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Just InCommunityForumMoreAn Essence of Silver and Steel by James D. Fawkes Books » Worm Rated: M, English, Supernatural & Fantasy, Skitter, Tattletale, Panacea, Words: 636k+, Favs: 5k+, Follows: 5k+, Published: Jun 3, 2017 Updated: Jun 5, 2021 4,277Chapter 56: Tyranny 6-10

Tyranny 6.10

I'd always known. I hadn't wanted to admit it, I'd forced myself not to think about it, I'd denied it and tried to come up with every excuse, but I'd always, always known that the heroes I used were real people. That they'd once been flesh and blood and committed those great and terrible deeds for which they had been immortalized.

Even so, I'd denied the possibility, because of her. The one hero I wouldn't, couldn't use, no matter what. As long as I could pretend that there was no substance to my heroes, I could pretend she wasn't real. The wondrous, magical aspects to them only made it easier, because no one believed in magic, anymore.

But I'd always known, somewhere deep inside, that I was just fooling myself. That these heroes were real.

That she was real.

I knew because I knew her, and I knew her better than any other. How could I not? She was closer to me than any lover, any sister, any mother. I understood her in ways others could only dream of; her aspirations, her ambitions, her thoughts and feelings, they were all as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.

That was why I had absolutely refused to use her.

I had only ever Installed her once, and that once had been enough for a lifetime. Alone in the dark, shivering and afraid, desperate and maybe even dying, I had called out for someone to save me. I hadn't cared who it was or what they wanted in return, only that someone reached down and pulled me from that Hell.

I offered everything I was in exchange. Just as long as I was saved.

There was only one Heroic Spirit who had answered such a pathetic wish.

Heroic Spirit Khepri. From the dismal future of a different world was another me who became a Heroic Spirit. By sacrificing everything she was, by willingly casting aside whatever was necessary in order to save the world, she gained the power to enslave others — hero, villain, the threat she faced was one that required forgetting such categories in favor of the strongest, most unified army possible — and took the fight to…what, I didn't know. I hadn't wanted to know.

She answered me, and with a thousand skittering voices, I was protected from the filth in that locker.

And I'd spent the last four months running away from her.

When you came face to face with your own mistakes, the only thing you could do was look away.

There was no more running, now. I was simply out of other options, and if I wanted to save my friends, I couldn't afford to shy away from the one power, the one hero, who could protect them. Lisa and Amy were far more important than my fears and insecurities.

So, I didn't wait for everything to settle. I didn't take a moment to self-examine, to consider how my body had transformed. To begin with, this was simply an older version of myself. Instead, I reached for the power that was now mine and shouted at the top of my lungs the name of the Noble Phantasm that would let me save my friends.

Queen of Administration

"KHEPRI!"

Because to do that, I had to stop the fighting.

FIGHT

The world halted as everyone froze. Everyone in the area, everyone within the considerable range of my power, they all stopped. Everyone, from those who had been in the middle of attacking, to those who had been using targeted strikes to draw attention, to those who had been moving the wounded out of the way, to those who had been doing their best — whether through powers or through first aid — to treat the wounded, to even Noelle herself.

They all became mine.

FIGHT

It was the only way to save Lisa and Amy. I had to stop the fighting.

In life, during Gold Morning, the radius had been a meagre sixteen feet. Paltry, almost useless on its own. But the legend of Khepri contained a nearly limitless range, capable of stretching to any place, not only on Earth Bet, but on other Earths, as well. Even if the reality had involved the use of Doormaker's powers, that legend had increased the power and range of this Noble Phantasm when she became a Heroic Spirit.

Now, it covered the whole Trainyard.

FIGHT

By taking control of everyone, I could stop the fighting.

Breathe, I commanded my new familiars, and they all took breath, again. My control was simply that absolute, that they could do nothing I didn't order them to do. None of them had the resistance or mental defenses necessary to deny me.

As it should be. Even if some of these people would one day make it to the Throne, right now, they were all living humans.

FIGHT

I hated it, if I was honest. Even during Gold Morning, it had never been a pleasure or something I wanted, it was always only a necessity, a means towards an end. Khepri had become who she was always because it was necessary, though. Looking back at the end of that fight, I'd had some regrets, but she wouldn't for a moment have changed a thing if it meant letting the world die.

I had to stop the fighting.

FIGHT

My mental grasp reached out to Eidolon, to twist him to my will, to take him and make him mine, and he resisted more than most. If it was anything other than a Noble Phantasm, he might have been able to muster a power to throw it off. Even still, the possibility existed that there was some power in his repertoire that would make his mind inviolable or create mental partitions, and in that case, he would absolutely be able to break free.

But right now, he couldn't. After a short, token struggle, he became wholly and completely mine.

Had to stop the fighting.

FIGHT

I forced him to dissipate the attack he'd been about to use on Noelle, the one that would have killed her and my friends. He fought against it, fought to keep hold of it, struggling against me like an ant against a mountain, but in the end, even Eidolon hadn't had as strong a will to face that final battle as I had. He'd let himself be defeated by guilt, rather than rushing on ahead no matter what, and he wasn't strong enough to overpower my will.

The attack vanished like so much dust in the wind.

Had to stop the fighting.

FIGHT

I gritted my teeth against the encroaching madness that buzzed at the edges of my mind. Focus, I told myself. Focus.

I had to… Had to save my friends. Right. Save my friends. That was why I was doing this. Why I had chosen this Noble Phantasm.

Stop the fighting.

FIGHT

"Apocrypha!" shouted Alexandria, the only one immune. "What are you doing?"

I ignored her. There was no time to deal with her bullshit. I had to save my friends.

I reached out, again, this time to Noelle. Like Eidolon, she, too, struggled against me, then folded like a house of cards. It should have ended there, it should have been easy from that point on, but even though Noelle herself caved under my will, something rose inside of her and resisted more, resisted my control. It was alien and powerful and had millennia of weight behind it, pushing back against my will. It was like some elder god reaching out of the sea for the brave ship that tried to tame it.

The fragment of the beast that had granted Noelle her powers, I realized. Her passenger.

My mind burned as I reached deeper into the wells of my power, drawing further from my own will, but I ignored it and took hold of that fragment, what portion of it was within this world that I could touch, and commanded it to bow to me.

Kneel.

FIGHT

Were I merely human or nothing more than another cape, it would have disobeyed. It would have ignored me as I would an ant, and it would easily have shrugged off any paltry attempt at control I might attempt. Even Khepri at the height of her power would have been utterly unable to take direct control of a passenger.

But I was a Heroic Spirit, now. My power had been amplified at the moment of ascension. And I had to —

Stop fighting.

— save my friends. Even forcing Echidna's passenger to obey was not beyond me, now.

Beneath my iron will, it was crushed and brought to heel.

FIGHT

The encroaching madness inched further, inexorable, like sharp nails being driven slowly into my brain. I locked away the sections that it took, barricading as much of myself as I could behind walls of iron willpower and towers of razor focus. It would not hold, not for long, but I only needed it to last until everything was finished.

"Guh… Ha… Ha…"

Sweat poured down my head from the effort. Come on, Taylor. Can't give up, now.

I reached again for Noelle and her passenger, and now, lashed to my will, I commanded them with all the weight of my authority.

Let everyone go.

There was no resistance, now, only obedience.

Stop. Fight.

FIGHT

Noelle's lower half bulged and expanded, and one of the monstrous heads dropped its jaw to disgorge more of the bile and first one body, then another, then another, until at last, there was a blonde girl and a girl with mousy brown hair. Lisa and Pan… Lisa and Amy flopped bonelessly to the ground, hacking as they spat up whatever of the sickly fluid had managed to get into their mouths and stomachs.

But they were safe. They were safe, they were safe, they were safe. Alive, maybe not well, but they'd recover, and if my experience had been typical, quickly, too. That was what mattered.

Good. I had…

Stop. Fight.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the madness, swallowing thickly, and turned my mind away in order to keep my focus.

FIGHT

With a thought, I sent several of my thralls forward and to the task of recovering those Noelle had just spat out. I paid special attention to those who lifted Lisa and Amy from the muck, watching as they breathed and groggily tried to open their eyes. With those who didn't wear gloves, I checked their pulses at their necks, and though they were faster than they should have been, they were quickly starting to normalize.

Good. They were going to be okay. Everything was going to be fine. I hadn't lost my friends, wasn't going to lose them, and my fuckups hadn't hurt them irrevocably. I had just —

A hand suddenly seized me, lifting me up and off of my feet by the fabric of my flexible chest armor. I blinked, jarred off of my train of thought, into the snarling face of Alexandria.

"Apocrypha!"

Stop. Fight.

My heart thudded in my ears, impossibly loud.

FIGHT

"Them go let!"

Her words came to me as though across a great distance, garbled and nonsensical. Something felt different, wrong, off, compared to just a second ago, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. There was just that sense that something fundamental had just changed, and not for the better.

Alexandria shook me, violently. Why?

"Apocrypha! I you what understand do said? All them go let!"

Fight.

Everything crystallized. I understood, now.

Fight.

That was why she was shaking me.

Fight.

That was why she had such an aggressive expression on her face.

Fight.

That was why she was yelling.

Fight.

A thousand bugs in flight. My swarm, my constant allies, crawling, swooping, stinging. They marched to their deaths. They found every open place and flooded it. They were crushed and died. And in exchange, so did she.

She was my enemy.

My chosen weapons appeared in my hands. A collapsible steel baton, the symbol of my mercy. An impossibly sharp knife, the symbol of my resolve. They fit in my grip like old friends.

Go for the eyes. One of them is already fake.

I brought my baton down hard on Alexandria's arm, and her hand spasmed, surprise blooming across her face, as I jammed it into the crook of her elbow. If it actually hurt or not, if she could actually feel pain with her powers being what they were, I didn't know or care to know, at that moment.

I just saw an opening.

FIGHT

With my other hand, my knife, I struck, viper quick, aiming for her one, good eye. She didn't have a good angle, nor time to throw me away, and I swung out from her blindspot, but Alexandria wasn't one of the top three heroes in the world for nothing; she managed to tilt her head and dodge the main thrust of the blow, probably meant for it to skim off the protection of her helmet.

She had never seen a nano-thorn blade, before, however.

The edge of my knife sliced through her mask as though it wasn't even there, cutting through glass and steel alike like butter — and, more importantly, carving into the invulnerable flesh of her cheek beneath.

How much she actually felt it, again, I didn't know. The degree to which she could experience pain, again, I didn't know. Even so, she must have felt the cut, because she let out a screech — the closest thing to true fear I had ever heard from her, I would later think — and lashed out at me without bothering to control her strength.

Pop

Except I was already gone the moment her fingers let go of me, and Trickster appeared in my place to take the attack.

It wasn't pretty.

At the time, I didn't have any consideration for that. But the way his chest caved in, the way each rib snapped like a piece of cheap plywood, the way, even after such a gruesome and fatal wound, her fist still had enough power behind it to go through him and come out the other side, it wouldn't have been a pleasant or painless way to go.

Why Trickster? At that moment, when the decision was made, simple calculus. He was not entirely useless, but neither did he have the utility most of the rest of my swarm possessed. His was the least able body among the capes I controlled and the most injured. He was an acceptable loss.

It wasn't as though I didn't already have his power, anyway.

"Apocrypha!" shouted Alexandria.

FIGHT

But I was already moving my swarm. Legend swooped around, peppering her with lasers one after the other without stopping. She followed him with her head, but didn't strike back, even as they tore holes in her costume.

I had Eidolon hang back, swapping out his power for something with more bite to it. He was my reserve, to deliver the heaviest blows at the right moment.

Grace charged up, bouncing off of Assault like a superball, and in between Legend's lasers, landed a punishing blow with an invincible fist.

My lips pursed. It didn't seem to have any effect; Alexandria took it without trouble, without even a split lip to show for it.

Legend came back around, covering Grace's retreat, and from behind her, I had Miss Militia switch to a Desert Eagle with hollow point rounds and shoot, providing further distraction.

She was said to be immune to Master effects, and she appeared to be immune to my Noble Phantasm, so I had Gallant move back and out of the fight. He would be useless, and there was no point wasting him by having him try to fight a cape as powerful as her.

If I had thread on me, Clockblocker would be more useful, and I could pull the same trick I'd used against Echidna to split her in half. However, there weren't enough spiders around to weave anything with any speed at all, and I didn't have any on me, at the moment.

"Make don't me this do!"

Make you? You mean the way I made you threaten my friends?

She was a fool, if she thought she could intimidate me into surrendering. A bigger fool, if she thought I could be frightened into hesitating, into giving ground, to allow her the upper hand in this fight. I wasn't scared enough of her, she didn't have the same sort of impossible, overwhelming presence she'd had the last time she tried it, for it to work.

What was there to be frightened of? After all —

I've already killed you once. I can do it again.

I stopped. My thoughts ground to a halt.

What?

I'd already killed Alexandria?

A flash of an interrogation room. Alexandria sat across from me, and next to her, a man, a soldier, who fought every fight as a war. Tagg. Bugs, everywhere, pouring in, swarming, surging into their mouths and down their throats.

Yes. I drowned her on solid land.

Then…how was she still…? Who was I even…?

My brain burned. FIGHT, every instinct was screaming. FIGHT. FIGHT.

Except, who was I fighting, if Alexandria was already dead? How was I fighting her, if I'd already killed her? Why?

It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense at all.

I gritted my teeth. My skull was suddenly two sizes too small to contain my brain.

No, Alexandria wasn't who I should be fighting, was she? I couldn't agree with her methods. Her actions had long skewed too far from what was acceptable. However, in spite of her flaws and her mistakes, in spite of all the horrible things she'd done —

That's right. The true enemy is —

A hand took hold of me again, lifting me up off the ground until my toes dangled. Another had wrapped itself around my wrist, preventing me from leveraging my nano-thorn knife. To an outsider, I might have appeared helpless, defeated.

FIGHT

My thoughts sharpened, honed down to the point of a blade. No, none of that mattered right now. All that mattered was that there was an enemy in front of me.

"Chance this last your is," said Alexandria. "All them go let, take I'll up lose you consciousness until us or. I breath longer hold can than my much you."

I opened my mouth.

"Door me."

Surprise flickered across her face, and a moment later, Assault's power let me slip through her fingers and fall into the rectangle of light beneath me. Instantly, I was across the Trainyard, up in the air, and I threw my cape out wide like a pair of wings and came to a halt before I could start to fall, hovering above Echidna's frozen form.

No, I decided before I could even consider it. Using her would get too messy too quickly. Even if they were an incredible force multiplier, those clones would be far less reliable than the originals, and therefore not worth the hassle.

I eased off my cape and dropped like a diving bird to the ground, to land next to Miss Militia. Up above, Alexandria appeared again, flying over the railcars and looking around for me.

Don't let up. Give her no time to think.

FIGHT

Legend rose to meet her, firing more aggressively, now. Gone were the peppering strikes, replaced with his harder hitting beams. Lasers that carried concussive force, jostling her, lasers that cut, that burned, that froze, that disintegrated, that burst and flashed so bright it hurt to look at and left spots dancing afterwards. They did little to her except annoy her and dealt superficial damage to her costume.

I tapped Dauntless with invincibility from Othala and sent him up, next, to fly and weave in between Legend's lasers and strike at her with his arclance. He was not strong enough, yet, to match her blow for blow, but it didn't matter when he couldn't be hurt and kept her occupied.

She tried to escape, but although she was fast — one of the fastest fliers in the world — Legend was simply faster.

Finally, I pulled Eidolon from his hiding spot and sent him up, too, with aerokinesis to round everything out. He hadn't had enough time for the powers he'd grabbed to reach maximum maturity, but that was fine; I didn't need them at their best to make this work.

As I watched them fight, Legend blasting her with lasers, Dauntless swooping in with surgical strikes, Eidolon battering her around with bursts of air, I gathered the rest of my swarm around me almost unconsciously and settled in to wait.

It wasn't long. It took less than a minute for my chance to show itself, and Eidolon literally stole the breath from her lungs. Alexandria, the invincible hero who had only ever been wounded by the Siberian, was suddenly gasping for breath, clutching, panicking, at her throat.

There.

Dauntless abandoned his arclance and shield and swooped up behind her, grabbing her to hold her in place. Legend and Eidolon both backed away, leaving him there alone, grasping at the woman who could snap everything short of an Endbringer in two.

His invincibility would be running out, soon. I had to make this count.

FIGHT

My nano-thorn knife and baton both disappeared, replaced with a single pistol, my last weapon, my least favorite weapon. I braced myself as I had learned to, took aim, with Dauntless as my marker, the way I had with bugs to similar effect, cocked back the hammer, and flicked off the safety. At last, I grasped Flechette's — Foil's — power and imbued that first bullet with it.

With this, the fight would be over.

"STOP!"

Something slammed into me, knocking me off course just as I pulled the trigger. My magic bullet went wide, off into the night.

"Doing are what you?!"

A nuisance. Another enemy getting in the way.

I lifted my pistol. Eight rounds left, I could afford to use one more.

And then I looked down into the face of Lisa Wilbourne and I froze.

No…

This… why would this person be an enemy?

"Apocrypha!" she said. "Stop this!"

FIGHT

My hand started to shake.

She's an enemy.

No. No, she couldn't be. After all, wasn't all of this, wasn't everything I'd done, here, wasn't it all…

But every instinct inside of me identified her as a target, another enemy, an obstacle to be removed. She was getting in my way of killing Alexandria, after all.

No. This was not an enemy. She could never be.

Yes, she was.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

No.

Around and around, they chased each other, until my head was swimming and my vision swayed. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood.

Her hands came up over mine and gently tried to pry my finger off of the trigger.

"Put the gun down," she told me. "Before you do something you'll regret."

Yes, she… No, how could she be… Lisa…

"Come on, Chief," she said. Her hands were shaking. "This isn't you. You're letting her control you."

I… I've always been… Haven't I? Wasn't it all…

"If you follow the same path she did, all you'll wind up with is her same regrets."

A tremor of something shot through me. Pangs of longing and guilt. Faint flashes of moments I wanted to change. Something wet was making trails down my cheeks.

I… I didn't… Even if there were things… Didn't I…?

"Don't you remember?" she asked. "You didn't come here to kill anyone. You're a hero. You save people. Even if they don't really deserve to be saved."

I… I never meant… All I ever wanted…was…

To be a hero. To do the right thing. Even when it was hard, even when everyone else told me I was wrong.

"And you did it. I'm okay. Amy's okay. So don't let her force you to become what you hate. You've already saved us."

…That was right. This had always been about saving them, hadn't it? My friends. My two friends. I'd risked so much, walked headfirst into the thing I'd been running from for four months, defied the Triumvirate for their sake. I'd made so many promises, forgiven so many things that might have broken us otherwise. So why had I been about to…

FIGHT

FIGHT

FIGHT

FIGHT

I shut my eyes and clenched my teeth against the madness, letting out a long, hissing breath. In my mind, I erected pillars and walls, cordoning off this small moment of sanity, just long enough to —

"Guh…ha…ha…"

Snap, was the only way I could describe it. Like a rubber band snapping back, my mind cleared and my control of the capes around me vanished with it. They scattered immediately, backing away, giving me a wide berth.

I couldn't blame them. Even if it hurt, that I had lost the trust of people who had just minutes ago trusted me with their backs, I couldn't blame them. I… Khepri had always known it was a violation, taking capes that way. Alienating. A step farther than could be accepted. It had, from the beginning, been a desperate measure.

I let go of my gun, and it disappeared, and beside me, Lisa let out a sigh of relief, shoulders sagging. I was tempted to join her, to let it all go, too, and just relax. I'd gotten my friends back. They were whole, they were okay.

But it wasn't quite over, was it?

Finish it. Don't stop until it's done.

I pulled myself from Lisa's grasp and turned around, and before Noelle could get her bearings, I took Narwhal's power and created a box-shaped forcefield.

"Wh-what?"

"Noelle," I said clearly. She startled and looked down at me. "I can fix you."

She blinked down at me, as though she wasn't sure she'd heard me right, then some mix between fear and hope crossed her face. "Y-you can?"

"Yes."

Her expression twisted. "Liar! You liar! It's your fault all of this happened, you —"

"Let me put this another way," I cut across her. "I'm going to fix you. The only thing that changes is whether or not you're going to make me hold you down while I do it."

She quivered, every part of her, and her nervousness seemed to amplify the erratic motions of the monstrous limbs on her lower half. Her face cycled through a complex mess of emotions, and she wrung her hands out.

I could only imagine what was going through her head. Her desperate desire to be healed, to finally be back to how she was before her nightmare began, warring with her distrust of me, whether I'd rightfully earned all of it or not…

I could understand her reticence.

"If," she began at length, "if you try anything funny, I'll —"

"I won't."

She fell silent for several seconds longer. Then…

"I…I can't control it," she admitted fearfully. "If you get too close, then…"

"I can handle it," I promised her.

She bit her lip, then nodded. "Okay."

I let out a sigh, and then dismissed the forcefields with a wave of my hand. The other heroes, even Lisa and Amy, took several reflexive steps back, but although her lower half's limbs tried to reach out for them, Noelle herself looked as though she was concentrating very hard on not moving.

Now for the hard part.

I gritted my teeth in preparation.

I couldn't do things the normal way, right now. No, I'd already been exhausted when I let Medea go earlier, and Khepri wouldn't have made things any better. If I tried to release her and perform another Install, I'd probably collapse immediately, and that would defeat the point. I was going to have to pull out my most dangerous trick.

Hotswapping.

Set.

I reached for Medea again and took hold of her power.

Install.

"Nnnnngg!"

The shriek came through my clenched teeth as a high-pitched groan. Every nerve in my body was suddenly alight with fire, burning, aching, searing, like being stabbed by thousands of needles from all over. My hands spasmed as Khepri was forced out and Medea shoved in, and the normally easy and effortless transformation let out ominous cracks as my bones and body reshaped themselves.

I've had worse, I used to comfort myself. This had nothing on Bakuda's pain bomb. Nothing!

It was a cold, paltry comfort. Telling myself I'd been through worse did not suddenly make this all better, did not turn the shoots of pain lancing up and down my legs, across my chest, through my stomach, into a pleasant tingle. It was still a self-inflicted torture that threatened to bring me to my knees.

It was just made it one I knew I could handle.

An eternity of agony passed. The scant few seconds it actually took stretched out into forever, and by the time it was over, every part of me throbbed with vestigial pain.

There was a reason I hadn't done this since the first time I'd tried it.

I've had worse, I asserted again as I used Medea's staff to keep myself standing.

"Ha…ha…ha…"

I forced myself to focus past the pain and stood straight. My legs threatened to give out under me, but sheer willpower let me stay upright.

I lifted my staff and pointed at Noelle.

All Wounds Must Be Repaired

"Pain Breaker!"

Admittedly, it was more of a hunch than a sure thing. However, if it was possible that the method by which powers connected and manifested with a cape were a type of contract, something that Rule Breaker could shatter, then it should be equally possible that an effect such as this that resulted in a mutated body would count as a curse, would it not?

There were still other options available, if not, but if it did…

The effects were immediate. The mass of flesh began to boil and evaporate, rising off of her like steam and vanishing into the air. It flaked away like ash, lifting off in tiny bits, even as the main mass continued to roil and writhe, steadily shrinking.

It took less than a minute to finish, and when it was over, a skinny teenage girl was standing where the monster had once been. All that was left of "Echidna" was a pasty film that girl was standing in.

Noelle looked down, stupefied, at her legs.

"I'm me, again?" she asked.

She poked her thigh, then pinched it and winced, and then she smiled.

"I'm me, again!" she said giddily. "I…I'm back to normal! I'm…!"

She stopped, flushed, and pressed her hands over her front, shrieking, "I'm naked!"

I gritted my teeth. "It's not done, yet."

She looked back to me, startled. "Wh-what?"

"I just fixed your current problem," I told her grimly. "If we just leave it be, your —" what did Khepri call it? "— passenger will just reconnect and start this whole thing all over again."

Noelle just stared at me, ashen-faced. "You mean…I'm not fixed."

"Not permanently," I said. "Not yet."

Admittedly, it was mostly more guesswork, in the end. But it was guesswork that made sense. After all, if gaining powers was like a contract, a geis, and geasa could be forced on you…

"Maybe you should…"

I turned to look at Lisa, whose mouth snapped shut immediately. She scowled. "Fine. You want to fuck yourself up even more, I guess I can't stop you. You're right, by the way," she added sourly. "She will relapse, later, if you don't fix it, now."

Good to know.

I gritted my teeth again and reached out, this time for Aífe.

Set. Install.

"Nnnnnnnnng!"

It was worse the second time, much, much worse. A thousand red hot knives, molten lava poured through my veins, my bones splintering under my spasming muscles — I didn't have the words to describe exactly how awful it really was.

Still…Still not as bad as Bakuda's pain bomb, but…

"What's she doing?" Amy asked. Somewhere along the lines, she'd come back to my side and put my arm over her shoulders to support me. "I… I can't see anything."

"She's taking a shortcut," answered Lisa from my other side, sounding anything but pleased. She was holding me up by my other arm. "Fucking herself over so she can put off the side effects of overusing her power long enough to finish what she started."

"Nnnn…ha…ha…" I panted as the transformation ended. Everything still ached. Aífe just had a higher pain tolerance than Medea did. "I…am not going to halfass this!"

Not the least of which because I'd just had a reminder of how badly my own powers could have fucked me over.

When I felt sure enough to move, I took a step forward, and stumbled, nearly fell onto my face. Lisa and Amy were both there to keep me upright.

A brief flash of irritation came from Aífe, but I bit my tongue to keep it in. It wasn't their fault I felt like shit and needed help to stay standing.

But it wasn't going to get any better. Arguably, from here out, it would just get worse.

So, I shrugged myself out of their holds and stepped forward towards Noelle. I tried not to think too hard about the wobble in my walk, nor about how Lisa and Amy hovered around behind me, waiting for me to stumble, again.

"Either take a seat or lie down," I told Noelle, a little impatiently. "It doesn't really matter to me which."

She hesitated a moment, then, flushing again as she glanced down at her completely nude lower half, lowered herself to the gravel. She winced a little — a flash of sympathy told me that sitting naked on the gravel couldn't be comfortable, to say nothing of the ooze and ick coating it — and folded her arms to try and protect her dignity.

I took a bare second to glance back at everyone, at all the heroes who were watching, tense, waiting for things to go sideways again. Armsmaster stood at the front, halberd gripped tightly, lips pulled into a line. But none of them, not even Alexandria, was trying to stop me.

My own grip on my spear tightened, and I groaned quietly as I sank down to my knees, using it as a crutch to keep from falling over. Then, carefully, deliberately, I started carving the runes I would need.

It took longer than it should have to finish the circle of symbols, the array that surrounded Noelle. I didn't want to even imagine how bad things were going to be when I let Aífe go, that I was having so much trouble now.

But I powered through. I had to finish this.

Back in front of her again, I pressed my fingertips to the first rune, the primary one.

"Suidigidir."

The runes glowed, crackling, searing themselves into the ground. Noelle clutched suddenly at her head, pitching forward and doubling over, eyes clenched shut.

"What are you doing to me?" she demanded.

"Blocking your passenger," I told her.

A spell of binding, of a sorts. The results would isolate her from the influence of her passenger, but the method… There was some complicated babble that Aífe understood, but what it boiled down to was blocking Noelle off from extradimensional influence. It wasn't quite that simple, but for an explanation, it was adequate.

It was normally used for things that were harder to hit, in this reality. Ghosts and spirits, or exorcising gods or demons from human hosts. Things that couldn't be handled through overwhelming physical force.

Against her passenger, it should work exactly like that.

A few moments later, the lightshow ended and Noelle collapsed, unconscious. After a second of hesitation, Amy stepped forward, knelt down, and pressed a few fingers to Noelle's bare leg.

"Subtle signs of transformation of her flesh," she mumbled. "…Fixed. No signs of further mutation." She let out a breath and looked at me. "It worked. I think."

I let out a breath of my own. It was finally over.

"Good."

I leveraged myself back up onto my feet. I smiled grimly.

Time to pay the piper.

"Release."

PAIN

It hit me like a punch to the gut, only all over. Suddenly, everything was burning, from my nerveless fingernails to the roots of my hair to places I didn't even know could hurt. The abruptness of it stole the breath from my lungs, so that I couldn't even scream. Even if I'd had the air, it might not have mattered, because at the same time, the equally sudden surge of exhaustion stole the strength from my legs and my arms and everything.

The world pitched sideways. Distantly, I realized I was falling. I heard someone calling my name.

And then, I was gone.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

Some of you guessed quite a while ago, exactly who this Heroic Spirit was that frightened Taylor so much. I couldn't go into quite as much detail as I wanted why she's so scared of Khepri, it would've bogged down the chapter and wouldn't have fit.

Hopefully, however, you can understand at least a little of it. The exact reasoning will be discussed in more depth in the next few chapters, but it might help to remember that the reason why Taylor has her secondary powers at all instead of just Installs is because her Trigger Event was so traumatizing that her power had to readjust to protect Taylor's mind from the ego of the Heroic Spirits on the Throne.

I'm honestly surprised more people didn't get it, though. I mean, I pulled this straight from FSN. I even included a line almost directly quoted from it.

If you want to support me as a writer so I can pay my bills, I have a (p) a treon (p a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes), and if P a treon is too long term, you could buy me a ko-fi (ko-fi . com (slash) jamesdfawkes).

Or if you want to commission something from me, check out my Deviant Art page to see my rates.