DIVA: A Fateful Discovery #2

[deucexm]

Part two, the lengthiest.  Took me quite a while because I wanted to get it just 
right and I am not as good at combative stuff as I would like - but here it is.

A Fateful Discovery: A DiVerse Alpha Chronicle
by Felix

-2-

Some time earlier...

In a featureless white void, the Goddess of Design took a deep breath and let it
out, steeling her resolve for the undertaking ahead.

Tracking down the Devourer's elusive essence had been a task difficult enough on
its own, but a quick flurry of dance steps weaving in and out of the Twilight
had finally led her to her quarry - which now lay before her, locked within a
massive purple tetrahedron. For some reason that had been the only
construct-shape capable of containing... whatever it was.

Rosewood still wasn't entirely sure what manner of /thing/ she was dealing with
- only that it was something with a heavy aetheric presence, only just
perceptibly impinging on the physical plane. And so she had brought it here, to
her domain - the Cutting Room, as she called it - to peel away the layers of
obfuscation between her and the truth. By force, if necessary.

Reaching into one of the sub-layers of her domain, Rosewood extracted two other
forms of Worldbreaker and materialized them, assigning the first to manipulate
the purple barrier remotely and the second to orbit her as an autonomous defense
satellite. The original, of course, she kept in hand in hammer-form.

Breaker-1 was definitely a laboratory instrument, the Goddess mused as she
watched its main body come apart into a series of pincer-like shapes. It had
been perfectly precise, but broke under the strain of her first few field tests.
Still, the design was suitable for an application like this, as she needed to
precisely control the tetrahedron /without/ getting too close herself. When it
came to the Devourer, she took no unnecessary chances.

Breaker-2, on the other hand, was somewhere on the other end of the spectrum,
being solely designed for combat. Rosewood had shelved the spiky floating orb
once she realized how little combat a Deity actually saw, generally speaking,
and had thereafter moved toward more balanced and multifunctional designs - but
just like the other version, and many others, this one most certainly still had
its uses.

Well, there was no reason to delay any longer, the Goddess decided, and
stretched out a hand. The chrome accents of her white bodysuit pulsed in all the
colors of the extended rainbow as she restructured the Cutting Room, layering
protected reality between herself and the tetrahedron, and then attached
Breaker-1's pincers to the purple shape to start the investigation.

The massive triangular faces quivered with a soundless vibration, strange
digital patterns flickering across them as the pincers slowly rotated, making
delicate, precise adjustments to the construct. Little by little, the purple
color started to clear, dissolving into faint colored static and then vanishing
entirely-

-as the tetrahedron revealed a miniature nebula inside, with a black thorny vine
coiling around and through it, fading here and there only to reappear elsewhere.
It was as if someone had mashed together a cloud and a briar patch; only, as
Rosewood looked closer, the vine she had seen as merely black at first glance
was actually absorbing all light, the nebula's glow revealing nothing of its
texture or true extent.

It had a very unsubtle wrongness about it, and it made the Goddess shudder, even
behind her wards. Dealing with the Devourer's minions was one thing, but the raw
Enemy itself... or was this even really it, she wondered? What exactly had she
hunted down, locked up, and brought in?

"What /are/ you?" Rosewood murmured, staring intently at the vine-shaped void.

THE END OF ALL THINGS, the void answered back with a snarl.

"I wasn't talking to /you/," the Goddess retorted, gripping Worldbreaker's haft
a little more tightly as Breaker-2's subroutines cycled into higher activity.
There was, in fact, an Other here - something that was not the Devourer, and not
her or anything of hers. But what was it?

Breaker-1 suddenly shrilled a quiet alert tone that Rosewood silenced without a
second thought as tiny cracks spiderwebbed through the tetrahedron's closest
face. The vine blurred and twisted, the void trying to grow, to escape from the
prison she had weakened for the sake of observation.

But there was nowhere to go; certainly not after the meticulous Goddess had gone
to such lengths to get to this point. Clones of Breaker-1 materialized, pincers
opening - and the moment the prison shattered, they darted in and caught the
vine, clamping down all along its length and pulling it this way and that -
keeping it from going too far, but also slowly prying it loose from the nebula.
Divide and conquer, or so she hoped.

The Devourer was not to be defeated so easily, though; Rosewood could see tiny
wirelike tendrils of void sprouting from the vine and reaching out to her
servants, digging into the pincers and corrupting them. Again she summoned a
host of Breaker-1 copies, annihilating the first set and replacing them with the
fresh versions, one by one until the corruption was no longer a factor - but she
could see the tendrils growing again, already reaching out hungrily once more.

YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME, snarled the void, and there was a cruel laughter in it.
YOU HAVE NOT THE STRENGTH. I AM THE END OF ALL THINGS.

"You're a /thing/ yourself," Rosewood spat back, frustration starting to get the
better of her. At this rate the damned thing /would/ overcome her ability to
keep it under control, and then what? All of the time she'd spent tracking the
Devourer's essence, the spells, the manipulation of the Twilight-

-no. No, she wasn't going to lose it over this. The Goddess took a breath and
let it out, and opened her eyes and /looked/.

Yes, her tools were getting corrupted, but the Devourer wasn't fully taking them
over; it couldn't. They were /hers/ - for all it boasted, it didn't have the
strength either. They were just about evenly matched here, it seemed, with a
slight terrain advantage in her favor; but Rosewood knew better than to
underestimate the Great Enemy after all the damage it had done.

Patiently, she kept the pace, revealing more of the void vine as her pincers
pulled it free of the nebula, little by little, before each one had to be
replaced. She said nothing now, neither did the Enemy; but it was clear the
Devourer wasn't pleased at being handled. Well, so be it.

With one last pull the end of the vine came loose, and with a gesture from
Rosewood the miniature engines on each set of Breaker-1 pincers ignited,
flipping the coiling void thing around and slamming it against one of the
remaining interior walls of the tetrahedron, pinning it there as securely as
possible. The Enemy hissed savagely, but she paid it no mind, focusing on the
very centerpoint - and gesturing again, sharply.

With a shriek almost too high to hear, Breaker-2 fired a tightly-focused energy
beam, spiking into the heart of the void vine. Part of it was absorbed; part of
it split and curved around and smashed through the tetrahedron's face with
staggering force, a small cloud of fragments exploding outward before dissolving
into nothingness.

The vine itself remained unchanged, and the hissing turned to laughter. YOU
/CANNOT/ DESTROY ME.

Again, three quick times Rosewood gestured, like a conductor. Breaker-2 extruded
a ring of charging spines which pulled in ambient aether so quickly the air
convulsed around them - then fired once more, the beam searingly bright as it
/hammered/ into the vine! It bent, briefly - but rebounded back into shape, the
beam splitting around it once again, the entire back pane fracturing from the
impact and falling to pieces.

And still the Devourer laughed.

The Goddess felt a cold anger growing in the pit of her stomach, cold and hard.
Anger at this unbreakable vine, anger at how it defied her in her very domain;
anger at everything it had done to ruin her plans, and everyone else's; anger at
the lives it had destroyed, the worlds it had shattered. Anger at her own
feelings of helplessness, when the Great Enemy was right here, /right now/, and
she could do /nothing/! If only-!

She clenched her fists tightly around Worldbreaker's haft, Breaker-2 shrilling
furiously in tune with her emotions as it drank deeply, dangerously of the
aether. This thing - it might just be a small part of the Devourer, but it
needed to be destroyed. Not contained, not sealed, /destroyed/. /Utterly/.

~ some Things should not Be ~

It was barely a whisper, barely even words; but Rosewood heard it all the same,
and it froze her in place. It was the Other. It had to be; it wasn't her, it
wasn't the Enemy either.

~ aid you ~

The nebula slowly floated out of the tetrahedron's remains, in a strange
movement-without-movement, and the Goddess felt her wards shuddering, the
protected reality around her starting to give way as it approached. Whatever the
Other was, it was powerful enough to take down some of her toughest defenses.
And it wanted to /aid/ her?

NO, hissed the Devourer suddenly, as it became aware of the golden cloud
approaching Rosewood. NO, NO, NO! YOU ARE MINE! RETURN TO ME!

It was her turn to smile, and she did.

~ combine ~, came the Other's voice again - and this time it was strained with
urgency, and the word itself was somehow odd, as if translated from another
language. Inspired, Rosewood summoned another flight of Breaker-1 clones,
hefting Worldbreaker in one hand as the pincers welded themselves to one face of
the hammer in a drill-like shape; and seething with barely contained aether,
Breaker-2 docked to the other face with a series of interlocks coming together.

For a moment, it was heavy - too heavy! - and then the nebula enveloped it,
gilding it, every surface gleaming a brilliant gold that somehow enhanced its
edges and curves rather than obscuring them; and it was as though another pair
of hands rested on hers, soft yet strong and confident; and then Worldbreaker
Extremis (apparently that was its name now) was featherlight in her grip.

NO! hissed the Enemy, the single word crammed full of desperation.

But Rosewood was calm and serene as she stepped back to brace her swing, the
Breaker-2 end of Extremis venting a rainbow ring of compressed aether with a
deliciously satisfying bass note. Then the anger, the passion, everything inside
of her swelled up once more, and she let it out into her chest and shoulders and
arms, swinging the hammer forward like a baseball bat - its drillhead shrilling
a sweet song -

- the Devourer was screaming now, but -

- the Other whispered once more, forcefully, and it was joined by a chorus of
thousands that drowned out the Enemy entirely and seared the words into the
Goddess's heart:

~ HIKARI NI NARE ~

As the drillhead bit deep, Worldbreaker Extremis erupted with blinding light
that overtook everything, forcing Rosewood to look away. After a very long
moment, she looked back to see the remaining Breaker-1 clones, the remnants of
the tetrahedron, and...

... nothing else. No vine, no void, no Enemy.

She had won.

Almost instantly the Goddess wilted, not falling (the Cutting Room not having
gravity per se) so much as curling up, Extremis slipping from her hands and
floating over to the tetrahedron where its gilding dripped off, coalescing into
a tiny golden marble. The drillhead wound down with an agonizing sound and
finally stopped spinning, its individual pieces falling apart and fragmenting
into nothingness; and Breaker-2's interlocks finally failed, the fractured orb
rocketing off into the distance before detonating with an aetherial firework
display.

But they - all of them - had done their job, and done well. Far better than she
had imagined, thanks to the Other. Whatever it was.

"... what are you, anyway?" Rosewood asked again, this time without
interruption, as she eyed the little marble.

~ fragmented and forgotten ~ came the quiet, yet much clearer reply. The golden
orb slowly approached, then dropped into the Goddess's hand; cold and metallic
to the touch, but with a slight, unexpected softness to its structure (moreso
than normal for natural gold). ~ my name no longer spoken ~

Her brow furrowed. "What's your name?"

There was a long pause, a feeling of /effort/, and then: ~ cannot remember ~

Rosewood gazed thoughtfully at the marble on her palm. A being - not just 'a
thing', but surely an Entity - with the power to annihilate a fragment of the
Devourer (or at the very least help her do so), and it /couldn't even recall its
name/. What was going on here? "Is there something I can do to help?" she
finally offered, tentatively.

~ purify the others as you did me ~ came the response, after a short pause. ~
rejoin the fragments and make us whole ~

The Goddess pondered these words in silence, with the power to obliterate the
Enemy in her hand - quite literally - and an unknown road before her.