There was no sound.
No scream, no explosion.
It was a scouring light, no direction, no aim, nothing held back.
The initial shockwave passed through doors, and it expanded in every direction with each door it passed through, sweeping past everything within ten miles of each portal.
The moment we were through the last portal, I’d connected every member of the group to a forcefield. The forcefield was then flung forward, carrying us with it.
Eased to a stop when we were out of range.
When the light faded, there was only flatness and portals.
I moved my hand to point, and my hand couldn’t make the gesture. My fingers refused to extend independently. I could see the hesitation on the faces of the others.
But I could see. I could see what was going on. I led my squad forward, and the rest followed.
I found the faerie queen, in the center of the group of rescued. Portals stood in concentric circles, with gaps so they could be navigated through. A stonehenge of glowing doorways.
I walked, stopping in the middle of an open field. I watched.
I saw Scion, just barely recovering.
I saw the faerie girl, talking to others.
I watched, and long seconds passed. Others around me were talking, just beyond my range. There was a voice in my ear, coaxing, asking questions.
She banished two spirits, keeping the portal man. Picked two others.
I didn’t wait for them to fully materialize. I created a doorway with the reality-warper and kicked it open.
I appeared right behind the faerie queen.
I seized her, and I seized the portal man she’d killed and claimed for herself.
I opened a doorway to Scion, and I unfolded a cloak of portals, capturing people.
I found the tinkers I’d left on the other earth.
When we emerged, he didn’t react. He was lost in his own mind.
The dream-projector fell unconscious, and was captured by her onetime friend. A glimmering of the garden-entity.
It loomed, rising into the air before Scion.
He recoiled, striking at it.
My swarm, feeble as it was, formed a reaching hand. He struck at that, in turn. The impact wasn’t as strong. A distraction, maintaining pressure, nothing more.
I opened a doorway, and I found one individual I’d left behind.
The boy with the changing faces.
The number man had said he’d taken a dose that had been focused on helping the entities be human.
I couldn’t change his face intentionally.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to.
I could feel Scion’s reaction, through my senses and the individuals I controlled.
Hope. For just a second. Not even the faint hope he’d experienced with the fake my teammates had put together.
Because somehow, this boy registered as being like this entity’s companion had been. Registering as the same state, as the power that made it so similar.
In the moment that hope died, the girl with the injured hand used her power on the iron rods. Infused them with the energy he was afraid of.
Those rods became projectiles, in another’s hands.
His hope was gone, he was bewildered, scared.
He didn’t try to dodge. He couldn’t or wouldn’t.
They impaled him. One in the head, one in the chest.
The tinkers fired their weapon. An interdimensional ram turned into a gun. They’d finished it while they weren’t under my control. Defiant was the one ready at the switch.
I discovered why he was concerned about the power.
It kept things from being contained. I got a glimpse, a flash of a look into the world beyond him, a world he’d shut off, to which his body was the only conduit.
The beam tore into him and into the well.
I moved the portals, and the beam turned to scour more of the landscape beyond Scion.
The Faerie Queen began to slip from my grasp.
She knew what was happening, and she was forcing my power to affect her spirits. A single spirit.
Breaking free.
She moved her hand of her own volition.
And then she was free. Inside my radius, but free.
She turned to face me. I met her gaze, as best as I was able. My vision wavered.
Her head hung. She made no move to resist. She didn’t close the portals.
More projectiles, opening more doors.
The beam ran out of power.
The dead remains of the entity showered the ground at the center of the wasteland.
I staggered. The emotion around me was too much. I pushed people away, and they bumped into one another. Some left my range, only a handful remained. I didn’t recognize a single one. Even the one holding my hand.
I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d somehow betrayed myself, and I wasn’t even sure who I was.
It was over. And I was free to finally lose my mind.
30.07
I was plunged into darkness. Things stopped making sense.
I was surrounded. I couldn’t think straight because I couldn’t think. Trying to analyze people, to parse them, to identify them, it was like being in quicksand. Resistance to my efforts, getting nowhere, and always slowly, inevitably sinking.
Thirty, forty, fifty people, more appearing every second, streamed through portals. All of the survivors, returning to the battlefield to see it for themselves. To turn their eyes towards me, because the only open space in the area was the space around me, the radius of my power, and it drew the eye. People noticed, and others paid attention to the noticing.
The looks were hostile. All the worse because they were alien. Hundreds of people, and they didn’t feel any goodwill towards me.
Strangers. Not strangers like people I didn’t know. That was different. Strangers who had connections to me, who I still didn’t know. Strangers like the masked man who broke into a house. Strangers in the sense of a stalker. Of a jury about to announce a sentence.
This darkness around me, it was an absence of illumination, an absence of any light that could clarify and make sense of things. I couldn’t recognize anyone, put a finger on them as familiar or unfamiliar, enemy or ally.
This… it was all ominous, vaguely threatening. People I might pass on the street wouldn’t pay me any mind. People here, almost every single one of them, they had a reason to pay attention to me, and the attention wasn’t good attention.
Any of them, all of them, they could attack me at a moment’s notice. Inflict horrible tortures, kill me, fates worse than death. There were a lot of fates worse than death.
I was settling into the end-state of my transition. I knew it, and I could see the dividing lines more clearly. What I could still do, what I couldn’t.
Taking action, moving… easier so long as I had an objective.
Objectives, too, were easier. I could still analyze. I could survey the battlefield, interpret powers, put two and two together. I could connect the dots, recall the powers I was up against, and I could form strategies.
My head hung, but I could see the eyes of the people around me through the clairvoyant. They fixed their stares on me, and I could feel paranoia building. A weight, a pressure, crushing me from all sides.
I couldn’t recognize anyone, only powers. Everyone was a potential enemy.
Everyone was capable of using their powers to hurt me.
Damn them all. After everything I’d done, everything I’d given up, and they were standing there, threatening me.
Not a word was spoken, though the singing continued in the background. It conveyed the story to those who were still arriving. There were only two reasons things would be so still. The first was that battle could be utterly lost and there was no more need for orders, for communication, for cries of grief and screams of pain. That there was nothing left but surrender for the ones who remained.
But this wasn’t that, I had to remind myself
. We had won. That disbelief rocked each and every one of the people who were present, that silence marked a kind of respect for the fallen.
And, all too possible, it marked a kind of unspoken agreement. I could see it. The silence was a relief and an added pressure, giving more weight to the eyes on me. Every pair of eyes was telling me the same thing.
I was the next big threat. The next one that had to be killed before this could all end.
I tensed. I could barely move, but I could still ready myself for a fight or flight response. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to stand, but I could use the device on my back, I could throw myself at the first opponent to approach me.
I was lost in this special kind of darkness, but I could analyze this situation too. I could look at my capabilities and what my power had taken away, and I knew that there was a common theme at work.
Con- conflict. I could function so long as there was conflict, so long as I was creating it or resolving it. Given the choice between paralysis and conflict, I wondered if anyone would really choose the former, committing to it over time.
Paralysis was a scary thing. There were a lot of forms of it, and they ranked up there as far as fates worse than death.
Conflict was better. Familiar.
My swarm informed me that I still had my knife, tiny legs tracing over the weapon’s grip.
One tinker came through a doorway, as if to survey the situation. Heavy armored boots rang as they struck the glassy, blasted disaster area. The man emerged, and he cast a glance around. He took in, no doubt, the ruined buildings, the clouds of dust that were rolling into the clearing, still following the vast amounts of air that had crashed into the space to replace the atmosphere the blast had wiped out.
The tinker pointed his weapon. The rest of the tinkers filed into this world, two by two.
Everyone, just about, was making their way here. Thousands, now.
Strangers. All of them would, circumstances demanding, aim to get in my way, to stop me, question my actions, condemn me, hate me, maim, torture or kill me. I’d seen good people go bad, couldn’t trust anyone.
My memories were incoherent, but I could see the common themes, and I knew everything they could and would do, given the chance. Pyrokinetics could burn, telekinetics crush. They weren’t the scary ones, as painful as a burn or other injury could be. It was the thinkers that worried me, the masters, the tinkers.
I watched that crowd with one eye.
Some of them would kill me the second they thought they could get away with it. Others would be scheming. I had power, they wanted that power for themselves. They’d take it like my portal man was taken from me. They’d take all of it.
My hand was clenched so hard I thought something might break.
Had to remain still. I had a handful of soldiers, a swarm of sixteen people who…
I’d pushed them away, and these were the ones who I hadn’t pushed out. Why had I pushed them?
Had I already been interfered with? Had someone already made a move, manipulating me?
Rrreee-
I shook my head a little. Couldn’t form complete thoughts. I felt a light weight on my shoulders, heard a voice. Reassuring, coaxing.
So very small, compared to everything I was seeing, everything I was up against. The voice did nothing for me.
I was prey in the sights of a predator. Frozen. When two snipers fought, the one who shot first was at a disadvantage. The other would see the muzzle flash and be on target. It was the same for me. My enemy would see the direction I was moving, the strategy I was putting to use, and they’d intercept me on both fronts.
Being small and still helped. I wanted to cover myself, to hide in my swarm, big or little, but I couldn’t afford to move.
Again, the voice. I shifted the clairvoyant’s grip, sliding it up from my wrist to my shoulder. Severing threads so the hand was free to move. Once it was on my shoulder, I moved it under a strap and used the cut threads to secure it in place.
My hand was free.
That singing- Singing was bad.
But it wasn’t the- wasn’t the winged being that was perched on a building at the far end of the battlefield. She was silent, her wings folded over her shoulders and along the edge of the rooftop. Worse for wear, with wings broken, but her body was pristine alabaster, her hair blowing in the wind.
The singing… it was one of my minions. The words had been faster in tempo before, now they were… I wasn’t even sure.
Singing was bad, wasn’t it?
I silenced her.
Stunning, to be in the middle of a city and not hear the roar of distant traffic, of conversation or anything of the sort. There was barely any wind, even, and no debris here for the wind to stir.
There was only my swarm. A dull buzzing roar in my ears, for the smallest ones. I could sense the pounding heartbeats, feel the breathing. I could imagine the sounds so clearly that I couldn’t pick it apart from what I was actually hearing. Periodically, I could hear a voice, which was the same in some ways. In my head or in my ears?
Muscles creaked when moving. For some, bones ground together. Joints popped. Stomachs gurgled.
My swarm had formed a loose ring around me, more by accident or manipulation than by any design on my part. There was a gap just beyond them, where others were afraid to cross. The noises of their bodies, the sensations, the perceptions… they were an island of forced familiarity in a sea of hostility.
If even one wave of that sea hit me and my island… if they charged, if someone gave them an excuse…
I repositioned my hand, a shaky, uneven movement. One side of my wrist pressed against the butt-end of my knife.
The last of the phones finished relaying the music. Only two seconds had passed? If that. The spell broke.
Someone cried out.
It had started.
The outcry was picked up by others. People grabbed one another, arms were thrown around necks, fingers dug into costumes and skin. They whimpered, screamed, shouted. I could see tears in eyes, faces contorted in emotion. Groups turned inward, focusing on one another, loners backed away, positioning themselves where they had space to maneuver. Madness, hysterical, chaotic. Grown adult and child alike, costumed and uncostumed, individuals dressed in white or in bright colors, individuals in black, they were part of the riot.
They held nothing back, emotionally. I saw fireballs explode in midair. People streaked into the sky, lightshows following after them.
But the yelling, the echoes of that first cry, they were what shook me, what shook everything. The only thing around us to block the sounds were people, and those people were making more sound. Thousands echoing of that one cry.
None of this surprised me, that they’d turn on each other the moment the real threat was gone. It was the way our species operated. A reality that had been writ over and over again in my experiences. I couldn’t remember the specific cases, but the lessons remained with me.
I was standing, already, making my way to my feet with the help of the clairvoyant, with the device on my back, the attached arms.
Easier to move when there was something to do. Fighting, fighting back.
My movement had drawn attention. I started to draw my knife, and something stopped me, keeping it in its sheath. I abandoned it, turning instead to my swarm. They shifted positions, ready to use powers, to protect me against outside threats, and my bugs filled the spaces between them. The strangers around me responded in kind, preparing for a fight. Thirty, fifty people, waiting for me to act. More lurked in the fringes, ready to step in.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar experience, to be surrounded in chaos, to be arrayed against impossible odds. For what I was now, for what remained, it felt only natural. All of this was as I’d expected.
They were talking, exchanging hurried words, questions. Trying to cobble together a strategy. I had no such need. My side didn’t need to communicate. They were perfectly coordinated.
Everyone here was a potential ene
my, and I’d treat them appropriately. I just needed to focus, to get my bearings, and identify the biggest threats to me. If I eliminated or captured them, I could systematically kill everyone present.
It was… not a calming idea. But it reassured.
I was just a little unhinged, my perceptions were broken. I knew that. But if I had to live like this forever, if everyone was a threat for the rest of my life, I’d well and truly lose it. Stopping them, eliminating them and bringing them under my control…
The only way we’d all achieve anything resembling peace.
I’d wanted peace for a very, very long time now.
After everything I’d given up, I deserved peace.
Someone was pushing their way through the crowd around me. I tensed. My hand went to my knife again, and again it was stopped.
I heard the voice in my ear. It was trying to sound soothing, gentle, but it was failing. I heard the fear in it. That fear was reassuring in its own way. It told me I was right. That the world did revolve around fear and violence. That I was doing the right thing, standing guard, being ready for a fight at any moment.
The madness around me continued unabated, the shouting fading, then starting anew, picked up by others, different factions, fresh sets of lungs.
I wasn’t going to listen to the voice. Not with all of the powers arrayed against me. it would be idiotic and foolish if I did listen, whether I understood or not.
The others, they were arguing amongst themselves, barking out insults, yelling, pointing at me. I’d taken control of them, and that was a fresh wound.
The individual reached the edge of the crowd. A man, bearded, with a small entourage of people wearing white.
When he spoke, his voice was soothing, a constant stream of words, more like he was talking to a wounded animal than a person. He stopped at the circle’s edge, and I could see how many of the others were tense, wary.
They recognized him, and they didn’t like him.
If I was going to exterminate them all, then I could use the fact that they weren’t all friends. Let them fight each other, wear each other down…
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