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]

"Now store my name in this piece of copper, and then give me the spike."

[imeanforever]

Promise does these things.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He re-inserts the brass spike into his own leg, and sees an extra copy of his name in the copper. Then he takes it out, and breaks it into pieces as small as he can manage.

"And now, there's something I think you're going to want to see." He starts walking downstairs.

"When Yellow caught you, it was only by your name, right? Not by food?
You can speak freely, by the way."

[imeanforever]

"I can't follow you unless you say I may," she points out, standing still.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Oh. Right. You can follow me. Invisible, if you prefer to cast that first; there's no hurry."

[imeanforever]

She turns herself invisible. She follows him. "Yellow got my name from Thorn."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Good. Because I can't make him not have fed you, but he doesn't know your name any more."

[imeanforever]

"What are you going to do with me?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Haven't decided yet. You want some of the same things I do and will be much more effective if you're not merely following orders. Setting you mostly free to help my planet is an available option. Of course, so is only deploying you on specific short-term problems and routinely ordering you to take no new action after each one."

[imeanforever]

Follow, follow.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

And they reach the dungeon. Alendi opens the door, and reveals Yellow.

"And here's your ex-master. Would you like revenge?"

[imeanforever]

Yellow is mid-cry.

"No," says Promise. She looks at Alendi. "If you're ever tempted to let me go, you might remember that I'm not a vengeful person."

"Promise," says Yellow. "Promise, help."

"I can't," she says.

"I was nice to you."

"You improved on the standard of living I enjoyed with Thorn," says Promise, "I'll give you that."

"Help!"

"I can't."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No? But you said...
Oh. I forgot about forgetting." He taps the relevant coppermind, and laughs. "That makes more sense, then.

Do you care what I do with him now that it isn't hypothetical?"

[imeanforever]

"I care about a lot of things. You could command him to seek no names and give no enforced orders and send him home."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"And that would at best neutralize one fairy until someone vassalizes him. There has got to be something more effective than that, even with all your moral constraints.

Oh well, he isn't important any more. I'll think of something eventually."

[imeanforever]

Promise is quietly thoughtful. Yellow is weepy.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi cares not at all about Yellow's feelings. He closes the door behind them.

"If I set you completely free right now, what would you do? Don't try to deceive me."

[imeanforever]

Promise thinks about this question. For quite a while.

Then she says, "I would go through the gate, and close it, and go to the Steppes, and make another gate from there to the same place on this end, and then I would go someplace very, very far away from the steppes and from where Thorn operates and where he found me, and I would try making a home again. Maybe one day I'd try to find out how your people were doing in the Steppes, if you went there. Or go back to my tree. But that would depend on what rumors I heard and whether I got caught earlier in the process."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"And then my people all get vassalized by whatever fairy most recently lived on the steppes. Or I suppose I could make Yellow claim it and just not let him take advantage of the kingdom's worth of vassals."

[imeanforever]

"The Steppes are empty. That's why I originally suggested them. Using Yellow could help too."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"There's empty, and then there's always have been empty, or that's what you warned me.
What if I send you to the steppes to claim it, and then start emigrating the population gradually? I'd be among the last to come, for magic reasons, so it'd leave you ruling a population of mortals with no other master."

[imeanforever]

"There's nothing to eat there right now, just a monoculture of grass. I would become nonfunctional in fairly short order unless I was allowed to collect and cultivate fey food or you decided to have a mortal feed me mortal food. The Steppes are also only slightly farther from Thorn's usual operating area than the place I most recently tried to live was, although a population of mortals with whom I had a reasonably free hand could protect me if they were smart enough to pick up sorcery, or had local magic to use, and luck and timing cooperated."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Growing fey food too wouldn't ruin anything, as long as it's contained enough to not interfere with the future mortal food.

Thorn...it's probably a good idea to neutralize Thorn anyway. How precisely do you know where he is?"

[imeanforever]

"I know where he keeps one of his courts, but he has a number of satellite courts and I don't know where the others are except that he can get to and from most of them and conclude business there in less than a single waking cycle."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Can't easily go after him then.
Not with current resources, anyway. How long would it take you to make a pure metal in quantity if I supplied a useless form of it? It'd be roughly analogous to transforming rust into iron."