Work Text:
Saving The World in 287 Steps
Contessa blinked.
Oh.
She looked down, where a thin beam of gold light had speared through her. Oh, she thought again. For all her plans and all her paths to victory, that was all it took to kill her. A stray beam fired in the heat of battle by an opponent she couldn’t predict.
The pain didn’t last long, at least.
---
There was a brilliant light, the sensation of rushing through space, and a woman’s quiet voice speaking in a language she didn’t understand. And then-
Contessa’s eyes slowly fluttered open. She was … alive? Yes. She was alive, that much was certain. Her body was lying in a tub of water lit from below by too-bright blue light. Above her was some tinkertech contraption made of golden and black stone etched with swirling designs and shining with those same too-bright blue lights. The design wasn’t characteristic of any of Cauldron’s Tinkers.
She blinked. The design wasn’t characteristic of any of Cauldron’s tinkers.
Contessa queried her power. Identifying immediate threats?
Her eyes darted around, taking in an expansive circular room, pillars built into the wall, and a console protruding from the ground, all of it made in the same style as the Tinkertech above her. The only variation in style was dimmer orange lights in the walls, rather than blue. None of it registered a threat to her.
Identifying stranger/master/other unwanted mental influences acting upon myself?
None.
Calming myself.
Her power returned two steps to execute that goal. Her breathing stabilized and slowed from what had been quick panting breaths. She stood up and stepped out of the tub, feeling better as she left behind the weightless sensation of the water and set foot on solid ground.
She twitched at the sudden sound of flowing water, as the water behind her began draining through hidden outlets in the tub, but another cursory use of her power determined it was neither a threat nor relevant to her immediate wellbeing.
She almost flinched again as that woman’s voice in an unknown language returned, sourceless and louder this time. But before she could flinch she prodded her power-
Remaining composed and calm. And then, for good measure- Identifying the source of the voice. Hm. That was quite a few steps, but doable if she wanted. Before that though-
Determining the nature of my current predicament. Oh dear. That was a lot of steps. The first step seemed pretty easy though, so she looked down and-
-and that was a penis, tenting shorts she had most certainly not been wearing when she had last been aware. And those legs were much shorter and stockier than she was used to, and she was lacking breasts and-
Her ongoing path to remain composed and calm kicked in and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and blanking out her mind for a moment.
Identifying my body. The steps required to do so paralleled many of the steps required to determine the nature of her predicament.
Regaining my previous body. That would take many, many steps.
Modifying my current form to closely approximate my former form. That was much simpler and could be done in parallel or separately to identifying her body. There were even branching paths for modifying the body she was in or creating a new body to migrate to.
Coming to terms with my current form. That was much simpler. She had idly wondered before what having different genitals would be like and now she knew. With the utter surety that she could one day return to her prior form, she could think of this as simply a mildly enlightening experience that represented an odd hiccup in her life. Her power further suggested she distract herself with useful tasks so-
Saving the world , Contessa idly queried.
And froze.
For once her sight of how to save the world was wholly unclouded. There were no pitfalls, no uncertainties, no blank areas beyond which the path to victory shattered into a million unknown outcomes. There was only perfect clarity.
She could save the world in 25 minutes, 14 seconds, and 287 steps.
So Contessa moved.
She raced toward the console she’d seen earlier, seizing the tinkertech tablet resting on top of it. One of the walls slid open to reveal a passageway beyond, but she wasn’t leaving by that route. Instead she raced toward a wall, placed one foot on it and tacced up to a small vent in the ceiling. She wrenched out the vent’s grate and pulled herself up and through, noting with pleasure that her new body was strong and effortlessly responsive to her will.
(Contessa’s ongoing path to come to terms with her current form marched forward one more step.)
She pulled herself further up through the vent, her ongoing path to remain composed keeping her from flinching at the touch of cold metal on her skin. She recognized the source of the cold a moment later when she punched out another grate and reached the surface. The vent let out in a snowy, mountainous area and the cold wind cut through her.
But she pressed on anyway. Though the snow burned her feet and the wind sent her chest into convulsive shivers, a secondary direction to her power to - Remain reasonably healthy, functional, and capable of continued action - didn’t add steps to her path so she kept moving, sure she wouldn’t come to any debilitating harm. She climbed up a nearby rocky outcropping as swiftly as her limbs could reach the next handhold and then bounded across its rocky top. She leapt off the other side seconds later, plummeting a dozen meters only to effortlessly cushion her landing in the snow below and roll to her feet.
Go. Contessa’s power urged her on and she ran, finding a snowy forest around her as she pressed on. She snagged a logging axe where it was lying against a tree without breaking her stride. Good steel, she recognized, and idly wondered if it would be missed.
As she ran, that woman’s voice again echoed in her head, in that language she did not know. However an idle probe with her power revealed that her path to save the world needed no additional steps to also identify the source of the voice, so Contessa put it out of her mind. She would apparently know the identity of the mystery cape calling to her soon enough.
Contessa ran further, climbing cliffs and racing through snow, keeping up a quick jog she thought her new body could maintain for a good long while. And then, as she pulled herself over the top of a cliff-
Goblins! she thought. Three of Nilbog’s creations were arrayed around a fire in front of her. Though on closer inspection … no. Not his creations. They were slow to respond to her appearance, far slower than the Goblin King’s creations would be. They had none of the nightmarish speed and power of his monsters. These things were slow and ungainly, the product of some lesser cape.
Not that it mattered. They were as good as dead either way.
Contessa kicked open a chest lying at the edge of their camp, grabbed a bow and a quiver of arrows from it that were knocked into the air, and followed through on the motion with a swing of her axe. Two of the goblins died. She slung the bow and quiver over her shoulder and grabbed the shield one of the dead goblins had been carrying on its back, throwing it forward into the snow.
She jumped, landed on the shield, and went sledding down the hill at speed. The improvised sled hastened her dash through the snowy terrain, bringing her quickly to an area where snow gave way to grass. There in the mountains, set atop a cliff with a stunning view of the sunrise, was another tinkertech structure made of that gold and black stone molded into odd swirling round designs, like nothing she’d quite seen previously on Earth.
There was no time for contemplation though. She hooked the shield on the back of her shorts and hacked away at the soil of the structure’s base with her axe, exposing a vent. A quick wrench, a tight squeeze, and she was inside. She darted to a platform engraved with glowing blue words she could not read, stood atop it, and the platform descended, taking her underground deeper into the structure.
The platform, much like a small elevator for one, let her out in an immense space constructed of the same rock and architectural sensibilities, though perhaps with more flat surfaces and less round protrusions. There were also a number of large gear assemblies turning in open space, which struck her as unsafe.
She had a moment to take it all in as she placed her tinkertech tablet - tucked into the front of her shorts as she’d run - on a console similar to the one she’d retrieved it from. She had several seconds to catch her breath and take in the sights as the console did … something? to the tablet.
Frankly it looked like an overhanging stalactite covered in glowing blue code above the console cried a single blue tear onto it to the sound of rising piano keys.
Not questioning whatever that was, Contessa directed her power, as she snatched up the tablet and ran again.
Contessa thumbed something on the tablet without looking at it and glowing gold chains sprang out of empty space all over the cavernous room to seize a large stone orb several meters tall. It looked like they were holding it in place at the upper end of a slanted bridge she was running towards. The whole setup looked kind of like-
Not making questionably funny Indiana Jones references out loud.
She slipped past the orb at the end of the bridge, ran along a thin handrail-less bridge just past it, leapt into space and onto another section of thin bridge to bypass another stone orb lying on the bridge, and arrived at a-
Large blue forcefield prison surrounding a desiccated alien corpse sitting in a meditative pose. Huh, Contessa thought to herself, I suppose the tinker who made this was a fan of the Crystal Skull Indiana Jones movie from Earth Aleph. I should tell David about this la-
With a pang, Contessa remembered that David was dead now. Eidolon had fallen in battle against Scion, and Contessa needed to lean heavily on her path to remain composed to keep moving. But move she did.
She reached up and tapped the forcefield, which exploded into a thousand insubstantial splinters. A moment later the desiccated alien corpse disintegrated and then … suddenly Contessa was outside the structure again, facing away from it.
Not questioning whatever that was, Contessa directed her power again.
A short man in dark hooded clothing with grey skin sprang out in front of her and began speaking to her in a language she didn’t know. Contessa would have thought she’d have no time for whatever he was saying, but apparently she did. For at least a few sentences anyway. She nodded at apparently appropriate points and stuck around just long enough for the man to pause and stop talking. When he was done talking though, she wasted no time.
She turned around and sprinted in the other direction, thumbing the tinkertech tablet and causing it to seize a boulder in more golden chains. She took her axe in her other hand and smashed it into the unmoving boulder, experiencing the strangest sensation as her axe stopped dead on the boulder’s surface without jarring her arm at all. Some kind of kinetic absorption effect, she surmised. She thumbed the tablet again and the chains vanished. The boulder popped out of its resting place in the ground with a sudden lurch of motion.
This is some fascinating tinkertech, Contessa mused as she froze the boulder again and again brought her axe down onto it, this time with repeated blows. Then she crouched down in front of it, unslung her bow, shot it upwards with an arrow, reslung her bow, and clambered up on top of the boulder.
Wait, her power directed.
Contessa had a brief panicked moment to realize what her power had just directed her to do before the golden chains vanished and a sudden blast of acceleration flattened Contessa to the top of the boulder as it leapt into the air, soaring up, up, up, up over a neighboring cliff-face.
Contessa regained her composure quickly though, and lightly jumped off the boulder as it landed roughly atop the cliff. She resumed running and tapped at the tablet as she ran. The screen flickered and began spitting out gibberish code which looked like some kind of safe mode as she typed away. She then tapped the tablet to her shield and her bow. A little red warning light began flashing when she was finished, but Contessa didn’t worry. After all, the path said she would come to no serious harm.
She would admit to a little bit of worry though when the path took her leaping straight off of yet another cliff - so many cliffs - dozens of meters tall. She slipped the shield under her feet and took hold of the bow, knocking an arrow, but none of that seemed like it would break her fall-
She drew the bow, aiming at nothing and - oh there’s another goblin beneath me - landed shield-first on a goblin’s head. And then many things happened very quickly.
The taut bowstring thrummed with sudden force surging along its length, vibrating so fast it keened out a high note on the edge of her hearing (which Contessa distantly noted was higher than her old hearing). Contessa’s entire body was surrounded by the gold light of the chains for an instant (her composure path helped her fight back a moment of panic). The shield beneath her bucked as a thin layer on its bottom surface exploded. The tablet whined where it was tucked into her shorts, smoke pouring out of a location entirely too close to her genitals. (Genitals which, as much as she may not want them, she would still rather not be removed in an explosive fashion).
And finally the goblin was pulped flat into the ground like it had been smote by the hand of an angry god (a phenomenon Contessa had only too recently seen first hand) as Contessa was shot into the sky over the mountains so fast she saw hints of transonic vapor cones forming around her extremities.
Contessa let the composure path drop. If being unceremoniously yote into the sky at nearly supersonic speeds with no warning didn’t warrant a little screaming, nothing did.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
As she screamed Contessa’s fingers typed away on her tablet. She touched it to her axe, leapt off the shield - grabbing it and hooking it at the back of her shorts again as she did - and took her axe in hand just before she hit the snowy ground … which she landed on as casually as if she had merely stepped off a staircase.
Another unhappy belch of smoke issued forth from the front of her shorts where the tablet was. Contessa did her best to ignore it.
Contessa was already in motion though, pointedly pushing aside any uncomfortable misgivings about warranty-voided tinkertech near her nethers she might have. In front of her there was another structure like the one she’d just left and she dug into it just as before. Inside was another crying blue code stalactite, another desiccated alien, and another new tinkertech application for her tablet.
A few short minutes later Contessa was outside the structure yet again and now her tablet could summon columns of ice from the ground. Which felt absolutely awful to stand on with her bare feet, but a quick test of her power said getting shoes would add a not-insignificant amount of time to the path.
It was a pity the goblins didn’t wear shoes, Contessa mused, as she plummeted down on top of another hapless creature and smashed it flat with the wrath of a hacked and deeply abused tinkertech tablet, launching herself screaming back into the sky.
This time Contessa’s warranty-voiding arc through the air took her out of the mountains entirely, into a pleasantly warm forest with yet another tinkertech structure.
Someone has been busy , she mused to herself. She got another drop of blue code stalactite tear, used a burst of its new power (some form of telekinetic control?) to blow through a wall of blocks, ran past a small robot which tried and failed to shoot her with a laser, and disintegrated another alien corpse.
Once outside, with what was almost beginning to feel like routine, she ran over to a metal crate lying around and froze it with golden chains. She hit it a few times with her axe, knelt down and shot it upward with an arrow, jumped on top and-
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!” she shouted again as she launched herself over a nearby ravine. That was not becoming any less awful with repetition.
She landed next to another goblin camp, sped up a rickety wooden tower they built, and jumped off right above one-
Okay that’s enough screaming, reengaging composure path.
-and this time didn’t scream bloody murder as she blasted back into the sky at horrifying speeds.
Not that the experience itself was any less awful, but Contessa was starting to think that if she let herself scream every time she did that, she would be hoarse by the time she finished saving the world.
Another structure at her landing site, another buried grate to dig to, another crying stalactite, a new tablet power-
Oh this one creates bombs, that’s useful.
Extremely powerful bombs whose shockwaves passed right over her without harm, which was very useful. Contessa sprinted through the underground area, blowing up every obstacle and wall in her way, always neatly dodging any shrapnel which was flung forth. I should see if any of our tinkers can replicate this device, it’s really quite helpful.
After she freed and disintegrated another alien corpse (really, why was the path having her do that?) and found herself back outside the structure, the bearded man in the hood came out to greet her again. This time by hangliding down to land in front of her.
Huh.
The man said something in what might be the same language as that cape who’d spoken to her when she first woke up in this world, handed her the hang glider and a harness to carry it and then … faded into dwindling blue flames.
… Huh.
The path left no time for somber contemplation of whatever that was though, because moments later Contessa was exploding her way through the vine covered ruins of an ancient town, running past another laser shooting robot - this one five meters tall and half-buried - and toward a forest.
Upon reaching the forest she felled a tree in record time, bound it in golden chains, hit it repeatedly, shot it with an arrow, jumped on, and - This will never stop being an awful experience - launched herself into the air.
The tree flew gently over the ruins of a cathedral - Interesting, the architecture looks almost Western Catholic, not at all like the other ruins - and she stepped off onto what remained of its roof. She ignored the very loud sounds of her tree crashing into the ruins of a secondary building and thoroughly demolishing it. She stepped inside the cathedral’s belltower and oh, there was the bearded man in a hood again.
Clearly a capable mover.
The man abruptly cast off his hood to reveal a crown, grew a meter, conjured orbs of heatless blue flame around himself, and became an imposing king.
And a changer.
Contessa ran through her usual stranger/master/threat paths out of an abundance of caution, but detected nothing amiss. The man - king? - spoke to her in that unknown language for a minute while she nodded and then faded again into blue fires.
Then she was leaping out of a window riding her shield again, onto the head of another poor goblin and-
Composure, maintaining my composure.
-blasting off at transonic speeds into the sky. She unfolded her new hang glider as she reached the apex of her flight and pulled herself into it, streamlining her body for maximum speed.
A landscape of untamed meadows and fields flashed by beneath Contessa as she rocketed through the sky. Wherever the path to victory was taking her, it was taking her there fast.
A quick query of her power revealed that even at these speeds though, the next step in her path wouldn’t be for another minute. So she had some breathing room to collect her thoughts and evaluate her situation.
First things first, this was definitely not Earth Bet. Nor any of the dozens of other Earth timelines she was familiar with. And while there were clearly parahumans here, she had not yet seen any sign of Scion.
When Contessa had directed her power to find a path for “saving the world”, she had been hoping for a vague plurality of paths as a general guideline for her next action. That was what typically happened when something, like Scion, was beyond the reach of her power and her power had to use her best mental models of it to path around her ignorance. That she wasn’t experiencing that here probably meant Scion wasn’t present.
Contessa saw two things this might mean. The first was that her path was leading her to some mechanism by which Scion could be locked out of this world. A method so secure that her power saw no ambiguity in recommending it as a path, despite its inability to model Scion’s exact abilities. If that was the case, the ability to do so would be incredibly valuable. She must see such a path through.
The other possibility though was that this world was not and never would be under threat by Scion, but faced some other existential threat which made “saving the world” a valid path. If that were the case, her actions here wouldn’t be helping to fight Scion at all … but fighting Scion was not, ultimately, Cauldron’s objective. Ensuring the continued existence of the human race in the face of Scion as a threat was. If this world wasn’t and wouldn’t be threatened by Scion, then it represented a continuation of the human race. But only if she saved it from whatever existential threat it faced.
Contessa nodded to herself, resolved. She would continue following the path to saving this world, even if its clarity might imply Scion wasn’t what she was saving it from.
Her resolution came just in time, as her power compelled her to make a minor course adjustment. She was just arriving at her destination, which was…
was...
Okay, whichever parahuman had constructed a literal fortress of doom protruding from the otherwise idyllic landscape like a petulant boil of smoke and darkness, Contessa could not respect their taste. Sure it was imposing and intimidating, but dark smokey fortresses of doom have to be lived in once you’ve constructed them! There was a reason Cauldron’s base was a neat classical office environment with easily cleanable linoleum, gentle lighting, good air conditioning, and spacious rooms. Just because you were committing unspeakable atrocities upon innocents (and whoever made this fortress clearly was, it simply screamed ‘we murder babies for fun’) didn’t mean your workplace had to be bleak and depressing.
Contessa idly wondered if her path would involve killing its architect. She hoped so.
Ah well. She’d see soon enough. Because it would be go-time in three-
Two-
One-
Contessa wheeled her hang glider into a hard stop that nearly tore it apart, landing in a recessed window at the base of the tower. She stowed it and leapt inside what appeared to be a store room, shattered a crate with her axe, and took the various colored arrows which fell out of the wreckage to add to her quiver. She then shattered another, and grabbed a cluster of bananas from its wreckage.
A moment later she’d climbed up to an opening near the ceiling of the room, eschewing a ladder in favor of an apparently faster path climbing up the rough cobblestone the ladder was attached to. The opening brought her to the outside of the castle, where she ran and climbed her way up to the castle’s main entrance.
Inside the castle’s main entrance was a greeting hall that looked utterly trashed, and a pair of hulking goblins twice her height eating on the shattered remains of a table. Not that they mattered.
Contessa tapped her tablet and used its telekinetic ability to snag an ornate metal bow from where it had been hidden in a chandelier above, and a halberd from behind the metal grate of an extinguished fireplace. She hooked them on her hang glider harness and kept moving. Along the way she also dodged a few swipes from the startled goblins and stole part of their meal, some more bananas and the partially cooked fin of what might be an odd shark.
She slipped further into the castle, taking a side door to another ruined hall with another pair of goblins who looked like they were cooking dinner in a cauldron over an open fire.
A quick bomb and an unexpected swipe from her halberd put an end to them. Contessa ran over to the cauldron, snagged a mushroom the goblins had been cooking with, and tossed it into the cauldron. Along with her partially cooked shark(?) fin, and all her bananas. The bananas went into the cauldron whole, for some reason. As the liquid in the cauldron bubbled and boiled, Contessa typed away with her tablet, tapped it against the cauldron, grabbed a canteen from one of the dead goblins, and dipped it in the cauldron. The contents of which were, even as she watched, turning a smooth gold-orange.
With one mysterious canteen of who knew what hooked onto her harness, Contessa set off through the rest of the castle. For the next few minutes she followed a simple pattern. Run into a room. Kill or ignore any goblins inside, as expedient. Pick up various ornate bows, swords, and polearms, shatter a few crates for the colored arrows within, and keep moving. At one point she even snagged a boomerang. Clearly whatever she was about to do would require a great many weapons.
Once she was clanking and clattering like a walking arsenal, Contessa kicked a metal crate over to a position underneath a hole in the ceiling, pulled out her tablet and -Oh no, I had hoped I was done with this- froze it in place with golden chains. She slammed it repeatedly with a halberd, crouched and shot it upward with an arrow, and jumped on.
Wait, her power directed.
Contessa checked that her composure path was still running. It was, and it did good work stifling what otherwise would have been some very loud screaming as sudden unphysical acceleration blasted Contessa into the sky once more.
Fortunately though, the launch took her to the very top of the castle of doom. With no higher point to reach Contessa could at least hope that there would be no more insane physics defying launches through the air.
A hop and skip off the metal box took Contessa to the edge of a cliff that marked the very peak of the mountain the castle was built into. She was in motion even as she touched the ground, racing towards the entrance of a building that might have once been a temple.
The architecture was interesting, she noted as she ran inside. Very thick stone construction paired with an open soaring interior, with plenty of large openings set high to let in light. She felt like she’d seen a similar architectural style before, sometime in her travels all over the various Earths, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite-
Oh wait, it looked like she’d have to table that thought for later. That was definitely something cape-related forming in the middle of the room.
With a warbling rising screech, streamers of blue light rushed in through the temple’s opening. They started coalescing into a shimmering ball of blue light as tall as Contessa’s new body, but she only got a glimpse of it. The moment it started to form, she was in motion.
Contessa turned around and leapt up the archway of the door she’d just entered through, climbing the carved stone at a runner’s clip. As she reached the top she plucked the canteen with the gold-orange liquid from her belt and swallowed its contents in one smooth gulp.
Whoa. Suddenly the strain of holding herself at the top of the archway was gone. What had been an effort of strength and carefully balanced body weight was suddenly no effort at all. Contessa felt as if, simply by pressing down with one hand, she could send herself flying up into the air. Or perhaps even destroy the stone upon which she was resting. What wonderful tinkertech this world had.
There was no time for wonder though, as the next step in the path demanded her attention. Contessa turned and waited, just for a moment, before leaping from her perch towards the glowing sphere.
As her new strength sent her soaring through the air, the sphere transformed. It flashed and in an instant was replaced by … cape? A monster? A construct? The thing was easily five meters tall, a warped fusion of ruined red and black flesh and gold machinery etched with swirling designs which protruded shining blue eyes. It had no legs, instead floating just above the ground on gold tinkertech that had replaced its hips. Its arms were grotesquely long, one ending in sharp claws and the other in a bulging cannon with four barrels tipped with blue eyes. The only thing even vaguely human about it was the mane of red hair spilled out from behind a gold mask with a single, small blue eye shining in the center.
The thing swung its cannon around, trying to bring it to bear on her, but it was so very slow. It was three steps behind her path, and by the time it pointed at the archway where she’d waited, she was within its reach staring into its mask’s eye from less than a meter away. She drew a great black sword from her harness and set to work without hesitation.
A heavy clang jarred through her bones as she slammed the edge of the sword into its mask, right over the glowing blue eye. Her enormous strength tore a great gouge in the mask and cracked the crystal of the eye. And before the thing even finished flinching she was moving on. Her sword tore great rents in the slick red and black flesh of its torso and stabbed into gaps of the machinery holding it up, tearing at the mechanisms within.
The thing reared back, flailing, but Contessa didn’t let up. She returned her black sword to the harness and drew an even heavier gold one in the same motion, bringing it around to slam into machinery replacing the thing’s hips. She wielded the sword with the same motion one might wield a mace, smashing it down from one side and then following through with the blow’s momentum in a spinning figure eight, bringing it smashing down again from the other side. The impacts juddered through her arms and she knew that these swords must have been forged by tinkertech as well. No ordinary metal could have survived the forces she was bringing to bear.
With an ear-piercing warbling shriek, the thing fled and regrouped. It dissolved back into that rippling blue sphere and flew up into the center of the temple room before reforming with an angry howl. Four tinkertech ellipsoids as long as Contessa’s arm flew out from its back, tipped with menacing blue light.
Contessa didn’t pay them any mind. She drew her new ornate bow and let loose with one of her new arrows before it even finished reforming. One, two, three arrows slammed into its cracked blue eye, cracking it further. It fell from the sky with a warbling cry, slamming into the dusty floor of the temple before her. She replaced her bow with a short halberd as it fell, and set into it with a will. She brought the great axehead down onto its torso again and again, until at last she hit some critical piece of machinery in its core and, with a scream, the thing blew apart into streamers of blue light.
That wasn’t the end though. Another blue sphere of light coalesced a few meters away, forming into a … new creature? A modification of the previous one? The cannon was gone, replaced by a brilliant blue energy sword built into the opposite hand, and the mask design was different. A narrow ‘Y’ shaped that could never fit on a human-proportioned face, set again with a single shining blue eye.
Contessa’s path didn’t care. She threw her halberd before it was even finished forming, cracking its eye. In the next motion she pulled her heaviest weapon off her back, a massive slab of vaguely sword-shaped stone that looked like it would be more at place in an industrial rock-crushing operation than on the battlefield.
Her enhanced strength brought it smashing down onto the thing’s head regardless. Again and again and again until it too retreated into a sphere of rippling blue light. It reappeared floating above her, hanging upside down from …
Huh. Contessa hadn’t bothered looking up at the ceiling before this, but that was definitely a ten meter wide pulsating diseased heart made of slick red and black muscle protruding from the temple dome. That … was a thing that existed.
Contessa sighed. Biotinkers. Why do they all have to be like this?
The creature hanging above her vanished into the rippling blue sphere again, which floated over to the archway she’d entered through. With another sigh Contessa reholstered the rock smasher and drew her bow. Hopefully the path to saving the world includes destroying that heart, she thought as she loosed an arrow.
The creature reappeared just in time for the arrow to take it in the eye. It screeched and fell to the floor, where Contessa leapt on it with the boomerang she’d looted from the castle below. The weapon was tri-pronged and wickedly sharp everywhere but the handles. Contessa’s swipes with it tore wide rents through its chest and its long neck. Desperately it tried to retreat upward into the air, but Contessa’s boomerang flew after it and took it in the neck.
The creature dissolved back into blue energy again, reappeared hanging from the diseased heart and-
Contessa huffed as her arrows took it in the eye and the thing fell shrieking to the floor. Again. She really hoped there weren’t any more of these creatures. Or any more forms. However this worked. Even with the strength potion surging through her, repeatedly drawing her bow was still tiring and her arms were a little sore.
Ah well, complaining never made a path shorter, Contessa mused to herself as she butchered the flailing creature with her great sword-shaped rock smasher.
Even so, Contessa wasn’t above admitting that she did groan when there was another one of those grotesque black and red monstrosities welded to gold tinkertech. Only her composure path stopped her from rolling her eyes as she set into it with another one of her absurdly sized butcher’s blades.
To be fair to it, this one did have an interesting trick which might have given another parahuman pause. After fleeing her initial assault it pulled back to hover beneath the heart and burst into a ball of fire so hot Contessa could feel it crisping her body hair from ten meters away. That was a good solid defense against people who weren’t precogs.
As it was, Contessa’s thrown halberd took it in the eye the moment its flaming aura formed. And then when it fled as a ball of blue light to the archway - well, one of her tablet’s bombs was already there.
The creature’s flaming aura winked out and it fell to the ground at Contessa’s feet. It didn’t last more than a few seconds in close proximity with her.
Of course, because dealing with biotinkers was a special kind of awful Contessa preferred to delegate whenever possible, there was yet another tinker engineered monstrosity after that one. This one was much smaller than the others. It stood only twice her height and had a glowing blue forcefield shield in addition to a sword crackling with electricity. If Contessa had to guess, this one was meant to fight with more skill and less brute force than its predecessors.
Such a pity for it that skill meant nothing against an opponent who plotted the optimal path to victory. It died just like the others.
Fortunately that monstrosity was not replaced by another one. In fact it was not replaced by anything at all. Even her power was quiet, only directing her to wait. So she did.
The heart twitched with a disgustingly liquid churning noise and then began to glow with an inner golden light that filled the temple and for a moment Contessa could imagine what the temple had once been meant to look like. Then the woman’s voice from early came back, speaking directly into her head. The voice sounded … tired. Like whoever was speaking hardly had the energy to utter words.
Step left, Contessa’s power directed.
She did, dodging by the barest hair a beam of blazing white light that speared forth from the heart. The beam cut through the stone of the temple like a hot knife through butter. The beam went wild, waving every which way and slicing through the walls of the temple. It never came more than a meter from Contessa again though, and her composure path ensured she simply stood unflinching as the beam unleashed destruction around her.
The beam finally sputtered out after a few seconds and, for a moment, Contessa foolishly wondered what was next. Contessa instantly regretted it and chastised herself for tempting fate like that, because with biotinkers of course whatever came next would be something awful and disgusting, like the heart-
The heart hatched.
Long tangles of mutilated red and black meat the size of a house, larger than the heart itself, vomited forth from the heart. Contessa could only make out a glimpse of gold tinkertech and actinic blue light from the thing’s horribly distorted form before the massive monstrosity crashed into the stone floor. Which, sliced through by heart’s blazing beam, collapsed. Because apparently this entire temple was built over a hollow chimney in the mountain, which they were both plunged into by the terrible monstrosity’s birth.
The composure path directed her to take a deep breath as they fell into the earth, and instructed her to remind herself that stressful and negative emotions could be vented upon deserving targets. Like the one falling beside her.
Contessa allowed herself a small smile.
This would be cathartic.
The bogeyman of Cauldron arrested her descent with her hang glider just as the hollow chimney gave way to a cavernous hemisphere carved out from the inside of the mountain. She pulled out of a steep dive into a gliding landing and got a good look at the horror she had to fight as she did.
It had even less of a body plan than the previous monsters, if that was possible. Its core body was nothing more than a long lumpy blob of diseased black and red flesh. Attached to that core was a mishmash of long bendy limbs, some of flesh and some mechanical, terminating in claws and hands and weapons with no concern for sane mobility. And at the front, if there could be said to be a front, protruded a hideous cracked golden skull. It had two glowing red eye sockets, an orange light blazing in its forehead, a long messy red beard, and a mad scraggle of crowded fangs made to tear and rip.
Contessa landed next to the tri-pronged boomerang she’d flung earlier. She looked the monster in the eyes and reached down to pick the boomerang up, never breaking eye contact. Fingers playing idly over its surface, she smiled.
The monster panicked.
It swung a limb ending in a massive orange energy sword at her, screaming with rage and fear. Contessa jumped over it and in a burst of speed, carved half a dozen furrows in its golden skull with her boomerang.
It smashed a limb on the ground, unleashing a shockwave of blue light from the impact. Contessa was already out of range though, firing red-tipped arrows -interesting, those ones exploded- into its face.
One of its limbs fired a blazing white beam at her. Contessa took one step to the right at the perfect moment and didn’t even break tempo with her stream of exploding arrows.
The thing screamed. It was angry and afraid and clearly did not understand what was happening to it, because it performed the cardinal sin of the desperate, trying the same failed strategy twice. The monstrosity attempted to cleave her with that orange energy sword again, this time vertically. Contessa stepped neatly out of the way, swapping red-tipped explosive arrows for blue-tipped arrows that produced bursts of razor sharp ice on impact. Honestly, if a horizontal swipe of the two-story sword hadn’t caught her, why did it think a vertical swipe would?
It did finally seem to get the message though, roaring and howling as it fled away from her, climbing up the cavern’s sloping walls by plunging its claws deep into their surface. Contessa switched back to explosive arrows.
The monster’s desperate attempts to exchange laser fire in return availed it absolutely nothing. Contessa kept loosing arrows.
Hagard, bloodied, and with shattered bits of mechanical limbs hanging off of it, the monstrous creature lunged off the wall to the floor and let out a huge bellowing roar. The orange light of some parahuman power suffused it, blazing from every surface as if it were an iron in a forge fire. With a desperate howling scream it swung its two-story orange sword limb at her again.
Contessa held up a shield and tapped the screen of her tablet. An instant before impact, her shield flashed gold. The monster’s sword reversed direction in an instant, flying back with the grinding crunch of catastrophic mechanical failure coming from within its limb. The orange glow vanished from its body.
It tried again though, roaring with a rage that brought forth the near-molten metal glow from its skin. This time it fired a laser at Contessa. Who grinned with grim pleasure as her tablet-assisted shield proved equally capable of reflecting lasers into the monster’s face.
The thing collapsed, disoriented and spent. Contessa drew her rock smasher, which she had to admit was rapidly becoming one of her favorite weapons with which to use her potion-enhanced strength. Then she went to town. She swung the immense weight of her weapon around her body in ceaseless arcs, smashing limbs and machinery and caving in ribs under the creature’s long bulbous body. Gouts of black blood flecked with glowing red blobs sprayed from its flesh.
Three times the monster tried to raise itself up and trigger its orange glowing power, whatever it was. But each time a strike from the rock smasher to its chest shattered the effect, along with a few ribs. The monster screamed under the onslaught. It was dying, and it knew it. But all of its frantic thrashing landed not one hit on Contessa, who dealt destruction to its body and wove between its flailing limbs without missing a step.
Finally, after one last devastating crunching blow to its head, her power directed her to step back.
Contessa retreated to the safe distance her power recommended and watched as the monstrosity’s own broken power tore itself apart. Beams of purple light punched through its flesh one after the other, before at last the entire creature came apart in one messy explosion of purple light.
Path to staying clean, Contessa thought quickly, and sidestepped a splash of black and red material.
But for all that, the thing still did not appear to be fully dead. An awful black and red mist floated above the thing’s messy corpse, rotating in a circle. Something about it felt malicious and alive. And Contessa’s path said there were still a few more steps left to saving this world.
The mist floated up out of the mountain’s hollow chimney and at the same time, motes of gold light began appearing on Contessa’s skin. Hold still, her power directed. Then there was a flash of light, and Contessa was elsewhere.
The teleportation -Contessa wondered who in the world had done that for her- had brought Contessa to a wide grassy field under the open dusky sky. It was a nice evening. There was a friendly horse next to her snuffling her hand and the sunset was a beautiful scenic gold.
Also there was a giant storm of black and hideous pink light that Contessa was pretty sure she was about to destroy to save the world.
What more could she ask for?
As she watched the whirling miasma condensed into a boar fifty meters tall, a living mountain of vile obscenity. Its black skin flowed like tar and a hideous pink flame reminiscent of chemical fires boiled out from beneath its skin. Its thunderous steps shook the earth and its angry bellow flattened and curdled the grass around its gaping maw.
Contessa scratched the friendly horse’s muzzle, which was being remarkably calm about all this. That was a very well trained horse. She wondered how it had come to be here. A companion as unflinching as she was in a fight was not to be taken for granted.
The disembodied voice began speaking in Contessa’s head again. The speaker sounded like she would have been terrified, if she had the energy left for such a thing.
Contessa let her speak, idly walking towards the giant hell-boar across the field, leading the horse behind her as she went. The horse’s placid willingness to walk towards the monster was beginning to concern Contessa, and she ran a short observational path to determine what was wrong with it. She glanced over the creature and found it in good health, with working sight, smell, hearing, and enough intelligence in its eyes to indicate it was in full possession of its faculties. It appeared to simply be an exceptionally well-trained and brave horse.
Contessa checked the path to keeping it after she regained her original form, and sighed at the thousands of steps involved. She patted the horse’s neck. It was a pity she wouldn’t be keeping such a wonderful animal.
In her head the disembodied voice, which Contessa had been ignoring, paused and then resumed with a somewhat more confused and questioning tone. Then the voice became somewhat more insistent, and then urgent, and then very urgent.
Without glancing up Contessa reached up with her left hand and plucked a beautifully wrought ivory and gold bow floating down from the sky above her. She shifted her hip out to intercept a quiver of gold-headed arrows also falling from the sky and the quiver’s hook snagged neatly on her belt.
This, finally, seemed to break the voice’s composure. There was a long pause, and then a phrase Contessa was fairly sure she could translate by tone alone.
“What the fuck?”
Contessa obeyed the last steps of her path and grabbed the pommel of the horse’s saddle, throwing herself onto it with never-practiced ease. She gently tapped the horse’s side with one foot and twitched its reins, prompting the horse to take a few calm and measured steps sideways. Those steps took them out of the path of a blazing beam of actinic pink light that poured out of the boar’s mouth. Contessa averted her eyes to avoid harm to her eyesight, proud of the horse which remained exactly as unperturbed as she did as the blazing light scorched the earth beside them.
She waited a few seconds and then prompted the horse to step in the opposite direction, dodging another beam. Wait, her power directed, for one, two- Contessa threw the horse into a gallop, charging almost directly at the monstrosity, only angling just enough to the left to avoid running into its tar-black hooves. She ducked her head as they charged, losing a few strands of hair -and nothing more- to another torrent of chemically pink energy which poured over her head.
As she charged past the boar’s flanks, she drew three golden arrows from her new quiver. One she nocked in the golden bow, and the other two she held upright with her thumb. Without hesitation she drew and loosed, once, twice, three times. The woman’s voice cried out in her head just before the first arrow found its target, and three separate golden circles overlaid with two spinning triangles appeared on the boar’s flank. Contessa’s arrows found their marks in the center of each circle before the woman was finished speaking.
Each circle exploded in a shock of brilliant light, tearing horrendous gouges in the monster’s flesh and drawing a throaty scream from the thing. Contessa didn’t pause or bother to watch, only directing the horse to keep moving, circling around to the monster’s other flank.
It seemed to have regained control of itself by the time she got there, drawing in breath to fuel another of those pink torrents and turning its beady eyes to stare straight at Contessa. She didn’t care. The path wasn’t telling her to dodge, so she wouldn’t have to. She only drew another three arrows, nocking one and holding another two. Just as before she drew and loosed three times, preempting another shout from the cape speaking in her mind. Three more circles appeared and just as swiftly exploded.
The monster screamed, in terror and rage, choking on the pink fire it had been about to unleash. Contessa drove her horse under its stomach, weaving between the stomping hooves that tried to crush her, and shot another circle which appeared on its underbelly.
The monster was howling loudly enough to shake the earth now. Pink fires screamed out from every tarry rent in its form, blasting the air with all the heat of a furnace. Which Contessa’s path took advantage of. She rode out from beneath the gigantic boar and leapt from the saddle as soon as she was clear, pulling her hang glider free of her harness. It immediately caught the air, yanking her high into the air on the intense thermals produced by those raging flames.
As she rocketed into the sky -which was a sight better than her path’s previous methods of vertical locomotion- the top of the boar’s head blazed with a line of golden light. The thing’s diseased flesh trembled as if trying to hold itself together, but was rent open regardless by the sheer force of the light. Beneath the rent was revealed an eye, bulging and pulsating, made of red flesh and a yellow iris from which fires poured forth.
Contessa needed at least one arm to hang from her glider, but the legs of her current form were fit and strong. She used her one free arm to grab one last arrow and the golden bow’s string, swinging it around so the bow’s wood rested on the soles of her feet. Then, with all of her strength, she pulled the arrow back.
The arrow took the eye in a golden streak of light just as it fully opened, popping the horrible thing with a blast of cleansing light.
The giant boar, the monster Contessa’s path said must die to save this world, finally collapsed. Its legs could not bear the weight of its tattered and brutalized bulk. Contessa dropped the bow, using both arms to steer the glider back away from the thermals of its flames and gently glide to the ground. And as she did, she was not the only person to touch down.
From the ruined mass of the boar’s third eye, a shining figure launched into the sky. A beautiful young woman with blond hair and a white robe, shining with brilliant light, flew out of the boar and slowly floated down to land in front of the boar. Her hands were clasped in front of her as if in prayer, and once on the ground she slowly looked up at the fallen beast, a giant thousands of times more massive than she.
Helpfully, Contessa’s power identified the woman as the source of the voice in her head.
The monster fled. Just as it had tried to escape Contessa in the mountain, its form boiled into a black mist laced with pink lightning, and it fled into the sky.
It didn’t make it. The young woman glowed brighter, and then brighter still, light blazing forth as if she was a star come down to earth. She raised one hand. Contessa’s path to remaining whole directed her to look away, so she could not see the details of what happened next, but for a moment the world was consumed with light. When it was gone, so was the monster along with it.
For a long moment, the world was still.
Then the white-robed woman shattered the stillness, whirling around to stare at Contessa and crying out the same words she had guessed the meaning of earlier. “What the fuck?!”
Contessa’s path to saving this world was over. Her path to returning whence she’d came and regaining her own body had only two more steps, the most immediate of which was waiting. She had a moment to use however she might wish.
With a faint smile, Contessa directed her power to reassure the young woman. The girl, really, as Contessa saw now that they were facing each other. She laid one hand on the girl’s shoulder, then took it back and used it to sign a short sentence. She didn’t know what she was saying, but she trusted in her power to clear things up for the girl, who had clearly been through a lot and deserved what comfort she could get.
Before the girl could respond, the four desiccated corpses from earlier in her journey appeared around Contessa, floating cross-legged in the air around her and waiting for her directions. To them, Contessa performed the last step of her path, giving them a set of directions in a sign language she didn’t understand.
---
Panacea swore over Contessa’s body. The bogeyman of Cauldron may not exactly be on her list of allies, but now that everyone had regained control of their bodies and Scion was dead, tensions were starting to run rather hot. If anyone could manage the situation and keep things under control, it would be the cape whose power gave her all the answers.
“Are you sure you can’t just oxygenate her brain?” she asked Bonesaw.
The girl shook her head. “Nope,” she said, popping the p. “She’s been dead too long.”
Panacea swore again- or started to. Four corpses, fully mummified fucking corpses, phased into existence as if this were goddamn Star Trek, floating in the air. Then, gone one moment and there the next, Contessa appeared between them. The corpses faded out of existence shortly afterward.
Panacea goggled. She looked down. Contessa’s corpse was still on the table. “Wha-”
“It’s a long explanation,” Contessa interrupted her. “For now, I recommend you see to putting your sister back in order. Do it right this time. Riley,” she said to Bonesaw, “there’s a triage center being established two kilometers that way. Helping there will improve your lot in the aftermath. Move quickly.”
Panacea moved. Whatever the fuck had just happened, there was no doubting this was the bogeyman of Cauldron.
---
Link collapsed in front of Zelda, and she rushed forward to grab him and hold him up. She looked down at him -trying to keep her eyes on his face, dear goddess why was he in his underwear?- and tried to find words.
A sudden intake of breath jolted Link’s body in her arms, and he gasped. His hands immediately moved in front of him, signing, “I- my body- I wasn’t in control-”. His breaths came quick and shallow.
“Sshh it’s alright,” Zelda told him. “You’re alright. We’re alright.”
“What happened?” he signed.
That was a very good question. She thought back to the last thing Link -or whoever had been controlling Link’s body- had said to her.
“Thank you, my child. You did better than anyone could have ever asked of you.”
“I-” Zelda hesitated. What she was thinking was insane. But then again, she’d just watched Link’s journey. All twenty minutes of it. Who was to say what was beyond the realm of possibility anymore. She swallowed. “I think… I think you may have been possessed by the Goddess.”