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

[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.

[alicornucopia]

Well, the palace doesn't have stairs, so at the end of the hall is a column of nothing, sufficiently large to allow flight up or down. It has windows, but they don't face in Promise's direction.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Time for more directions, from a mute and possibly paralyzed fairy. Somehow.

Slowing down to a speed where words are recognizable, Alendi orders, "Think of the top five most likely places the Queen might be. Store direct and accurate directions in this bit of copper." He holds one of his many rings against her skin, and stabs her with the spike to transfer copper Feruchemy. "Figure it out."

[alicornucopia]

The fairy doesn't do anything visible, except cry harder. The fairy who's trying to haul her away gives an almighty yank and manages to stick her foot to the floor, where it stays put by sorcery. Some sorcerer in the hallway is causing a spray of grit to sheer off from the ceiling rubble and barrage Alendi's eyes.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Visible doesn't mean much under the circumstances, and Feruchemy is simple enough to figure out that the decoy will probably finish very soon. But it'd be silly to take that risk.

"When you've done it, confirm by doing something I'll notice but not disapprove of," Alendi doesn't want to have to think of a signal right now. "I'll let you go after that."

If the sorcerers can manage to sorcer things despite the distractions, there are probably bigger threats coming up. He doesn't have a lot of freedom of movement at the moment, but zips around as far as he can while still keeping his ring in contact with the fairy who's attached to the floor. Might as well be a very slightly more evasive target.

[alicornucopia]

The decoy is seriously limited in what she can do with a stuck jaw and broken neck. She flutters her eyelashes.

The grit is annoyingly well-aimed.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Fortunately, Alendi is finally free to get away from it. He yanks the spike out of the fairy and returns it to its previous place in his own body. He says, quickly, "you can run now," and then launches himself up. Two levels is easy enough, and with his speed he'll immediately get to either his destination or the next obstacle that can stop him, whichever comes first.

[alicornucopia]

The fairy cannot actually run, because she has a broken neck and is glued to the floor.

His going directly through the ceiling seems to have caught some fairies off-guard; there are some in the next floor up (he hits his head on a sorcerous barrier between him and the next one) but they're all facing the fairy equivalent of a stairwell and need to turn around to address his presence.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

If Alendi were concerned with the fairy's plight, he might have to turn in his Tyrannical Dark Lord card. He's only paying attention to his relevant enemies.

There's probably no need to fight them. He can stroll past them and take the fairy stairwell before they have a chance to react. He jumps across and up, kicking off the far wall and hoping the barrier doesn't extend over the stairwell itself.

[alicornucopia]

The barrier does extend over the stairwell itself!

But then the south wall of the palace disintegrates and then it doesn't anymore.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

That was either an extremely counterproductive defensive measure, or help from a sorcerer on his side. Alendi jumps again, and takes off down the corridor at a speed only Promise can track.

[alicornucopia]

He is accompanied by enough bursts of light and extreme-temperatured winds and occasional enemies turning into sparrows that he makes it unimpeded except for physical attacks he may easily shrug off to the guarded room where the decoy directed him as her first guess. The door, naturally, won't open.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Is this a "won't open" as in barricade, or a "won't open" as in magic? Probably the second thing. Rather than test the door directly, he tries battering down the wall it's attached to. South of it, naturally. (Pain gets turned off, just in case.)

[alicornucopia]

That doesn't work. But after he's been at it, Promise presumably finagles something, because now he can walk right through it.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Thank you, omnipotent sorcerer.
He charges through, rather redundantly using precognition on top of speed. No telling what's inside that room, after all.

[alicornucopia]

Well, then, the tiniest sliver of a second in advance, he will get to see that now everything is absolutely dark. And the entire palace shakes with an

absolutely

tremendous

NOISE