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]

She can't shut it down. It's not so strong that she can't act against it, but without magic it wouldn't stop affecting her.

[imeanforever]

Damn. Sitting through it until she can push back with the right finesse via sorcery it is, then. Ugh ugh ugh this is gross this is gross this is gross. She takes four breaks (one of which includes dry heaving) over three hours of leaning into the sphere and learning the exact dimensions of its grossness.

And then she casts.

And now her principal emotion is pissed off.

She flies towards the very middle of the sphere.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Finding the center will point her to the right tower in the mass that is Kredik Shaw. The emotion manipulation doesn't get any more gross than what her defense is already prepared for.

At the tower, there are only a few occupied rooms with open windows. One of them contains Alendi.

[imeanforever]

She would approach him and ask him to explain - they did have a perfectly civil interaction before; he even trusted her enough not to bother reciprocating her no-orders order despite clear invitation - but here he is, sitting right in the middle of the gross.

She perches in his window. Invisible. Protected. Suspicious and seething.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He's just reading a book.
If he were to pay more attention, he might notice that one of the people he's Soothing and Rioting happens to be in his window instead of down in his city, but that would be like paying attention to one insect in a swarm. He doesn't even notice that that one person is managing to seethe.

[imeanforever]

This is her only angle that might be safe. If people here can do this, they can do other things that might be even worse; she does not dare be absorbed into some greater pit of emotional tar or more scalpel-shaped attacks that she wouldn't have time to force back. Of people who might know what's going on, one of them is her vassal and therefore probably safe to interact with.

Maybe he's uninvolved, innocent, a victim himself. If that's the case she can apologize and rescind extraneous orders and go sit on a mountain waiting to get hungry enough to be forced back through the gate and then find a new place to live, again. He won't be permanently damaged. Certainly she isn't planning to fuck with his mind; she is loosely aware that some people might consider gently phrased orders from a nervous master worse than emotional manipulation but she is not at all sure what it would be like to be one of those people.

And maybe he's participating. Maybe he's doing it. He had magic, that she remembers; she knows little enough about how this world does non-sorcery that she has no reason to believe they're separate kinds or specialties, though she can't rule it out. Maybe it's him doing it.

In which case she'd feel no guilt to speak of.



In a low but sufficiently carrying voice:

"Take no new action."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He doesn't.
Doesn't even say hello, because he can't.
Can he at least speed up his thought—No.

Ruin.

[imeanforever]

"If you are innocent in the bubble of emotional manipulation around this castle," she says, "then you have my sincerest apologies. You may, at a volume that will attract no attention from people besides us, answer my questions and comments exclusively with true, plainly worded, and complete information. Is anything delicate in danger if you cannot take new actions on a scale of minutes? Hours?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No. There are things depending on me personally right now, but I could keep doing them continuously for days before needing to recharge."

[imeanforever]

"What are those things?"

He's not actually compelled to answer; the question isn't worded as a demand in itself and she said may, not must. But if he starts he's going to have to finish.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I am doing the emotion bubble. I do it because I've tried different things over the centuries, and this is remarkably effective. If I stopped, there wouldn't be immediate riots in the streets but the marginal crime would be committed instead of not, and removing the happiness part would have the obvious negative effects. Order gets weakened, and a lot of people get unnecessarily hurt.

And I'm looking for Allomancers. Especially ones not attached to any noble house. They're powerful people and good to know about, so I can capture the ones who need capturing and try to recruit the ones who don't. In case of capital crimes, I do have a way of preserving part of the power and distributing it. This forms a part of the motivation for focussing on people with Allomancy, but by no means all.

The rest of the magic I'm doing affects only myself. Keeping myself a bit faster, stronger, more awake, and also alive.

I'm not doing anything urgent right now other than magic—" he tries and fails to gesture toward the fact that he's holding a book— "as most of the direct ruling is done by the various Ministries. I do handle cases that skip through the bureaucracy for one reason or another, and I set general policy. But neither of those is likely to matter on a scale of hours."

So he didn't have to tell her he's not burning copper. Interesting. There probably won't be any Inquisitors burning brass or zinc close enough right now, but the fact that they could conceivably see the extremely unprecedented fear coming from this room is something.

[imeanforever]

Oh, good, he's doing the emotion bubble. This is not better than nobody doing a fucking emotion bubble but it's better than someone who is not her vassal doing an emotion bubble and her having baselessly ordered around one of its victims.

Hmm.

"List, in descending order of importance, anything that you expect I will in retrospect find urgent to know."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"The most important is that if Ruin gets out and there are any open gates, it can probably go through them and destroy your world. And if gates can sometimes happen accidentally, like however I got there in the first place, it would be a very good idea to make sure it doesn't get out even after I evacuate Scadrial.

Likewise very important but with 'retrospect' not on the schedule for a few centuries is information on how to imprison it and the risks of omnipotence going wrong. The ones I know about.

On a more immediate note, I have the ability to ignore orders but am prevented from using it because 'take no new action' tok me by surprise.

And if I stop the Soothing then people will notice and will come here to investigate. The specific people who will arrive can probably see you despite the invisibility. There is a small chance that they may arrive anyway if they happen to be sensing emotions close by.

I was serious when I mentioned getting as many fairies as possible vassaled to humans for safety reasons, and planning to eventually get rid of both of your masters and the Queen permanently." That should make him sound better, at least to her. "And by issuing me orders, you've just made that list yourself." Never mind.

[imeanforever]

"If you didn't want me issuing you orders you should have taken the mirror option when I offered it or not emotion-bubbled a bunch of people. Can you prevent people from coming here to investigate without arousing suspicion?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Mirror option. That was part of that order?

"Probably. I could announce I was going to stop it and pretend to have a reason; it'd be surprising but nobody would suspect magical enforcement. It'd be easier to just let them come here and be suspicious, with us being somewhere else entirely."

[imeanforever]

"What would be the consequences of going somewhere else and permitting the suspicion? And what's your method for ignoring orders?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Mainly it means I deal with the suspicion after the fact instead of during. And, of course, that they don't see you with me.

I can store my sense of hearing for future use. Be halfway deaf for a time, in order to be twice as sharp for half the time later, that sort of thing. If I store all of it at once, then I'm temporarily completely deaf with no outward signs.
The ability is, with a lot of inefficiency, transferrable. Do you want it?"

[imeanforever]

"Do not use this ability to wholly or in part ignore orders that I produce of my own uncommanded will. Do deploy it to prevent any other fairy from countermanding orders that I produce of my own uncommanded will, including at multiple steps of remove in a longer plan. Why are you offering?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"You did recently become indispensable to one of my plans to save the world. It would be unfortunate if you got incapacitated in the next three centuries."

[imeanforever]

"Where would be a good place to have the rest of this conversation?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Easiest is just some tower not being used. Even if people see that it's occupied, they won't know who we are. I can find one easily enough."

[imeanforever]

"What, from my perspective, are the drawbacks to relocating to such a tower right now?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"You'd have to relax the order about not doing anything and might conceivably give me more freedom than you meant to." This enforced completeness thing sucks. "As for actually being in some other tower, it's effectively the same from your perspective except with much lower risk of being seen by anyone who poses a threat to you."

[imeanforever]

"And if I turn you invisible and you lighten yourself and I carry you to another tower through the window?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Then you wouldn't have to remove very much of the order.
The downside there is that the Inquisitors—that's the magical law enforcement—do always have their vision on, and seeing two invisible people floating about might draw their attention. Safer to let me burn steel and iron and get us there quicker under my own power."