RE: Masks 2
10-23-2021, 08:24 AM
Dr. Hartmann looked around the little hollow, before her tired eyes fell on her own personal Radka.
"So what's the game here? Hold me here until the end of time? Show me all the horrors you plan to unleash upon the Earth?" Emily shook her head. "Do you even have any long-term plans? Because it seems like you haven't thought anything through past 'become the Earth'. So unless someone's left some faster-than-light engine lying around somewhere, I hope you're looking forward to drifting in space forever."
---
Theraea remained crouched in place, still furiously working away at her project. Time was running out, but she had a little - she'd deflected the wave of burning blood with a hastily-conjured barrier, and it would take at least a moment for Radka to track her down. That was enough.
The Weaver's fingers flew across an alien keyboard, hastily rewriting the functionality of her reality anchor, while even more hastily rewiring it to charge with several times the safe tolerances in Abyssal energy. Enough for one singular pulse. One discharge of laws rewritten. One last hope, if this would even work. It would need to be well-placed, and it would need to count.
If the Radkas managed to see past the illusion, they would see Theraea standing tall, a strange gun in her hands. A black, rectangular door stood in front of her, clearly wavering and distorting from some interference from the tree itself - and it remained open just long enough for Theraea to fling her improvised device through. When that was done, she reached into a pocket and, impossibly, pulled out what appeared to be an authentic 13th-century Mongolian lance. With a beat of her wings, she charged into battle alongside her comrades. This was out of her hands now.
---
Meanwhile, just to the left of conventional reality, a lone Weaver sat in her room, enjoying a session of Stefano Kart: Twin Tear!! - a brand new game recovered from a drifting scrap of reality by an intrepid scouting team that had nothing better to do. Rather insistently, a message notification dinged, and she was forced to pause her game to check.
FROM: Mender Theraea, 17-Ibuarska
TO: Observer Cydia, 1-Amgarsk
PRIORITY LEVEL: CRITICAL
Cydia-
Package delivered to portal chamber. DANGEROUSLY UNSTABLE. Disconnect mauve wire and IMMEDIATELY send into CORE OF EARTH PRIME or otherwise CENTERMOST POINT OF ANOMALOUS TREE NETWORK. HURRY.
If I make it out alive, we should hang out more.
- Theraea
---
And in the portal chamber of Observation Post One, there sat a mass of hastily-MacGyvered technology, with a number of wires and other bits of machinery sticking out in all directions. Dormant for now, a new set of laws hummed away within, ready to explode out violently once set in motion.
A cessation of communication, to disrupt the networking of the trees.
A cessation of regeneration, that Radka might not heal from all wounds.
And an ordinance of withering, that the part of the plant network disrupted might not so easily be restored.
A gamble. A gamble atop a gamble atop a gamble. But maybe it would be enough to give the world's heroes a chance.
"So what's the game here? Hold me here until the end of time? Show me all the horrors you plan to unleash upon the Earth?" Emily shook her head. "Do you even have any long-term plans? Because it seems like you haven't thought anything through past 'become the Earth'. So unless someone's left some faster-than-light engine lying around somewhere, I hope you're looking forward to drifting in space forever."
---
Theraea remained crouched in place, still furiously working away at her project. Time was running out, but she had a little - she'd deflected the wave of burning blood with a hastily-conjured barrier, and it would take at least a moment for Radka to track her down. That was enough.
The Weaver's fingers flew across an alien keyboard, hastily rewriting the functionality of her reality anchor, while even more hastily rewiring it to charge with several times the safe tolerances in Abyssal energy. Enough for one singular pulse. One discharge of laws rewritten. One last hope, if this would even work. It would need to be well-placed, and it would need to count.
If the Radkas managed to see past the illusion, they would see Theraea standing tall, a strange gun in her hands. A black, rectangular door stood in front of her, clearly wavering and distorting from some interference from the tree itself - and it remained open just long enough for Theraea to fling her improvised device through. When that was done, she reached into a pocket and, impossibly, pulled out what appeared to be an authentic 13th-century Mongolian lance. With a beat of her wings, she charged into battle alongside her comrades. This was out of her hands now.
---
Meanwhile, just to the left of conventional reality, a lone Weaver sat in her room, enjoying a session of Stefano Kart: Twin Tear!! - a brand new game recovered from a drifting scrap of reality by an intrepid scouting team that had nothing better to do. Rather insistently, a message notification dinged, and she was forced to pause her game to check.
FROM: Mender Theraea, 17-Ibuarska
TO: Observer Cydia, 1-Amgarsk
PRIORITY LEVEL: CRITICAL
Cydia-
Package delivered to portal chamber. DANGEROUSLY UNSTABLE. Disconnect mauve wire and IMMEDIATELY send into CORE OF EARTH PRIME or otherwise CENTERMOST POINT OF ANOMALOUS TREE NETWORK. HURRY.
If I make it out alive, we should hang out more.
- Theraea
---
And in the portal chamber of Observation Post One, there sat a mass of hastily-MacGyvered technology, with a number of wires and other bits of machinery sticking out in all directions. Dormant for now, a new set of laws hummed away within, ready to explode out violently once set in motion.
A cessation of communication, to disrupt the networking of the trees.
A cessation of regeneration, that Radka might not heal from all wounds.
And an ordinance of withering, that the part of the plant network disrupted might not so easily be restored.
A gamble. A gamble atop a gamble atop a gamble. But maybe it would be enough to give the world's heroes a chance.