A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"And how many of these people both have considerable brainpower and would be motivated to do anything about it?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Probably not many. I can head off the suspicion by introducing you as my vassal, and the motivation will go down in eight days. And it will be pretty obvious that you aren't enslaving the entire Empire or anything nefarious like that.

Until you do, of course."

[imeanforever]

"I'm certainly not going to run the empire like a standard court, anyway, even if we do wind up implementing a plan that involves mass vassalization."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No one here has a frame of reference for a standard court; they'd just know whether or not they've been being forced to do things.

If you want to stay secret, that's also an option. I'd estimate that going public in advance is worth it if it's likely to come to an actual invasion and not if Thorn's people are going to be attacking in secret."

[imeanforever]

"I've had no chance to observe Thorn orchestrating something like this... I don't think he has the population to want to sacrifice subterfuge."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Secrecy it is, then.
Once they're looking, you might be spotted by an Inquisitor who notices they can sense your emotions and not your blood. But I can cover for that with copper any time you're close by me."

[imeanforever]

"I might just be able to counter that sense the same way I countered the emotion bubble's attempt to affect me, if you tell me more about how it works. But I don't know if it would be worth the time it'd take."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I can't really explain it very well. When burning zinc or brass, I sense other people's minds. Their emotions feel like a, a ball of clay or something, but rough and with some parts raised and others pressed down. And I can raise or press those parts to affect how strongly they're feeling different things. Whatever you did gave you a resistance to changes, but I can still sense that there's a ball of emotion there."

[imeanforever]

Promise shivers. "Later we are going to have to have a conversation about that but right now it is only tactically important and probably not very much that."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Maybe Alendi should have considered not volunteering that information. "It will let me or most Inquisitors reliably check an area for fairies.

But you're right. If we can capture the Queen at all, we can probably do it in less than eight days. And then us versus Thorn here doesn't come up."

[imeanforever]

"Right. She can just casually absorb his court. She and hers have had long practice at that sort of thing."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"So you'll need zinc, tin, and a portal to get you familiar with her court. And steel if you need physical speed to match the mental.

Can you use sorcery to suddenly change the scene to something you know and they don't? Like, say, this room. You wouldn't even have to do it fast, if you have a portal and the element of surprise."

[imeanforever]

"That would require more familiarity than I can probably acquire in eight days. And it would only help until whoever was in the changed room left it."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Even if you're acquiring familiarity at hundreds of times the normal rate? Once you have zinc and some charged metalminds, the limiting factor on mental speed is how much you can learn without getting bored.

And if you can change the room into a locked cell, the time until they leave might be a lot."

[imeanforever]

"I can walk through walls, that's how I got Yellow," says Promise.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Right.

That's also similar to one of Thorn's protections, the one I was most worried about. He can make himself pass through solid objects at will, which would include me. And I imagine it's probably harder to capture one of the Queen's top sorcerers to make them revoke it."

[imeanforever]

Promise nods. "I'm sure she has something like that, and probably more comparable things too. But that sort of thing does always need to be activated at will. If you can catch her by total surprise with a dart or something, and then manage to speak an order before whoever she's with kill you, it won't come into play."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"So changing the terrain is a bad idea, then. I'll be able to speak at pretty much any speed, but might have to slow down so she hears it properly.

What sorts of things count? Just getting anything from the mortal world inside her body? I would not have expected darts to work."

[imeanforever]

"I don't know, unfortunately. I wouldn't have necessarily expected the metallic water to work. I'm reasonably sure that anywhere inside her body won't do; it might have to circulate in the blood."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"That can't be it. Swallowing must also work; there's no way the metals had time to get absorbed through whatever digestive system fairies have when I did it to Thorn's people."

[imeanforever]

"I mean circulate in the blood if introduced via a non-swallowing mechanism. The underlying concept is, as I understand it, taking something you cannot in principle return."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I'm not sure I know fairy circulatory systems well enough to even try aiming for that, but I suppose I can spend massive amounts of luck on it. Massive amounts of luck can make things easier sometimes."

[imeanforever]

"I would imagine so. Should I be transmuting anything while we're having this conversation, for efficiency?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Cadmium, probably. It's the small hexagonal orange one. Usually useless, but would have come in handy last time I was hiding from sorcerers. And once it exists, I can make another useful metal with ordinary metallurgy."

[imeanforever]

"How would it have helped?" she asks, picking up the orange thing from where she left it and getting started on transmuting it. "And should you be storing visual acuity for me while we have this conversation?"