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

[unprophesied_of_ages]

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

[imeanforever]

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

And the gate begins to settle.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi is ready in every respect except the undetectability.

"How do you know where she'll be when the gate is ready?"

[imeanforever]

"I don't, because I don't know when the gate will be ready. Not much to do about that. It's why I'm picking a low-traffic area."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Well, as long as the secrecy works everything else should go well. We've taken care of the obvious failure modes."

Alendi pulls up a pair of chairs to wait until the gate settles.

[imeanforever]

They wait.

They wait.

(They look after a thoroughly constrained Yellow, and Promise eats too, and they wait.)

And four days later -

- the gate finally settles.

Promise closes it immediately and goes to squint through her little gate.

Then she closes her little gate.

"Are you ready to go now?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Absolutely."
He hasn't gotten any less ready over the last four days.

[imeanforever]

And now he's invisible and inaudible etcetera.

She opens the gate and motions urgently.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi goes through as soon as he's undetectable and falls quietly to the balcony. The inside of the door contains the Queen's bedroom; with any luck she'll be there now.

He opens the door as discreetly as he can manage.

[alicornucopia]

There is a tall, silver-skinned, white-haired fairy with dizzyingly patterned wings dozing on the canopied bed in there.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Perfect.

She gets a dart, and now he'll have to wake her up to give orders. He does this by turning off inaudability and whispering "stop" in her ear at ascending volumes. It'll have to work at some point.

[alicornucopia]

As soon as he speaks, something heavy, invisible, and violent catapults into him from the ceiling, roaring loudly. Echoing noises of alarm can be heard in the other hallway. The figure in the bed sits up and shrieks.

The flickering lights and sudden gusting chill in the room are probably Promise.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alarm. Excellent.

This seems like an excellent time for speed.
Dropping the blowgun, he shoves the heavy thing enough to get a free arm and fires the crossbow at where he thinks it is. With any luck (well, a lot of luck) he may have just gained another vassal. He shouts to both, "Stop!" and reloads the weapon.

[alicornucopia]

The gaudy-winged fairy in the bed holds still. The roaring heavy invisible thing does not. It attempts to wrench various parts of Alendi out of harmony with each other.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi barely cares. It may be annoying, but it has an upper limit on strength and he doesn't. He strikes toward it, hard enough to knock an ordinary thing of its weight through the wall, and tells his vassal, "order it to stop!"

[alicornucopia]

It goes through the wall.

"Stop!" whispers the silver fairy, short on breath.

It... does not stop. It charges him again.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

So...either it's not a fairy, and Promise didn't mention any non-fairy threats, or this Queen was one of the decoys.

"Where can I find the Queen? You can breathe if it gets me my answer faster."
He doesn't bother striking the attacker again. Just makes himself several times heavier than usual and lets it hit him.

[alicornucopia]

So it hits him. And then starts trying to figure out how he is assembled and put a hand over his mouth.

"She's," gasps the decoy, "maybe in her other chamber or her wardrobe or," gasp -

The invisible violent thing is now trying to put out Alendi's eardrums.

The invisible violent thing abruptly melts; it's still invisible, but hot enough to glow.

"- or the dining room, the little one on the fourth floor, maybe -"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

That makes things easier. Thank you Promise.

"Directions to your best guess, now, quickly and honestly."

[alicornucopia]

"Out this room left fly up two levels in the flightwell -"

The door bursts open. More fairies pour in. The flickering insane lights and wild temperature changes accelerate. One of the small fairies suddenly turns into a sparrow. The decoy's jaw clamps abruptly shut.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Did someone give a silent order? Can that even happen?
Alendi grabs the decoy, holds her in front of him, and charges through the door. "Keep answering!"

As long as he's not trying for secrecy at the moment, he gives away his position by changing from room temperature to barely short of boiling. And spreading that around the room with extra air he conveniently happens to have lying around. Promise has been warned this might happen, but any hostile sorcerers haven't.

[alicornucopia]

The decoy is silent and does not resist being picked up, although she's tall and wingy enough to be awkward to carry and she looks miserable in the heat; her nightdress and the edges of her wings start to char. Something he is not personally exploding explodes. There are screams; there are footsteps; there are wingbeats. A bludgeoning force applies itself to his knees; part of the ceiling falls down in front of him, blocking the hallway direction the decoy recommended. Fairies yell commands at each other.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi stumbles.

While falling, he stops time. On this irritating world he's no more graceful than an ordinary human, but with subjective minutes to reposition himself that's more than enough.

If the fairies are using physical barriers, hopefully that means there aren't any actual obstructions. He launches himself forward, after lightening himself so that it's essentially his strength pushing only the fairy. Once the two of them are moving quickly, he adds mass and speed to strike the barrier with more force than it could possibly be intended to take.

Too fast to try to ask his captive anything comprehensible, unfortunately. Maybe once he's out of this crowd.

[alicornucopia]

The decoy he's holding does not tolerate this treatment well at all. Something snaps and her head lolls on her shoulders. She was already tearing up; now she is silently weeping. The chunk of ceiling shatters, revealing the hallway and more fairies beyond. One of them tries to pull the decoy away from him. One throws a spear that looks like it's made of bone and aims straight for his throat.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

A broken neck wasn't supposed to happen. She might not be able to point him to the Queen now.

There's a strong temptation to take the spear in the throat to watch people's reactions. (It's tactical! He'd get to find out who can see through his invisibility!) But it could be enchanted, and he has places to be anyway. Now that there's nothing directly in his way, he taps zinc and steel to casually walk through the crowd of suddenly frozen fairies. Whoever's holding on to his captive can let go or be dragged along.

Unless there's some kind of obstruction he can't see to avoid, he'll be as far as he knows to go in practically no time at all.