or warning. For a moment her head swirled before she remembered that yes, indeed, magic was real, and that these creatures belonged to Zolya. She sighed heavily, gnawing the inside right corner of her lower lip in thought. They were probably right: vertical velocity was hard. She couldn't fly or generate the constant thrust required to fight against gravity.

There would have to be sturdy footholds for her to push off of. She didn't think she could develop acute enough control over the shape of the barrier in the handful of seconds it would take to reach the crater wall to glide for any sort of distance.

"So, what then? Give up?" She muttered, more to herself than the birds as her gaze traced the plate-gap to the crater wall some miles in the distance. Yue rolled the medallion in her palm over and over, pausing to squeeze its sharp corners against the inside fold of her knuckles after each flip.

That anxious vibration, the restless urge to move coiled around her neck, causing her to roll her roll her shoulders involuntarily. One of them cracked in protest. She could feel the individual muscle fibers behind her knees screaming as they twitched. An individual mote of dust that had been suspended in the light in front of her came into focus as a thread of luminous [Silver] waved lazily across her gaze.

"Don't think I can let this one go, friend," she informed as she stepped North with a purpose.

Threads of [Silver] peeled out of her chest wildly as she took a deep breath. She tried to recall Zolya's lesson on directing and allowing Aether to flow through her body, though... she found her [Silver] threads didn't wish to move that way. When she tried, they often got stuck part way, or tugged awkwardly against her skin.

Don't force it... what did it do naturally? Her head tilted as she remembered observing the threads crawling up the manor's cairn stone. Her Aether wasn't fluid like Zolya's or Archer's, and it only flowed when she was touching something. Yue turned the medallion up in her palm, watching her threads of Aether stitch themselves into the engravings, naturally laying in complementary support as it formed braids and lattices around what she guessed were the most important structures of the array. The occasional bolt of [Crimson] would arc down her forearm and thrum against the array, usually chasing a spike of frustration or irritation that this Aether thing just wouldn't do what she was asking it to.

She exhaled gently, rolling into a new breath. Keeping a lid on all that inner turmoil was gonna be a thing, wasn't it?

Yue closed her eyes as she walked, trusting the near imperceptible caramel glow from the Earth below her to keep her feet steady. She imagined thread twisting into twine, weaving into braided ropes against her skin and pulsing into the medallion. She didn't have to open her eyes to see the [Silver] complying slowly. Her eyes snapped open to that familiar tension in her irises. She was tuned in enough to feel her pupils stretching. Her hand closed tightly on the medallion at the top of her breath, and she found herself coiled to pounce.

Right. Clear my head. Don't think too hard about it. Just do what feels natural, the Aether will fill in the rest.

Her foot sank inches into the Earth before it started to push back, and her chest slammed into that familiar wall of pressure. She was ready for it this time, ducking her head into it. She imagined creating down-force like her suit would to counteract the strong lift, and the barrier seemed to comply as she angled her body into as flat of a profile as she could while retaining her balance. Clouds of vapor roared over the contours of her shoulders, roiling over her spine as the barrier formed a sharp spike just slightly ahead of her, reinforced with a lattice of [Silver] Aether.

Yue pushed, feeling her foot skip across the broken concrete before achieving friction. She lurched forward, punching through the pressure as a violent cone of white vapor roiled around her waist and thrashed against her thigh as she forced her knee up to her chest.

She streaked across the bleak empty outside of ShieldTown as a plume of curling dust ripping savagely across the landscape, punctuated by periodic explosions of dirt and debris as she skipped across the ground. Long trails of vapor streamed intermittently from her fingertips as she made minor attitude adjustments between steps.

The downforce eased only slightly as the slope of the crater began to increase sharply, and her steps became taller and taller leaps. Finally, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, she was perched on the peak of the sturdiest boulder she could pick out on her approach. It shattered beneath her as she rocketed upwards along the crater wall, her eyes flicking back and forth rapidly to pick out footholds and the barrier angled so that she was nearly crushed against the cliff face by the downforce.

The morning sky, which had just been a brilliant thread moments ago was rapidly expanding to fill her vision. If she could just stay super-sonic past the half way point she should have enough inertia to clear the surface... Yue braced herself for a final push, angling towards what looked like a shallow overhang she could get traction on, though her breath stuck in her throat when she reached it. A trick of the light against the weathering of the rock made it look like there was more to grasp than there was. A quick scan told her there wasn't any other anchor within reach that would allow her to keep her inertia, so she had to commit: there was no aborting at this stage.

Yue's foot slipped and she wobbled unsteadily for a moment, and the momentary lapse of concentration caused the braided lattice of [Silver] threads to buckle and unravel. The barrier lost its curated shape, and she skittered across the cliff face as she tried to re-shape it. Streaks of vapor shrieked over her wildly as the shock cone closed in over her shoulders and she was slammed into the cliff face by the shockwaves. The breath was knocked from her lungs and the medallion spun from her fingers.

She managed to protect her face with her arm, hot sparks dragging along her skin as the lattice of Aetheric threads rapidly unraveled. She pushed away from the wall before any serious injury was sustained. The sharp corners of the medallion dug into her palm as she reached out and grabbed it just before it spun out of reach. The damage was done: she was bleeding speed rapidly, and flailed awkwardly as she hit the apex of her ascent. Her fingertips only just brushed against the corner of the plate ceiling before she started falling.

Yue managed to control her descent by angling the barrier to keep herself pressed against the cliff face and sliding down. Towards the bottom where it became rockier she pushed away from the wall and skipped unsteadily across the rocks until she slammed hard into the dirt, sliding the rest of the way. She stared at the sky through the distant plate gap for a long minute before she pushed herself slowly to her feet and began walking at a normal pace towards ShieldTown... she needed a minute to catch her breath after that.

---

"Hey Dean... are there any Rogues on your roster that can go super-sonic?"

"No... Silver Fang is our guest, though. She could."

"Our surfacer is Silver Fang?? Fuck. She's making a run at the Plate Gap."

"Hah. It was never a question of 'IF' she would try, only 'WHEN.' Easy money."

"I'm flush from the Scarhide bet. 50 she makes it."

"Actually the minimum bet on that pool is-"

"Well, raise it 50!"

"Oooooh! That looked painful..."
"Oooooh! That looked painful..."

"... Fuck."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

You ever get that feeling... long car ride. Waiting in a place you can't get up, stretch, move around. Scratch it 'til you bleed, that bone-deep itch to move just won't go away. Can't sleep. Get up. Shake your legs. Stretch. Beat bruises into your thighs... it just... starts up again as soon as you settle.

That feeling was creeping up Yue's spine; settling into her neck and clawing at her shoulders. She splashed water on her face and smoothed out her hair. It really didn't help that it felt like there were far too many hands pressing cloyingly against her skin at all times in the Stoneworks, especially with the spike in...

Fuck it, we're just calling it 'Aether' from now on. Never gonna get it straight, and now we can talk freely about it to other Final Odyssey nerds.

If only she could just... close her eyes. Shut it all out.

Yue stared at the Silverscale Grimoire laying on the bed she had recently made while listening to Zolya distantly through the door. She was right... stretch her legs. Get away from all this... fucking HOVERING and fretting like she was going to explode at any moment.

Well...

She glared at the overgrowth outside her room's window. Had she really become so damaged that everyone had to bend over backwards to take care of her? Yue thumped her fist against the door frame... maybe a little too hard: it resonated through the walls of the manor. Right. Deep breaths.

"I'm... I need to clear my head," she called through the door. "Some light exercise sounds like a good idea now that you mention it. I'm gonna stretch my legs a little," she informed, to the immediate panicked rustling from the adjacent room.

"Yue," Archer called curtly, sliding into the hallway unsteadily while trying to pull a shirt over his wiry, but chiseled torso. "Yue, wait! Ah fuck," he muttered, lightly distressed as his eyes tracked the rapid thump of footfalls over the roof.

The metallic chime of the Barrier medallion echoed through windows, and the whole manor shuddered with the force of her launch. The tall grass, flowers, and trees groaned and swayed as they were buffeted by her turbulent wake. Archer huffed with an annoyed expression.

"Going out to 'stretch her legs a little' has a much different definition to the Parahuman Super-Athlete who travels miles in seconds and doesn't feel fatigue," he snipped, before Zolya could even turn the I-don't-see-what-the-issue is, let-the-girl-run expression on him. "At least she's headed East," he muttered after a second as he finished tucking his shirt in. "Can you keep an eye on her with your birds?" He asked, taking a deep breath. "I don't think I have any prepared summons that can keep up with her."

---

It was strange. The barrier cut through the air with hardly any friction, almost like it were impossibly smooth and the wind just... had nothing to grab hold of. It had actually thrown her off balance and nearly caused her to stumble for her first several steps. Combined with the lack of ailerons, stabilizers, and other control surfaces that were hidden in the crevices of her armor kind of made her feel like she was constantly falling. No invisible fingers clawing at every hard contour or flapping uncomfortably at the backs of her arms and neck, just sliding through like a an egg off an oil-slicked griddle.

The shock from each step which normally rattled in her knees without the Exo-Frame and the impact absorbing gel layer seemed to get effortlessly reflected away from her body. Granted, she could feel a great deal more turbulence in her wake, but its not like she could be subtle at this speed to begin with.

Her foot sank into the grassy earth, and she felt the ripple of kinetic force slap the ground as she pushed off. It rippled out, reverberating back and ripping up the soil like splashed water. She took a breath, feeling threads of [Silver] peel out, slip along her arms and even drape gently across her shoulders, thrumming with power against her skin.

When was the last time it felt like this... gentle authority? Like she had cut through the tangle of strings holding her down. Like the forces of the world bent the knee instead of fighting to restrain her. Thorns and vines had clawed at her heart so long that it just... felt normal.

Yue turned sharply as she splashed through the Stoneworks' barrier and pushed hard on the firmest purchase her foot could find. A familiar ripple of compression pressed against her, nearly knocking her body upright. Yue flared her arms unsteadily to create some drag at the top of her breath, and the barrier seemed to respond to her desire for stability by shaping channels to redirect the air. Appropriate levels of lift and drag were suddenly at her fingertips, and Yue flailed for a moment as the ground fell beneath her just a little more than she was expecting. The normal crackling roar which would flay her unprotected skin clean off no more than a gentle flutter in her ears.

The walls of ShieldTown were rushing up on her far too soon for her liking. It felt like she was trapped in a little sauce pot. The looming darkness stabbed through with artificial light, metal ceiling and distant cliff walls pressed in on her. She just wanted to cut loose. Scream and run for everything she was worth. It burned in the back of her lungs, and nearly knocked the breath out of her as she slid to a halt some distance outside the walls. Yue huffed, staring up into the billowing pillar of dust she had disturbed. A narrow, knife's edge of morning sunlight was cutting through it from the plate-gap above.

How far was it?

How silly would she feel if she could have escaped all this time and just... never tried?

What if it was just as easy as stepping outside and she could save Alex and the others from all the chaos and disruption her mere presence wrought?

What if she could just... go?

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[Undercity - No Man's Land]

---

Life in UnderCity was harsh. It was a fact, not a theory.

Even in the more fortified areas, your safety was purchased with contribution and sometimes the labor was harder than homelessness. Still... people of all walks found a way to thrive. The gangs in particular. JAHANNAM, and Halcyon Horde at least had rules you could follow; guidelines, really. You did your best not to borrow from JAHANNAM if you had a choice, and as long as you paid your taxes and didn't cause trouble, the Horde would mostly leave you alone.

The more esoteric groups like the Cult of Flesh seemed to operate without rhyme or reason; and then there were the Rippers. Psychotically obsessed Chrome junkies that would stop at nothing to get their next augment. They were feared for their unique brutality. Rippers were like cockroaches armed with rockets and lasers, that became aggressive when the lights came on instead of scattering. Where there was one, many were like to be nearby and disturbing them was trouble. They were prone to infectious bursts of psychotic rage that spread through the group at large and lingered long after the stone that struck their nest was thrown.

Like a peculiar hive-mind: stirring up the Rippers in one part of the UnderCity often set off a chain reaction that enraged all the Rippers in the region. Which is why (as a general rule of thumb) you just didn't fuck with Rippers. Like many things, however, there were... exceptions.

"Help... help me..."

The Heap. An enormous scrapyard some distance northwest of ShieldTown. Over the years it'd mostly been picked clean but you could sometimes find an odd spare part, and it was still a rich source of scrap-metal for patches and repairs. It was becoming a more common Ripper haunt as they filtered in to hunt for materials to maintain their cybernetics. Crude as it may be, not everyone had a fully kitted Chrome shop or cryptosleep surgery tank.

"Hey. Hear that?"

"Hear what? Cochlear implant's on the fritz again. Can't hear shit," muttered Grimm, as he hefted a piece of rusted steel. The electric servos in his shoulder and forearm whined as he flung it behind him to sift for the next piece of scrap. "Nothin' here but rust and garbage since those whores at The Den moved in."

"Someone... help me..."

"Hoohohoho, Grimm! That's a pristine Vox Encoder if I ever heard one! Bet me right eye," Slurm's wet, phlegm rattled chuckle scraped over the husks of skeletal cars and warped beams. Implant rejection had hit Slurm particularly hard. Grimm's steel digits snapped around Slurm's collar, pulling him roughly off the pile he was skittering over and throwing him to the dirt. "What gives??

"No fresh picks in the Heap, Slurm... or did ya forget? Den sluts scooped it all. It's a honey pot," Grimm warned as he returned to the up ended semi-tractor he was digging through. "Leave it alone," he ordered.

"Fine," Slurm spat, as he scrambled to his feet and moved back to his spot sullenly. "It'S a hOnEy PoT, he sneered quietly under his breath. "Old man's been a Ripper so long he don't know the taste of honey from that nutrient slop he guzzles down." Slurm continued to mutter as he picked sullenly through the refuse while the siren call of a premium Vox Encoder drifted tantalizingly over the Heap.

Eventually Slurm couldn't stand it any longer and scuttled away quietly while Grimm was occupied, trusting the man's damaged cochlear implants to hide his departure. Grimm had a singular focus when it came to sifting the Heap, and had a knack for consistently finding a good pick, scarce as they were nowadays. He'd be busy in that truck cab for a while and probably wouldn't notice if Slurm snuck away to have a peek.

A peek wouldn't hurt, would it?

"I'm stuck... is anyone there?"

There it was... Slurm peered cautiously from behind what probably used to be a diesel station overhang. Laying there, pinned beneath the the door of an old shipping container that had fallen open. Had to be careful around those: they could fall open at any time and they were heavy as fuck. Amateur.

"Hello?" She called, causing Slurm to flinch. One of the buttons on his worn denim Ripper cut had brushed against the overhang. Bitch had real sensitive hearing if she heard that. "Is someone there?" She called, struggling to look around. Something fluttered and chirped above him. A bat? Huge colonies of the pests weren't uncommon in certain parts of UnderCity, but they didn't usually wander out this far. Whatever.

"And what do we have here?" Rasped Slurm as he prowled out from behind his cover on all fours towards the container.

"This door fell on me, I think my leg is broken are you here to help?"

"Help? Yeah... help myself to that shiny voice of yours," he cackled as he loped over, letting his phlegm-slicked tongue loll out like a hungry dog. He'd only crossed half the distance when something weighty gently struck his back. Odd... though it wasn't nearly enough impact to even throw him off course, he crumpled listlessly and only just managed to keep his tongue intact as his chin painfully struck pavement.

The slither and chitter of shifting metal rose around him as the pinned figure shifted. Another thump: against his shoulder. This time it was accompanied by a searing heat and his scream was only muffled by the fact that he could no longer manipulate his jaw. The acrid stench of sizzling flesh and melted plasteel racked his lungs, and his arm slid foot by foot towards the container as her body bent and contorted unnaturally. Bladed digits with far too many articulations reached out from under the door far too smoothly; alloy plates and synthetic muscle slithered up the frame to her wrist as she twisted herself effortlessly out from under the weight and almost seemed to reconstruct back to her feet.

His arm slid towards her again, dragged by some kind of robotic drone or creature, grasped by far too long digits connected by some thin, leather-like membrane. It turned its singular, glowing red optical sensor towards him as it moved and the staccato shower of light and sparks from the arc-torch which made up what should have been the creature's mouth seared his retinas. A set of long, spindly digits reached into his vision over each eye and dragged his eyelids open, pinning his head back with surprising force.

"My... what shiny eyes you have," she noted, her vox encoded voice devoid of emotion as she reached down and picked up his arm. The limb jerked and shuddered as the drone that had been carrying it burrowed aggressively into the shoulder, and a worn out joint brace clattered to the ground from beneath her cloak. The metal and fiber slithered unnaturally, forming and optimizing new connections, repurposing wiring harnesses and synth-muscle. Threads of light weaved into the limb as she jammed it into her empty shoulder socket. Tactile plates and haptic feedback sensors re-oriented as the hand was forcibly converted from left to right.

She flexed her new hand and shook out the stiffness. Her neck and face were a perfect blend of synth and flesh with no signs of inflammation or rejection, though her mandible seemed to be missing, and her lipless maxilla curled into the simulacrum of a fanged skull.

"Should have listened to your friend. He gives good advice," she informed coolly, dead violet eyes spearing him with loathing and disdain. She twisted her new wrist in her hand as if trying to soothe the chafing of freshly removed handcuffs. Violet reached into her cloak, and withdrew her eyeless black and red kitsune mask. She brushed a few strands of straight black hair out of her face with her new appendage before pressing the mask to her face. A bat unfurled from her torso as she strode towards him and thumped to the ground, almost allowing him to look up into her exposed ribcage.

Slurm's muffled screams echoed quietly over the Heap as it charged him aggressively.

---

"It's Grimm... Slurm's dumb ass fell for a honey pot and he got nabbed. Need more bodies at the Heap: Chiroptera is out hunting..."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Yue made her way to the table sheepishly, doing her best to fade into the background and disappear... or die of embarrassment, you know... as one does. She sat down at the table quietly with her hands in her lap and her face resembling a tomato as she watched everyone serve themselves. For a moment it seemed like she would skip breakfast before her body reminded her that she had not eaten a real meal since her MRE the previous morning.

"This experienced mage was in the kitchen, you can blame this all on Zolya," Archer teased as he began to serve himself. Yue ate quickly in silence until she was scraping the sides of her bowl for sauce fragments and eying the remaining latkes with a predatory air.

"I have a question...," she interjected slowly, looking about ready to pounce and maul the next person to steal from the plate of potato cakes. Archer slid it towards her with a grin.

"Shoot."

"Sword Song enhances magical properties... but most of the equipment I use is Tinker-made and most of it still sings. Does that mean they're magic too?"

"Tinker-Science is its own category of weirdness. It interacts with certain magics in weird ways when it shouldn't, and obstinately does nothing when it rightly should have an interaction. Don't even get me started on Tinker-science mantling legendary enchantments from lost or destroyed artifacts. Basically it's generally accepted within the magic community that Tinkers are bullshit, and nobody really understands why their shit does what it does. In other words... Yes! But also no."

Yue speared him with a glare that spoke to how clearly disappointed with his explanation she was, though all this did was make Archer laugh. She crunched a dry latke in contemplative silence, staring vacantly past everyone at the table. Yue was content to just not bring up the fact that she seemed to break things (both mundane and magical) wherever she went for the time being.

Why couldn't she have a nice, easy, safe, normal power like Luna Lightning? Hell, it felt like even the guy who generated soap bubbles had an easier time than her. And poor Felix was trying to replicate her speed with his cybernetics? Poor guy. She never told him that she basically had to become an expert in ballistics, aerodynamics, and physics in order to move the way she did.

Friction, gravity, inertia, compensating for the Coriolis Effect, kinetic energy transfer. How does she make a hard turn when traveling at 900 Miles Per Hour? Where is her foot going to land? If a 130 Kilogram object traveling at 403.2 Meters Per Second kicks off that curb to try and change her flight angle, will she be stepping on concrete or sinking into gravel? Will the suit absorb that impact or is she about to break her leg? How much did she have to slow down to grab that guy who fell off a ten story building without turning him into paste or ripping one of his arms off? We're not even gonna get in to what it took to normalize experiencing all these forces while time dilated without going into G-Lock, or becoming violently sick.

Vomiting in 1/120th time dilation was an experience she never wanted to repeat.

Now she had to worry about breaking magic wherever she went too? She was tailor made to destroy things, it would seem... Archer reached across the table and snapped his fingers loudly in front of her eyes, snapping her back into realtime with a hard flinch.

"Hey, hon. You've been staring off into space for like five minutes now. Listen, I've been a mage for hundreds of mortal lifetimes and I still don't know everything there is to know about magic. The more I learn about it, the more questions I have sometimes, so... don't think too hard about it: you'll drive yourself mad. If you're done eating maybe you should get cleaned up. I think the rest of us are about ready to shove off towards Shieldtown."

"Right, sorry...," replied Yue distantly, as she snaked another handful of potato cakes off the plate before standing.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

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

[A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

Näs Castle, Sweden, Winter. The ruins of some Swedish king’s fancy home from the 12th century, and home to the Nordic Federation’s Parahuman Special Forces black-site, “Valv Tre”… of course nobody would know that since it was buried deep beneath the island’s tourist trap.

Research.

Plasma?

Senja…

Every surface shuddered like crawling skin. The walls were bleeding? Covered in blood. The cloaked woman’s combat knife slid wetly between Captain Jamison’s vertebrae. She watched the light fade from his eyes before flicking the blade out through his jugular. All with that smile on her scarred face as his arterial blood sprayed across her skin.

There was a pause. A moment to drink every detail before her. Everything she constantly ran through her head every night manifested around MG. There was a part of her that wanted to lash out at this, to try in some vain attempt to change what had already transpired . . . MG gagged and shot that part of herself long ago.

Panic was an expected reaction when one’s trauma was staring them in the face. Nora only felt rage. A tempered hatred radiated from the woman before she finally spoke.

“Die Screaming.”

There was no squeeze of her shotgun's trigger. Instead, winter claimed everything before her. The only warning for what was about to happen was the sudden drop in temperature that could crack steel, with MG at its epicenter. Jagged ice surged outward from MG in a tide of biting and cutting cold. And it would not stop.

Wouldn’t stop.

Stop.

"Stop! Claymore! Ah fuck," ID muttered grumpily when the emergency countersign didn’t elicit a reaction. At least MG hadn’t pulled the trigger: she wasn’t sure she could dodge crystal infused enchanted buckshot from this range. A steel panel buckled next to her with a thunderous crack under the thermal shock.

Can’t stay here… They’d bring the whole place down, and if MG got into physical contact range… involuntary cryo-induced naptime wasn’t on ID’s itinerary today.

A flick of her wrist primed one of her fuel sprayers and she raked the air between her and the suited giant, snapping a spark from the flint skin of her fingertips to ignite her breath. A gout of orange flames slammed into the curtain of explosive droplets. They burst into hundreds of tiny, brilliant explosions in MG’s face like a box of fireworks gone awry: just enough to engage the suit’s flare and noise compensation and buy a moment of hesitation.

ID leapt through the entrance at an angle to generate transverse velocity, she trusted MG… but there was still a chance she’d shoot at whatever it was she was seeing. Fractal frost dogged her footsteps, freezing joints, hydraulics, and mechanisms in an instant.

Sorry, friend… can’t let you put me to sleep. We’ll both die. Gonna need you to sit down for a minute...

A click of her sprayer rewarded ID with a few droplets of explosive liquid, which she swirled into a compacted bubble of mana. She shot it back through the frozen blast doors, pausing only a moment to aim as crimson scales slithered across her temples and down her forehead. A brilliant ray of searing violet flames shrieked from her fingertips, thundering down the corridor as the intense heat slammed through the cold front and detonated the insulated fuel packet.

An explosion rocked the corridor, throwing MG to the ground. Charges detonated deep under the island. Men in black uniforms with that signature red A badge on their shoulders rained lead to buy that wretched woman cover. Senja was suddenly on top of her, and the intense pain of a knife buried in MG’s eye lanced her skull from front to back. Senja smiled down at her as the walls wept, fire crawled across the ceiling, and the corridor walls began to buckle. Her eyes were four pointed stars of golden-green-gray and pink with a sclera of black from which squirming ink bled down onto MG’s face.

How’s that leadership role treating you now? Enjoying it as much as you thought?

“Never even wanted it, you petulant brat.” The pain was real. Despite everything she tried she was forced to physically re-live this shit. The sudden flash bang and external heat had been irritating. Now she was here. There were white spots in what remained of MG’s vision. Her thermals had been turned off so that the cold could start to numb her nerves a bit. Wait, what the fuck was wrong with Senja’s face?

“The hell happened to your face?”

Things weren’t clicking. MG was one step away from putting herself in cryo to get out of this shit. But part of what ID had told her earlier came through the pain. Not to trust her eyes or ears.

. . . Fuck it. She better have been right on this. MG shut her good eye and made the mental command to turn on the thermal cyber eye hidden under her eyepatch, that should be run through with a knife. The noise dampeners and compensators in her helmet were driven up to the point that she was practically deaf from the white noise. Gonna have a nasty case of tinnitus after this on top of the splitting headache.

Complain later. You have a job to do.

The thermal vision kicked in. The world was all purples and blues with some reds and yellows. It took some time for the vision to sharpen into more detail. No Senja, just a frozen room with evidence of a thermal shock having happened.

Shit, she was being mind fucked. MG really hated psychic types.

Carefully, she got up off the floor and did a pat down to make sure she still had everything. She took up her shotgun and let out more of a growl then a sigh of irritation.

“ID! If you're anywhere nearby I won’t be able to hear you! I’ve had to deafen myself and switched to thermals! We’re gonna have to work with hand signs and you're gonna have to be my ears here.” There was a pause before a heavy book stomped the ice covered floor. “Dammit I really don’t want to be talking to myself here. Can’t even hear myself talk.” She then proceeded to curse rather colorfully in Finnish as she slowly made her way forward. If this gets fucked with somehow I’m freezing myself near death and letting ID figure it out.

A thumbs up poked out from an intersection farther in, and ID cautiously peered around the corner to check on MG. Sensory blindness wasn’t optimal, but it was better than whatever full-sensory hallucination that had driven her to flash-freeze the whole complex. ID reinforced her Domain bubble, pulling it tighter against her skin. If that’s what was in store for her should her concentration lapse, MG might yet have a much worse day.

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

---

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

[A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

"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

---

[Castle on the Clouds]

---

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

---

[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.