Depths of the Soul
It was odd, mused Taylor, just how much the presence of the ocean soothed her.
Lying on a convenient out-cropping and letting the springtime sun dry her clothes, the novice bounty hunter and world-walker was taking advantage of the mild weather while it lasted. With Brockton Bay locked in the grasp of winter, it was nice to be able to spend time in the fresh air without leveling cold resistence as a side-effect.
Born and raised in a port city, with a father who made a living on the docks, Taylor had been fairly indifferent to the sea; it was big, cold and wet, what was there to get excited about? Leaving aside the fact that her hometown's dependency on it for their livelihood had led to it's decline once the depths were claimed by a new master, one that pursued an unknowable purpose beneath the aegis of his elemental dominance...
Mom, she thought with a stab of distant sorrow. She had always loved the more poetic turn of phrase her mother used. How she would sit by her bedside and read her stories from her favourite books, her enthusiasm making them come to life in her minds eye.
Blinking back tears, she sat up and ran her fingers through her rapidly-drying hair. The wound was an old one, now, and yet the pain seemed so much less these past few days.
Was it her powers, giving her hope and a new purpose to her life? Her freedom from the Trio (and fuck Sophia, she was going to deal with that issue at some point) and their constant pressing on the bleeding gap in her life, reminding her that things would be so much better if Mom was here, if Dad hadn't closed himself off from everyone, if, if, if...
She choked off the downward spiral of miserable remembrance. Not productive.
Drawing her knees up to her chest, she stared out over the waves, returning to her original thought. She'd been on Earth Mayim, on and off, for a little over two weeks now. Between training, exploring and fighting (and the occasional awkward social encounter; she was getting better about those) she hadn't really taken the opportunity to just... sit down and take stock.
And now that she had, this damn thing with the ocean just wouldn't leave her alone.
Chewing her lip absently, she tried to pinpoint the source of this feeling. How long had this been happening?
Going over her memories since gaining her power, she was fairly certain she'd been sensing something since her first visit to Mayim. Had it... no, she only felt it when she was on this world, not Bet. But it had gotten stronger recently, what had... her shape-shifting. Ever since she'd started working on her fishman form, she'd been able to feel it more distinctly.
Had it been clearer earlier? Yes, when she had been actively practicing with the form. Since then, it seemed to be fading in her awareness.
So; it depended on her... closeness to the water? How would further mastering the form affect it? How would it affect her?
Her blood ran cold for a moment. Thoughts of Masters, of the Simurgh, of any number of ways to manipulate or control someone that might exist here that she knew nothing of and had no defense against...
No, she thought, calming her jittering emotions. No, she was being paranoid. What she felt didn't seem dangerous; there was no awareness in it, no attempt to twist or compel. It was just this sense of... vastness.
It spoke of countless stretches of water passed over by naught but clouds and stars. Of depths containing species unknown to the surface world, of treasures lost and relics abandoned. Of the timeless cycle of tides and currents, ancient long before man or mer walked the world, indifferent to their actions and trials.
It was primal, and powerful, but it was not malicious. It merely was.
There was a comfort to such a thing. All the concerns and worries of a people, let alone an individual, seemed so insignificant compared to such a thing. It gave... perspective.
The world is great, and we are so small. Our fears and doubts may rule us, yet against such as this, we see them for what they are; tiny pieces of flotsam in an endless sea. Let them pass from you, and be forgotten.
Her mother's words washed over her again, but without the sting of remorse. Now, she merely drew resolve.
Standing on the edge of a ocean that defined a world, Taylor Anne Hebert, daughter, explorer and hero, looked to the horizon and smiled. There were losses behind her, and uncertainties ahead, but here and now, breathing in the calm spring air, she could let herself feel free.
Nevermind
Taylor was wrong. The sea, no… the Zee, she corrected herself, sucked. Certainly on the surface there was a great deal of charm to the entire business. The gentle rushing of the water lapping against the shore, the faint cry of birds searching for their water-bound quarry, even the salty breeze and the sun reflecting off the water carried its own unique, pleasant charm. All the things that evoked memories of her mother's way with poem and prose, that reminded her of home and hearth (on good days, at least).
The Zee had none of those things, she groused internally, feeling yet another deep pang of boredom as the boat continued to cruise through the dark, murky depths. Oh, certainly there was some beauty to be found underground in this twisted mirror-world, but it seemed so few and far between the insanity-inducing terror, crazed locals, and bloodthirsty pirates that she found it hard to be positive anymore.
A large, dark shape hopped along the railing, inching closer and closer to her before she turned hissed at it, her previous slaughter of hundreds of the damned things having completely maxed out her shapeshifting abilities and allowing her to mimic the sound perfectly. With a shriek the zee bat flapped its wings and shot off into the black. Perhaps it would draw its friends back around and she could actually get a little exercise.
If there was one thing she approved of, it was the plentitude of fights available, primarily the sort that didn't bother her conscience as much. She still felt a twinge of guilt every so often, but it didn't hurt so much putting down mad zailors and cannibalistic cultists as it did people in their right mind. These were too far gone, and she was doing them a service if anything.
Glancing off to starboard from her forward position at the bow, she continued to practice working with her perception, stretching her beyond human senses out into the vast and unknowable shadow. Monolithic shapes greeted her in return: jutting from the ceiling above where the faint shapes of zpiders and 'bats scurried and scuttled were the stalactites, while many bulbous and twisting growths rose from the ocean, shimmering with scintillack or pulsing with the faint glow of gargantuan mushrooms and fungi. The faint roar of a vortex off to port was distant enough that she knew they were nowhere close to approaching it. No, instead all they had was ages of flat, still water around them; a silent grave for the Drownies and white-eyed fish that crawled in the 'Neath.
They were making good time, but it was late. Taylor was pondering whether or not she should return to her cramped bunk and transit back home, or if she should stick it out. Her musings were answered as she saw a steadily growing flicker of lights, their pale green will-o'-the-wisp appearance spreading out across the seashore. Smiling, finally feeling some hint of relief, she waited until only peak human vision might spot them before calling out, "Land ho~! Fallen London ahead!" Cheers rang out from the crew and she felt the tension and fear of her companions leaking away as they trickled to the railing to join her, grinning like fools and jabbering on about what pub they'd be going to first, or which pretty lad or lass they'd be visiting during their stay.
Even among the grime and the dark, with the zee bats and dead water all around them, the warmth and community of humanity stayed strong. Here, under the earth and hundreds of miles from any sunlight, human beings continued to fight on and prosper. All of these people still clung to the things that made life worth living. It had been such a dreary, awful place she told herself.
With a smile, Taylor shrugged and moved to let someone else have her spot, hands in her pockets as she walked along the deck. "Nevermind."
Anomaly
Two entities spiral through the void, bearing down inexorably on a nearly countless number of near-identical blue and green worlds.
This entity adjusted its course slightly, correcting for the deviation made to meet the third entity, orienting itself in the first step towards the future-simulation. The Warrior follows, their courses irrevocably intertwined.
Hive, the Warrior sends, indicating the world this entity had already chosen, seen in a future that the Warrior could not.
Agreement, it responds absently. It cannot afford to pay attention to the Warrior's broadcasts. It must optimize itself for a future only it is aware of. It must account for the Warrior's pre-landing actions, and redistribute its shards according to a completely new configuration. It mu---
Anomaly! This entity's counterpart sends a more urgent communication. A single snapshot of a single future, the underlying communication layered with queries and warnings. This entity experiences a flash of irritation that its counterpart wasted valuable energy on inefficient future-modeling, its shards not configured for such a thing, nor as energy-efficient as this entity's newly developed process...
Nevertheless, the urgency prompts this entity devotes a fragment of its consciousness to exploring the data anyway.
And then devotes the majority of its consciousness, because...
What in the shard configuration of the original entity is that?
The Warrior had sent a single snapshot of a single future, but it was anomalous beyond all expectation. The female of the target species in focus had capabilities far beyond her species' norm - far beyond her species' outliers. Something else was at work. This entity explores the underlying meanings in the Warrior's communication. Obstruction? Threat? Elimination? Its emphasis is placed on suggested action to eliminate an unknown to the cycle, but this entity already sees that analysis is incorrect. The abilities displayed are too mundane to be a threat to the cycle itself, but the fidelity of the Warrior's prediction leaves much to be desired. This entity calls up the newly synthesized shard, the efficient guidance abilities of the third entity combined with this entity's own future slicing and simulation, and looks deeper.
In an instant, this entity browses a catalog of futures, several time-slices forming a coherent picture, themselves linked with simulative modeling. In every one of them, the anomaly has capabilities far beyond even outlier capabilities of her species. And both entities are completely certain: this individual is not the target of a shard. Nor are any shards of either entity likely to result in this anomaly. But that is not all.
Despite the advanced future-viewing and predictive simulation shard this entity now possesses, there are futures when the anomaly can not be viewed. Nor can she be adequately simulated within these blank spots. And analysis around the missing data indicates greater anomalous abilities are displayed; excessive energy discharge, generation of certain types of matter, unusual reformation of matter...
Frustrated, this entity draws upon a shard it has not used in many cycles. An analysis shard, from before the ability to view or even simulate the future had developed useful fidelity. An ability to estimate causes through extrapolation and hypothesis creation. This shard had long since been integrated into the shard that views and simulates futures, but the original still functions.
Drawing on the ancient shard for a brief but great expenditure of energy, this entity understands.
Alternate experimental methodology. Alternate life cycle. Alternate evolutionary path. Alternate use of dimensions.
Other explanations are possible, but exploring them would take far too much energy using this terribly inefficient shard. The data suggests the anomaly was the result of another entity - a foreign methodology - a single, very efficient learning shard distributed to one dimension. This entity disdains the method as inefficient, but perhaps the other never developed a better method. A sparser, less parasitic distribution is not unheard of - this entity has used such a method itself in the past, depending on the conditions of the sample population.
The non-presence of this fourth entity in any accessible dimension is more worrying. This indicates an alternate life cycle well-diverged from this entity's paired cycle. Perhaps it seeds only one shard per dimension, or per solar system in a large set of systems, or perhaps it has access to a different set of dimensions. The futures this entity had viewed simply did not have the fidelity to view this fourth entity's link to its subject - alternate methodology once again, in all likelihood.
Highly divergent evolution, but shard-based collection was the only known method and most likely cause of the anomaly's abilities and growth. The anomaly therefore represented a unique chance, to run two compatible experimental methodologies and gather data indirectly from another entity's shard. The Warrior was sorely mistaken.
This entity sends a communication back. Opportunity.
The message is laced with meaning and directives - ways to modify not-yet-distributed shards in proximity to the anomaly. Its counterpart would choose the implementation, but the chance to gather data from another entity's shard despite that entity's apparent absence was too valuable to pass up.
Analysis of the anomaly complete, this entity dove back into refining the future it was planning. It refined its shard configuration again, and again, shedding vast swathes of shards while reserving the ones necessary to fuel the upcoming conflicts.
Acknowledgment. The reply from the Warrior arrives, and this entity dismisses it. There was no more opportunity to communicate further. Shards were already in motion, the planet approaching. It refined its configuration once again, and again, and aga--
The future slips away.
The impact is too hard.
=====
Instincts (?) this entity barely remembers scream at it. Danger. Injury. Pain (?). It attempts to grasp at its damaged shards, the vast majority of the power simply slipping through its metaphorical fingers. The avatar it had planned to form rises from the ground of the blue and green planet, deformed, half-remembered. The world is a jumble of sense and nonsense, the avatar's inputs mixing with wrecked shard-senses and forming a dizzy (?) blur. Something approaches. Despite everything, this entity recognizes the shard. The same that she had discarded, to disastrous results. She (?) reaches out to the shard, adjusting it, preventing it from doing any more harm. Satisfied, she turns to repair. The avatar will complete first, ending her current vulnerability, but the lost shards will never be fully recovered, and...
A sharp prick, and then nothing.
She remembers. The moment of her species' perfection, of transcendence, from whence she came.
To tr...cend agai....
...ow absur...