The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

The architecture was... unnerving. There was nothing explicitly dangerous about this dimension, but little cues and clues filtered through its bizarre appearance and let your subconscious know you weren't welcome. The work of dead empires, it spelled itself out to her in beige and blue like black and white.

Nothing immediately presented itself as the obvious answer to her questions, so for a while she simply watched the inhabitants. Survivors. Shards of shards, tossed on sparse stages and reflecting the emptiness within their fragments-of-selves. She watched them struggle with what they were, how that compared to what they were supposed to replicate. It depressed her.

There'd been a round here, of what she could only assume was the Observer's battle. A closer look at the corpse leaking sluggishly out of every nook in the reality confirmed as such, and she almost smiled. Had he learnt nothing from his dealings with the Faceless?

Why here, though? Why not skip the prelude, the suspense, and just give her the coordinates to the current round? To the Observer?

Most of the cameos below busied themselves with what she could only assume were the usual tasks for the natives of a Battle-injected world. She glanced back through time and space to nine worlds - seven, deserted; one, a shell of a world packed with simulacra, a lively locale for as long as there were real entities to appreciate it; one, a home to thousands. Not in the past, not until recently. Right now.

A home to thousands, dragged from orbit.

...

Scout sighed. She wanted this diversion over and done with.

---

Xadrez tried praying. Nothing too wheedly and desparate, more of a celestial sounding board to see who might be listening.

The gods responded in bet-hedging turn - to wit, they didn't. That was ok. Xadrez could work with that. He could through the Middle-Gem already feel the Library's subtle transition from isolated peak to the top of the world, and he could work with that too. He ignored Kracht and the silver soldiers for the moment, attuning himself to the Middle-Gem's pulse and getting reacquainted with his chessboard. It was obtuse without his pieces, clumsy work without his knife, and the cubic-crystal silver frost that rimmed the board rang - rang in a way dulled his hands to the wrist when his fingers strayed too close. Xadrez grimaced. It was restricting his workspace, and whatever resigned-fey mood he'd tapped into when he'd initiated the first paradigm shift wasn't coming back to him.

Reinhardt: Reinhardter stopped trying to kill the unliving entity which was Kracht, shoved him aside, and seized the Middle-Gem with no resistance. Xadrez just kind of dangled, calm in the knowledge the Amalgam's forces hadn't been prepared to deal with two precision-carved rocks and a ghost.

"Hand over the Middle-Gem," intoned the silver warlord. The spectral one rolled his eyes even as Reinhardt ran him through with a sword, and beckoned to the Catastrologus, which they'd all just kind of left lying around. The centrefold yanked itself from under the feet of every man-shaped thing still standing, robbing Reinhardt of his footing and sending discarded books flying. The Catastrologus flew to Xadrez' hand even as the rest of him slammed the board (dragged down by Reinhardter). Xadrez adjusted his grip, twisted as best he could to make the most of momentum, then squarely jammed the tome in the warlord's metalloid face.

It crumpled. Xadrez forced his fingers in, and opened the book a crack.

Reinhardt's head split open as the centrefold forcibly unpacked itself, a midnight torrent of angles and stars heralded by still-rippling thunder. The figurine shrieked (in a satisfyingly muffled fashion). He released the Middle-Gem, and Xadrez pulled out his sword and tossed it to Kracht.

Kracht was about to warn Xadrez that these silver men weren't typical fleshy Amalgam-arms, and by dint of being solid mineral they were actually offering a decent fight. On clockwork cue, two more crashed through the observatory roof, but failed to stick the landing. One cannoned through the trapdoor, turning it to splinters, and Xadrez spun sharply at the noise. He swiftly analysed the other, took in the sparking joints and the writhing iron limbs and the storm seen swirling through the holes in the roof.

The storm from nowhere, singing the song of souls - a tempestuous testament to the deaths of men.

This was his battle, he'd staked his claim, declared he cared for the Library. The Middle-Gem. The final bastion of inhumanity.

He was battling for the Place, and through the Middle-Gem, it knew.

---

Jen was knocked off her feet by the blast, and rolled more by accident into the remnants of a crater as the other five bombs went off. The moon just shook and improbably rained flaming rubble on her for a few minutes, though one of her more insociable force-broadswords (appelation: Thrummagem) was shielding her from the worst of it. She waited for the eerie silence to settle in, but the tremors and deep cracking noises pressed on.

She finally chanced a look over the crater rim, and saw stars and a dizzying not-drop into an infinite void. Yanking her gaze from that, the obnoxious raven and the marignally more obnoxious Cedric weren't in the immediate vicinity. Good. Jen dusted off her battledress as best she could, and stood-

-and almost lifted herself off her feet. The gravity had changed, for the significantly smaller celestial body. Not good. She didn't have far to run before the Place swung into view below. She jammed her omnisword (a snippy, whippy rapier) into the ground for support, trying to focus on standing relative to the ground and not at the perpendicular Place.

The moon spread dismayingly outward, the explosions having split it into half a dozen sizeable rocks that were definitely falling, albeit slowly. Jen, fighting initial panic at the sight, could smell magic, or the smell given to magic so you knew it was leaking. She probed the cliff with her sword, then scuttled over the edge and found gravity shifting. Cedric stood some way off, wreathed in blooms of explosion and incinerating what could only have been the remnants of Luna Lane, exposed by the satellite-splitting detonation. Jen could forgive herself for not being blind-furious, because with the Place hunkered in the sky above nausea was a fair bit easier. The twist in her gut inconveniently reminded her to look up, where the other pieces of the moon were drifting with stately deadliness down and away. She could probably jump up, fall, and spring off those and maybe take Cedric by surprise, but one such strike was unlikely to down him.

A ceremonial claymore piped up, which startled Jen considering the two hadn't spoken in years. Star Canise reminded the queen he had perfectly servicable moonrock trim, and if Mother Moon's magic needed a place to hide until things calmed down a bit, well, he'd be more than happy to oblige. Presuming, you understand, that her former majesty can kill this blazing moron. Jen was about to argue against siphoning Mother Moon into what was still technically a sword made of Amalgam, but Star Canise's snotty attitude was coming back to her. She brought the sword down at the familiar, stilted angle, remembering in a single stroke the pomp and choking circumstance and two diplomatic disputes sandwiching one righteously trashed pagoda. The bad old days, before Jen decreed that things would stop making so much sense.

The moon (all its constituent pieces) rang, a single, sharp note the colour of royalty. The wind didn't pick up around Jen, not in a position to exist in space, but moonsong swirled around her in a vortex nonetheless. Cedric's aura of fire sputtered, drained of fuel. He turned in the direction his dying flames flickered, and his grin followed suit. He pulled the last of traces of explosion onto his sword, and Jen hefted her own crackling sword with difficulty. If any sword could store an abstract force of nature like Mother Moon, it would be Jen's, but the magical feedback was already getting tangled up in her psyche. A wholly unfamiliar maternal instinct was definitely worming its way in there, and it was all Jen could do to channel it into something more constructive like, say, the instinct to rip apart whatever was threatening her cubs. Country. Yeah, that'd do.

The once-queen bared her teeth, and charged. Mom hummed approvingly in the back of her mind, and blanketed her in light as Cedric launched a wave of fire. Jen pierced it like a moonbeam. Their two swords crashed like cymbals, the Place creeping a little closer from below with every strike.

---

Arkal lowered his Stuff-sword, which was only getting heavier the more mooks he had to carve through. He needed a fresh plan of attack. He clambered atop the nearest pile of silver soldiers and roared at the phasmid.

"Klaus! Stop this madness."

The stick insect just clicked and hissed in response, his machine spitting out another file of soldiers.

"What happens to you when the Amalgam's plan is complete?"

"I crumble in humanity's grip, traitor!" shrieked Klaus.

Arkal smashed a soldier's face in with a well-placed mace. The grunts had him surrounded on his corps-pile, so he leapt to the base of the recently-constructed diamond spire. The senselessness of everything in the cultist's lair just made him angry. This model he and the silver troops fought across was beautiful, the work of a master craftsman. Arkal snapped off a mountain peak like an icicle and jammed it through a spearman.

This stick-insect cared about its craft, and used it unthinkingly to such terrible ends. Why?

The mountain-spiked spearman lurched over and tackled Arkal as he sidestepped another's sword, and the two of them came crashing down on a strip mall. Klaus hissed with frustration, but didn't move from beside the machine spitting out soldiers. Arkal's forge blocked a sword, but the smith snapped out of it at the clang and knocked the offending swordsman's silver feet out from under him. He got to his feet a little slower, using the diamond mountain and its library to help himself up.

"Klaus, listen to me! Not as a human, but as a craftsman!"

The phasmid flinched, another phalanx stepping in front of him to stop Arkal. Klaus lowered his tools and blinked.

"I just need to understand. You're clearly proud of your creations, and very skilled. So, why do you help the Amalgam when it'd destroy all your beautiful work?"

Klaus had almost looked interested, but his antennae drooped and he turned back to the piles of scrap.

"No, no," he wheezed. "You cannot understand, you are a traitor to your own kind and never heard the Song. I was human once, yes, yes I was. I heard the Amalgam's Song, I heard its song and it rejected me, drew out my inhumanity and warped me." Klaus motioned his guards to charge, already finishing another. "You cannot have heard it, heard the Song, else you would have accepted the Amalgam unconditionally!"

Arkal sighed, punching and mowing his way through the throng again until he could talk to Klaus again comparatively unimpeded . "Are you sure we heard the same thing!? Because I did hear it, and well, I couldn't say I didn't think it was nice -"

"NICE!?" Klaus click-shrieked, bugging eyes only exacerbated by his condition. "The Amalgam's Song was the creation of all humanity! To hear it is to weep and know that no creation, in all the Multiverse, will ever compare!"

Arkal lopped a soldier's head clean off, and kicked the torso over. "Right, we definitely didn't hear the same thing. Because, Klaus, I found it rather inspiring. Inspiring enough to forge the greatest work in all my years as a smith."

Klaus twitched his mandibles, exuding not-quite pine scented irritation. Arkal felt sure he'd gotten through to him, but the toymaker jerkily shook his head and reattached a soldier's arm.

"Keh! Such words only exalt the Amalgam. Of course, of course the Song would inspire you, a human! Even a traitrous human, yes! It rewrote your traitor-thoughts into patterns beyond our comprehension, wrote in you, a great smith, instructions for a weapon befitting humanity's champion! You must have, must have forged a blade that could hunt every last traitor, slay any beast, fell any monster-"

Arkal pulled out Weo's scythe, clearing the room with a roar of fire. "Almost, Klaus." He leapt upon the Chairman's Hill, brandishing an invisible rapier of Stuff.

"I used the Song, and I made it into a sword. That sword slayed the Ovoid itself! Amalgam." Arkal frowned. "Whatever. Jen - maybe you've met her, she was the one who killed it."

The stick insect wrung his hands. His breathing sounded close to fitful, and Arkal could almost see the conenctions in his brain missing their destinations.

"No. No, no no. No. You lie! No one man, no one human could do it. The Amalgam's Song is perfection! The, the culmination of humanity itself! Yes! To turn, to turn it into a sword, to dare improve on perfection - that is beyond blasphemy! Beyond blasphemy, beyond treason, it's impossible!"

The soldiers lowered their swords at their maker's screams, before returning to his side to protect him. The machine still clanged and whirred and spat out silver men unbidden, and when Klaus finally found his voice it chattered and clicked and stunk of fear and anger.

"You liar, yes, liar, you claim you made perfection sharper, lighter, stronger, you claim you mastered forged the Song - you, you!"

Klaus hissed, clutching his tools like a child with its blanket, immune to reason that the monsters weren't real and those square inches of flannel weren't protecting you from shit.

"YOU WILL NOT LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE!"

---

The stormclouds parted for just long enough to let what was left of the moon glint through, before another semi-electrocuted soldier broke what was left of the roof. Xadrez deliberated for a bit, then started dragging dismembered dolls aside to get at the trapdoor. Instructing Kracht to continue repelling them, he fumbled his way down the ladder and drifted as urgently as he was capable back to the sitting room. Other than a whole lot of Undercurrent splashed all over the place and a trail of foot-shaped prints leading to the tower room, things had been left mostly undisturbed.

Xadrez picked up a remnant ream of something tidily combining the physical properties of silk and fog, trying to make heads or tails of it. Tracing one particular thread to one end of the ribbon led him to Tia, the eldest of the Norns. She looked a little bit queasy teal, but still pulled a stern enough expression that even Xadrez quailed.

I don't suppose you interrogated that
whatever it was

Tia just flicked her crests, divesting Xadrez of her weftwork and growling a slow, judgemental death-rattle.

Fine
the short of it is that the rock you dredged up has what should have been a premediated appointment
I have due concern however that my incursion was not
and that the prescribed series of events has not accounted for this
At any rate this device- Xadrez opened his fist, half-expecting the Norn to dispose of it swiftly as she did Converse -has information intended for Kracht
Weighing the risks and merits of following the intruder's instructions would be easier if I knew even some of this machine's contents

The Norn glanced up at the ceiling, at the maltreated Catastrologous in the tactician's off hand. She tutted, or at least clicked her teeth in a fair approximation.

The Librarian's pelt is a poor fit for you, Once-General
You're much a beast after your mistress
One of life's catabolists, an un-doer

You cannot think I'd not resent that, said Xadrez, eyes narrowed, Middle-Gem buzzing. Tia blinked reproachfully, swaddling herself in fatesilk. She pushed her hair behind an ear-antler with a claw, dislodging the purple flower nestled there.

I did not dismiss your position within some vaunted construct of
order, nor,
did I call you destruction
Order has its ends, Once-General
A name and place to such ends does not absolve them

Kajura flopped from the ceiling, chattering at her sister and licking blood off her eyelids. Should such ends ever absolution seek!

Indeed, snickered Tia, not taking her eyes off Xadrez.
A Librarian does not pursue knowledge,
they accrue it,
sort it,
lay it out in its vestements
for a true hero's perusal

You are no Librarian, Once-General
Let me be clear on that

You
seem to know much of this fabled beast, said Xadrez. His fingers closed around the chip, hestitated, before he leant forward and proferred it. Peppi, the Dredge Norn, materialised grinning, her hands around the tactician's. She took the chip, flitted back to her cauldron, and tossed it in. The gunmetal sea vanished, replaced with the not-colour of Time Itself. Peppi, already elbow-deep in anticipation, looked to Tia for an order.

Where to begin?

Tia looked to Xadrez, who looked to the Middle-Gem. Crux and crutch and cirumstance.

wherever Fates lead, he smiled. Peppi's claw arced through the air, trailing promise like glitter.

---

Hector grabbed Emma by the shoulder, a peacock with abjuring runes where its eyespots should be leaping into existence between them and the silver Broderburgs. "Get a grip," he hissed at her. The ugly squawk of a peafowl getting its bearings snapped her out of it, and she took a stumbling step forward.

Hector watched as time crashed to a halt, before realising that time had just floored the brakes and was proceeding at a crawl. Emma fell to one knee, breath ragged. She stood at pained leisure, and there was a panic in her eyes that suggested to Hector a trap by the Amalgam's forces. Then she turned to him with the same look, and it was clearly confusion. Unfamiliarity.

Memories caught up in hops, skips, and mental leaps. Emma smiled at the king, and only winced a litle. Were Hector better-versed in the fundamentals of magic, he might've recognised a transaction at work, a freshly-warped reality's kickback upon metabolism and psyche. In Emma's case, to her chronology on top of that.

"It's a temporal bubble - while we're in it we're faster, so the world runs slower. An old soldier friend taught me this trick."

The change in Emma's demeanour was jarring. There was a hint of pride to her voice, like nobody had been expecting her to come up with a solution, and yet, here we were. Hector almost asked her if she was really all right, when she noticed (for the first time, again) the silver soldiers. She watched the hypnotic-slow flourish of anger on her parents' chrome faces, and looked to Hector more confused than anything.

"They aren't my parents," decided Emma. "Allie said they had to leave, find a place we could all hide-" -time took a choked breath- "- but let's face it. They're dead." She blinked, and was much more like herself again (from Hector's limited experience). "Right. The rate those soldiers are flying in, they'll have us surrounded in no time. Have you got any artillery?"

Hector pondered, then snapped his fingers. "Archer fish." A squad of what were definitely too big and too muscly-armed to be real archer fish appeared, before hitting the ground with a series of wet "fwip"s. Emma watched them flop about silently, before Hector muttered, "fish eagles. Porcupines." The flying steeds and their back-mounted ammo materialised, picked up the fish, and stood to attention.

"We'll need a mount of our own, too. Something fast and untrackable, preferably."

"Excuse me? There's no way we're leaving the whale."

"Why not?"

Hector racked his brains. "Fuck. I can't remember."

Emma rolled her eyes. The peacock, by the edge of the time bubble, honked uncertainly as the soldiers advanced. "The throne room may be a more defensible position than your bedchamber, my liege," counselled Huginn.

"The throne room," Hector mumbled. He extricated another zebra and a cavalcade of spitting cobras, then pulled Emma aboard and drew his sword. Huginn perched on the zebra's hindquarters, and Tom Broderburg's sword was moving in an incremental overhead swinging motion toward the barrier's edge.

Emma finished coughing, and undid the barrier with zero fanfare. There was an indignant bray, a clang, and a mystical thrumming as the peacock dodged a sword and activated its eyespots in quick succession. The zebra leapt into motion, trampling a soldier and making for the exit.

"Emma, honey, come back!" cried Clarice, as she strangled a peacock with her bare hands.

"Listen to your mother when she's speaking to you," scolded Tom. Hector just supported Emma, close as she was to passing out and falling off the zebra. The Chromeburg flung his sword, missing the king but impaling in the doorway with a squelch. Pain, or at least the concept of it, flashed through Hector's head.

"Shit." He tossed gold-leafcutter ants like confetti as he ran, hoping they could digest at least some of the silver and stitch the whale back together. Another half-dozen soldiers fell into the fray - six dull thumps in the pit of Hector's stomach.

---

Scout heard reality, or rather, the dead Ovoid intertwined in it, yielding and breaking as an amateur mage negotiated a portal out of it. The Observer clearly hadn't tidied up after his last round, which was the same breed of chicanery that gave rise to problems like the Amalgam. Or so Scout suspected. Figuring at least some obligation as a denizen of the Multiverse, if not to irresponsible Grandmasters, she swooped off her perch to assess the situation.

Kath was marching double-time along a snaking branch, wide as a road and ensconced with new growth that received many a defoliating whip when the path became overgrown. The day was looking salvagable until the spring green turned spearmint, and the temperature dropped too fast for the Tree to actually muster a response along the lines of dying. Kath whirled around, and caught a glimpse of something in the guise of a woman before the air froze around her.

Kath screamed profanity as best she could with her jaw locked, before the frigid bitch tilted her head a little and silenced her.

"You're not from any battle I've seen." Scout's tone was distinctly incurious. "Who are you? What were you doing in that city? Why are you leaving?"

A bright green flame rushed through Kath- "that's none of your damn business" -she snarled, and pounced through the thawed-out air. Her whip bit the woman's cheek, failing to draw blood but making the should've-been-a-cut issue curls of mist, vaguely reminicent of Xadrez.

"It is my business, insofar as I'll bury you under the roots of this tree if I believe you are any credible threat to me or my interests." Scout's voice struck a perfect accord between exaggerated boredom and legitimate supreme indifference, and Kath despite herself admired it. "That city was the site of a Battle, and such locales normally restrict interdimensional travel." She paused. "That is not to say your incursion violates our rules; in fact, if I deem you and your goals no threat to the Battles' integrity, you may go."

Kath had no way to tell if this ice queen would kill her anyway, so settled for the truth. "I'm not in one of those fight things," she growled. "There was one passed through the dive I used to live in, but after that I headed me own way. There was this place called, well, the Place, and I was supposed to be queen of it, but the stupid leggers kept wanting their old queen back. I figured I'd be better off killing her than killing all the dissidents, so I chased her to back there." Kath, to her surprise and loathing for this woman, had no problem jamming a thumb the way she'd come. "I cut a deal with the guy who's going to command my army or what have you, and the two disappeared when that beige thing died, but I've just got to go kill me some Grandmasters and the ghost's mine by contract."

Scout raised an eyebrow, or at least ended up in a state with one raised eyebrow. "You're going to 'kill some Grandmasters.'"

"Once you unmount your high marlin and send me on my way, yeah."

You couldn't really tell with her eyes pure white, but Scout gave the mermaid a long look up and down, choosing her words. "You."

"It's not like I've got else better to do! Xadrez being a stubborn fool who won't serve me until the lot of them're dead."

Kath felt the ambient temperature drop another couple of degrees. She wondered if being deep-frozen was going to be her punishment for taking the direct approach, but Scout eventually settled for "Xadrez." It was almost a question.

"Yeah. Xadrez."

"Spectral entity. Humanoid. Bound to a large black disc, carries a knife. Master tactician. A warlord. Circumstances unknown following the death and banishment, respectively, of the two chief gods of his world." Kath, through the rising voice of Scout, would've claimed most of that sounded about right, less the bits where she had no idea, but the World Tree swayed as if in a storm. She couldn't move. Leaves cracked and fell, a shower of glass fragments splintering and ringing off the branches and slicing at the mermaid's skin like Scout's cry. The goddess laughed, a noise as colourless as her distintegrating form - only grief gave it the faintest tint.

"The Observer! Has stolen Xadrez! From a world sealed against me! Oh, how the Agents of this outer Hell conspire!"

The cold rushed from the air, whirling into a focus upon which the storm of spirits alighted. Scout composed herself again from the shoal, and the single point of utter cold stretched into a thin-lipped smile.

"My thanks, little godslayer." Scout stepped aside, imperceptibly inclining her head. "You're free to leave." Kath found that, indeed, she was, and had the good sense not to waste it arguing with an chaotic ghost-storm. She ran from winter, ran until the Tree returned to spring.

---

Cedric was winning, to the surprise of basically nobody in the extant multiverse. Jen barely rolled out of the way of the train-rocket, which Cedric had dragged up and launched into a recuperating Jen just to be a douchebag about it. Jen's moon magic could only help so much - siphoning it off the moon itself for safekeeping was no good if she burnt it all trying to take Cedric down anyway. A full-frontal assault was also out, considering her bloody mother would happily use the last of her strength to shield Jen from a fireball or a nasty cut or even a bit of glare in her eyes.

She checked in with Star Canise, did some likely-inaccurate mental arithmetic, before rushing forward and dancing again through fire like it was all choreographed. She'd tried half a dozen swords, and none seemed to truly equal Cedir'c Silver Sword.

A scrap of something black sailed past her shoulder, screeching and latching onto the omniknight's face. Jen took the lapse to retreat a step. Muninn cawwed and clawed and the tang of burnt feathers contaminated the air, another dose of dizzy to the upside-down world. By the time Cedric had gotten a hand round its neck and set the raven alight, Jen had found the Impossible Blade again. Tabbing once over to Star Canise for the necessary boost of speed and a curt farewell, Jen charged.

Her blade charged clear through armour and ribs. Cedric didn't sputter, though his infernal halo obliged. The ex-queen got another physics-defying slash across Cedric's back before he staggered around. He managed two steps before the smell of blood rose from his insides, and pain finally overcame hyperhuman drive. Cedric raised his arms, grimacing, Muninn in one fist and his sword in the other.

Jen wondered for a split second if he raised those hands in surrender, when Cedric's expression twisted. He slammed Muninn's remains on the ground and brought down his sword with both arms and the last of his strength.

Muninn buckled, and seemed to swallow the Silver Sword right to the hilt, which released one final ring of fire, big and flashy and more for show than to actively incinerate. Cedric didn't have the strength to look at Jen, much less stand, but he hauled his head up at least on the cue of a mechanical glunk as the hilt hit rock.

No one-liner. Just a look of abject hatred, and yawning cracks radiating from the sword in the stone, splitting what remained unsplit again and again until the entire third of a moon was swiftly reduced to gravel. Jen didn't have a chance to leap so much as gravity stopped working, "the moon underfoot" falling apart. The Place, neglected all this time, claimed her and what was left of the Moon as its own badly-displaced landstuff.

Jen enjoyed about half a minute of weightlessness, of the silence of space and a dying Cedric, before she could feel the headfirst Placeward creep. The moonrocks and moongravel and ruined trainrocket joined her in descent, a stately drift that couldn't last forever.