Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven – Tyrant and Emperor

They were separated by literally thousands of miles, and yet their eyes met instantly. The ancient reptile who'd just received a +4 Intellect boost and full Ranks in Diplomacy and Sense Motive for his Kaiju hit dice, and the primeval ape who'd just received the same, looked at one another in astonishment, never having seen one another anything resembling this way before.

Naturally they knew one another, rivals as old as they were. Tyrant Fuego was older by far, and had more Hit Dice, meaning his overall spiritual force was higher. But Emperor Mono was definitely smarter and wiser, showing more depth, and had a deeper understanding of primal forces, other than fire.

That said, they both could tell the other didn't want to fight, they were not intruding on one another's territories, the same event had woken both of them, there was no reason to tussle, and they both had relative strengths the other did not.

Really, they were both kind of astonished they understood the other so well. A breath or two later there were surges of questions arising that they'd never bother to ask under anything resembling the past, sensory impressions exchanged of what was coming, they worked out where the other one was almost instantly, compared their impressions of the events, and what was going to happen.

And then they both Looked At Me.

The Door between them and I peeled back, and I was brought right into their /room, simply by raw willpower. Expected, but still disconcerting.

-You're in a Reality Shard, and the Land is coming in to reclaim it,- I /explained, and then Barus was brought in, both of us hot, hard white lights whose thoughts were far less powerful, but far quicker and more agile, to an almost dizzying extent compared to these two ageless behemoths... me naturally outshining Barus, but him showing that point of Exemplar Lite which got their attention for a transcendent bloodline.

His Commune with Nature went off, and these two Kaiju finally got to be aware of something sooooo much bigger than they were.

That awareness of pain, of the distortion in Reality that warped time and space, was made abundantly clear. The Land was finally able to expand into this area, reclaim it, heal the wound that was gaping open. It didn't get all of it, but part of it, at least.

Everything that they could look or see, that whole great wall of light? That was all a tiny little bit of pain being eased by The Land. All that power they wielded, the magic that they could sense and empowered them? It was so small on the macro scale that the Land scarcely cared, and yet so high on the micro that a being whose awareness was so profound could not help but be proudly aware of them.

They were less than gnats walking on the skin of the Land.

---

Any ire they had vanished under that incredible awareness, tied directly into the source of all their might. They could recognize the Land; how could they not, having accumulated so much power, such insights, over so many years? But now, they recognized the power was not just power, it was something alive... and it knew and recognized them, favored little children the Land had nurtured through the eons.

There were spiritual rumblings like earthquakes all around me as minds accustomed to just moving on magnificent instincts were suddenly Enlightened. The Druidic power and knowledge that Barus held, the entirety of his enhanced understanding and feeling of Nature, was opened to them, and it rippled across their minds like crashing tsunami.

Elder Arg came in, his monkey brothers; every Caster, one by one; the Ironblooded; Kings and generals, opening up to those two massive presences, the Map sprawling open around them, the awareness of time and place and gods and magic and life, and the large, large world around them which they now understood far more deeply than they had before.

Reality came, and swept over them.

The mountain beneath Fuego's feet eroded and died. Those monkeys who couldn't reach Mono wavered, and vanished into ages reclaimed, millennia stolen now returned. We all watched the great jungle that was their home fall into ash, less than ash, taken and stolen away with all its creatures, leaving only the thousands of apes and monkeys atop and hanging from the body of the Emperor, who simply exerted his will and returned what needed to be returned, and kept what was equitable behind, aided by the vague wavering of the great Formation Elder Arg had raised around his ancestor.

The Wall of Light swept past on its four-hundred second journey, Mono's head turning, Fuego seeing what was coming, understanding as the vastness of the horizon was suddenly a very small area, less than half a mile across. The Fire Tyrant looked up at the sky, understanding without comprehending the signs and patterns and fracturing of the wave coming towards him, and awaited it calmly, absolutely sure it could do him no harm.

It washed over and past, and he held onto his Time, as the Land didn't care, and his will was strong enough to make it so.

------

He lifted his foot, a taloned locomotive which was literally an arm's-length away from me now, and put it down a hundred feet away, turning as he did over top of me, turning to see the light advancing still as the ground jumped, his tail swaying slowly.

Less than a quarter-mile away, spitting distance for creatures like them, Emperor Mono, still adorned in monkeys, grunted once. With only a few screeches and grunts, the monkeys and apes got off him as fast as they could, streaming off him even faster than they had arrived. He turned his great golden head to watch the light sweep down the Shardzone, and Reality collapse back to what it had always been supposed to be behind it.

Ape and dinosaur eyed the Slow Zones to either side; I explained what they were with only the brush of a question, they comprehended, it was done.

Neither made a sign of aggression towards the other. Neither of them wanted to stay here, there was no territorial aggression, no status to affirm, no hunger. They could fight... but why? For now, there was no reason.

Briggs and I astutely began to withdraw from the area, not wanting to be stepped on by talons longer than a giant's pike. It wasn't all that far to the way out, and pretty much everyone else was withdrawing, too.

There were other survivors, of course: Evilborn and undead, mostly, some Aberrations who could endure the retracted time. Barus just turned his thoughts to those, his Communing with Nature, and the instant revulsion and unnaturalness of them hissed through the mental space like a swirl of foul shit.

Two pairs of great eyes turned from something big, down upon those things that were very small. A lot of eyeballs got very, very small, very quickly.

-Emperor Mono, touch your nose,- I /informed him. -Tyrant Fuego, second Rune on your Horn.-

Huge paws came up to touch a great snout, the Marks and the Patterns locked to them transferred to his palms. He looked at them, and the active Mark, while Fuego's burning eyes locked onto the intriguing glowing Patterns on his nose horn.

I hadn't had time to Empower them, of course, but those Patterns were for a full Zehn Slot set of Weapon Enchantments.

-You take a Soulshaper Level like This.-

'Cause damn if I was going to be the one to pop their chakras open.

Emerald fountains geysered upwards on their paws/claws and feet, gathered on the feet of the one and the hands of the other.

What was Karma to them? They were living Karma. They poured energy into those Runes drawn onto them, and ten goddamn Slots of Weapon magic lit up at the same time, general enhancement of their natural attacks. Two hundred days of Naming Karma, ping, done in a second or two.

Greater Soulbound, +IV, and Blooding and Vivic optional. If they wanted more, they'd have to devote Karma to the Epic Limit, and Elder Arg could draw the Patterns for them.

Still, rote +VIII wasn't going to be lacking against anything short of a really strong Eternal, or an Avatar.

Vivic was what we wanted here. After all, didn't want this shit contaminating the Land.

Some of the creatures that were closer to the exit began to flee... and discovered the Ironblood and a lot of Casters were in their way, and my, look at all those Marked monkeys coming in from behind with rather serious expressions.

The hundreds of surviving things who were drawn up between these two office-building sized monstrosities and the Hole, well, they couldn't back up quick enough.

Mono bellowed, a horn-like sound louder than thunder, sufficient to pop a lot of eardrums in front of him. Fuego roared, a rising, raging explosion coming out of millions of years ago to dominate in the present.

Two mighty fists came down on several clustered daemons. They splattered, and vivus exploded. The ground heaved, hurling hapless survivors into the air, and with very improbable speed, a huge hand swept across and smashed into dozens at once, compressing them to mulch and sending unwhite flames sailing towards the Slow Zone not far away.

Fuego bent down and breathed.

Plenty of stuff resistant or even immune to fire there. Didn't help them. That wasn't just fire, that was a burning particle stream of plasma, energy, and burning atoms moving at great speed, and happily ripping stuff apart into excitable smaller bits as it did so.

The ground glassed in passing as the flames of Fuego played over it, and everything else atomized. Little puffs of white burned here, there, and everywhere, and the Tyrant stepped forward... his step not even making the ground shake, only the misting tips of his talons leaving a mark behind.

---

"So that's what it means to confront mega-damage," Briggs mused, watching the carnage as titanic ape and dinosaur, both of them radiating a feeling like finding something rotten in their lunch, went on a killing spree. Just the shockwaves from Mono's fists alone were pulping huge numbers of the enemy, and damn, his hands were fast. The wind alone was hurling the unfortunate survivors around like leaves.

Them poor Damned sots thinking they'd live through a fire equal parts Fire, atomic Radiance, and Force... well, that was a pipe dream.

Of course, they could try to fly, but when facing things that could generate hurricane-force winds with a casual motion, that didn't work too well.

Some were dumb and tried for the Slow Zones. Naturally they hit them and started moving through them like molasses. A fist or a tail swept through, unhindered by the time differential, and creatures went splat boom whiteness...

-There is something coming,- /said Brother Shadowknife, as the two kaiju rapidly cleared the area, sweeping half a square mile free of life in less than two minutes between the two of them. The yawning darkness of the Hole ahead, now looking like a much more normal hole going down into blackness, received a lot of hapless burning bodies, like unwhite meteors falling into darkness below.

Both kaiju grumbled with familiar contempt and wariness, stepping away from the lip of the darkness. Lightning crackled in thick streams around Mono's fists, blue-white patterns were sharp against the black scales of Fuego's legs.

Heh, five Slots off the bat, too, them ancient bastards, them!

Up it came out of the pit, round and mottled in color, tendrils jutting out here and there and being withdrawn, trailing down for hundreds of feet, a haze of spores and particles surrounding it in a poisonous, killing miasma that rippled with corrupting, decaying energies.

Lots of us little people's eyes narrowed despite ourselves.

A Mu Spore kaiju...

Just how much was this thing worth?...