unprophesied_of_ages | A forest that was not there yesterday

A forest that was not there yesterday

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.

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Promise giggles. "Do you want the other concealments to toggle the same way?"

Turn.
"I don't think I'll ever want to turn those off until I get back, but there aren't really any drawbacks. May as well."
He removes some rings from his other hand.

"The drawback is that someone could get the rings away from you," Promise says.

"If anyone knows to try, let alone manages to do it, the concealment's already blown, right?"

"Not necessarily. Wildcard magic from all the kinds, plus the fact that I can't make you insubstantial and somebody could touch your hand."

"If it might matter, then never mind about the rings."

"I could layer them. The inaudibility too. Then you'd be inaudible until you spoke and your ring was turned, invisible till you - did something, we'd have to pick something, and the other ring was turned, etcetera. You'd only get to break the conditional spells once, but if someone got the rings before then you wouldn't be hosed."

"Can't be too paranoid, when they really are out to get us. Turning the ring and snapping my fingers, then, since I'll be safely inaudible."

"Okay." Promise enchants a second ring. "And something for the scentlessness. Some fairies navigate by scent a lot."

"I'll...I don't know. Clap my hands.
Is it just the ordinary senses we have to worry about? There aren't fairies whose primary sense is telepathy or something?"

"Not that I know of, and I would definitely remember that if I'd ever heard of it. Some might be able to sense your temperature. Can you stay air temperature while sneaking?"

"Yes. But it changes the temperature of my entire body, so depending on how precisely they sense the temperature I might still stand out. Wouldn't look like a person, though."

"Don't hide in a well-ventilated corner, I guess... I can't really fix that, I don't think, but uniform air temperature is better than nothing." She gives him a ring for scentlessness. "I'll hold off on the other spells until we're sure I don't need to be able to see or hear you anymore. Now. When you get the queen, or if you have to settle for a vassal first, what are you going to tell them to do?"

"To stop. Then tell her to tell everyone else to stop, and have her keep shouting that while I run for the gate.

If it's a vassal, I tell them to maintain my secrecy and do the best they can manage to help me get to the Queen's six favorite vassals. I'd want to interrogate them to find out what specific orders I should be giving based on who they are, but can't count on getting a chance."

"There may be things set up that don't require anyone to deliberately activate them and will still be in operation even if everyone is stopped. I don't know if the queen is smart enough to have arranged not to know about them all herself; attack from this angle is almost always impossible on a couple of levels, but she might have done anyway. Certainly no one vassal will know about it all just because the palace has stood for thousands of years and there's been turnover. Having her shout may be a bad idea - if there's someone away on an errand and they come back to see everyone frozen in place they'll know something's gone wrong. And in case there is something like darts set up and you get caught again I definitely don't think you should have her advertise the order to all of her vassals in range, or you'll wind up caught by it too."

"If I've been caught, then my darts won't work on her anyway and it's over regardless of what order I try to give.
But if there's any case where capturing each other with darts could possibly come up, I can just not listen to her.

Surely once we have the Queen it doesn't matter who knows she's been captured? They'll all get rescued eventually, but we don't need a very long chance to give her a more permanent set of orders."

"I'm not sure what would happen if you darted each other at exactly the same time," says Promise. "And there's one fairy who knows names automatically; if there's one who works on mortals that would be an obvious sort of vassal for the queen to collect. It's worth having a contingency. And once you capture the queen the obvious next action for someone who finds that disagreeable is to kill you, possibly from out of earshot or while more traditionally deafened, and if they can't do that, turn you into a snail. It would certainly matter if word got to Thorn. Thorn getting the Queen through us is the worst case scenario."

That doesn't sound like much more absolute of a loss than Thorn getting them and not the Queen, but maybe Promise is just concerned with irrelevant people again.

"I can order her to go through the gate and tell you her name. I'd like to see her face if someone does manage to kill me and she doesn't have another master who can cancel that.

It really does seem safer to have her order everyone to stop, though, because then I at least don't have to deal with anyone who isn't prepared in that way."

"You may be right. I do still think you shouldn't shout. She doesn't interact with most of her vassals on a daily basis and I doubt she's sufficiently answerable to them, security aside, that they'll have any very coherent response to her going quietly missing. Which will buy us long enough to give her an exquisitely thorough set of instructions."

"I'll try. If I have a chance to issue more orders I'll do it quietly, but if there are too many people around I'll incapacitate them.

I'm less confident in my plan for if I have to work my way up through her vassals. Most individuals wouldn't be any help at all, and making progress will be more complicated than it was with Thorn."

"I will be putting you right next to her," says Promise, "so hopefully it won't come up. It might be that the best you can do is get them to cover your tracks and give you directions to the Queen unless you happen to stumble on a really good sorcerer."

"Directions should be enough on my end. You'll be able to incapacitate anyone who spots the gate?"

"With the reaction time I can command now? Yes."

"Then all we need is a chance and a bigger gate."

"I'll put it here," she says, indicating a location and a shape.

And the gate begins to settle.

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