The Dragon of Roads

While she knew "of" it in abstract terms, experiencing it had always been beyond her means. As an Empress, Bonpricha was never meant to ascend and descend the peerage of a flight. She was also never meant to become adopted by another flight, yet unyielding determination, careful planning, and stubborn defiance of what constraints the heavens had placed upon her had allowed for the impossible.

Not that it came without downsides.

Never one to wallow in self-pity, she could not escape the reality that she had imposed upon herself. Her Blessing remained much the same, with the moniker of "Empress" replaced with "Princess". She also retained access to her Focuses of her previous flight while gaining access to those of her new flight. In so many ways, she was much the same and had access to new Abilities, which would normally be cause for celebration.

However, the experience was anything but one to invoke jubilation.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, and she had the whole metaphorical bottle to go as a single dose. The obvious and inescapable fact remains unyielding: a Princess is smaller than an Empress. Two sizes separate them, and each one is more noteworthy than the last as one goes up in peerage. That is to say, the loss is far more noteworthy when going from a bigger size to a smaller one, for one must make sacrifices to what Skills one has unsealed.

It is natural for dragons to go up and down in peerage, for doing so allows them to unlock Skills they could not otherwise gain access to. Once a Skill is unlocked, it is never locked again, but it can be sealed if there simply isn't enough room to keep all of them unsealed at once. There are all manner of options to determine how simple or complex of a matter it would be to change a loadout of what Skills are unsealed, but the better options incur a larger cost to maintain. For an already strained budget, that is salt upon the wound.

Huge swathes of her Skill Webs are little more than ghostly reminders of what she is giving up. The light has gone out, and never again will all of them shine at the same time. Wants had been separated from needs, the former discarded entirely and the latter requiring further pruning. This had necessitated a careful and painful amount of self-reflection on what truly is needed and what is not. To her, it is akin to cutting off an arm and determining that the remaining arm will need to meet the same fate.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

Her thoughts and emotions churned ceaselessly as she mused grim actualities. She has no regrets, and she acknowledged that she can never undo what she has done, but it brings matters into perspective when she had been heavy-handed in dictating terms to her progeny concerning their loadout of Skills. While their anger and, at times, resentment did not escape her notice, the harsh reality of it hits much closer to home than she would have ever cared to experience. In hindsight, their restraint from lashing out was nothing short of exemplary.

When her self-mutilation had completed itself, and the butcher's bill came due, she found her Blessing to be a devastated wasteland compared to its former glory. It would be enough. It must be enough! This was the only way to save her flight, to give them a fighting chance to stave off the eventual destruction that all flights are heir to.

"It is also the only way you gain effective immortality. Convenient, that."

She internally scowled at her equally internal monologue. Indeed, some pretty truths were polite facades to mask ugly truths. It would be a reasonable deduction to see her actions as entirely self-serving and degrading to a dragon's dignity. Thus, she could be rightly looked down upon by those she holds dear to her heart.

A dragon's pride takes many forms. The young are often indignant at perceived slights. Those that are older and wiser may seem to invite countless insults with a smile. The wisest know that success and victory outweigh any humiliation one may face to obtain them, and, if anything, triumph tastes all the sweeter when the road to get there held many obstacles and insults. For when one is certain of one's worth, then one knows that such worth cannot be debased by the perceptions and actions of others.

And so, with her resolve tested and unshaken, her spirit resolute, and her purpose as certain as ever, she releases her hold on that mantle of Empress and emerges from her egg as a Princess of the Crossroad Wayfinders.

The others cheer and comfort the newest member of his Emperor's flight. However, Nabonidus remains true to his purpose as his fingers press rune after rune while interacting with the terminal. While he has eaten food that he levitated to his mouth, he has not stopped once to rest or indulge in leisure. For almost eight days straight, he has worked tirelessly, and his efforts were almost complete.

He did not begrudge the others for their indulgences to pass the time. Things were more efficient this way without them to bother or distract him. The only thing that mattered was that they each kept the notion foremost in their bearing that they would immediately cease what they were doing to attend to his questions should he ask them. While he never would in practice, the hypothetical versions of his future self would, and indeed, in exercising his Blessing as an [Oracle], he did so religiously.

That was the crux of its effectiveness, that others could and would be ready to indulge him unfailingly at a moment's notice. As a [Vizier to the Draconic Emperor], he had the means to coordinate and even tap into the Blessings of those loyal to his Emperor, and thus, he gained countless boons as long as they remained nearby or within the territory of his Emperor. Bellwright's Blessing in particular had been instrumental in easing the mental tax imposed by his task. And his task was fundamentally simple in the abstract, but monstrously challenging in the execution.

All he had to do was rewrite some stuff. As in: Every. Single. Godsdammed. Blessing.

The descriptions of each Skill were often vague or misleading, the terms shared between them were often reused in ways that were at odds with one another, and some concepts had too wide a range of scope to be useful. In short, it was a mess of contradictions, obfuscation, and mysticism. However, given the name of the current System, that was not a total surprise.

[World Heart > System > Magic > Blessings > Descriptions Config: Post-Sundering System Rough Draft v1.83 Final - copy(3)]

That is where he found the current descriptions of all Blessings in existence. He could not modify what Skills each Blessing had. He could not adjust how powerful they were. He could not choose which ones were active and which ones had been disabled. All he could do was edit the descriptions that people see when they interact with whatever mechanism they have to interface with their own Blessing.

Also, he had the Isolation Protocol primed and readied for when they committed their changes. No biggie. It isn't abundantly transparent as to what it exactly will do, but it does seem to be mixed in with a whole host of "reset" options. Transaction logs before and after each cataclysm in the past also help paint a picture, but Nabonidus does not find himself sufficiently versed in ancient history to glean anything useful from them. That does not stop him from recording copies of everything he can see in the terminal's logs and current settings. One never knows when such information could come in handy.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

All things considered, they are on track to finish their purpose here within eight days, and since future-him is working to keep distractive people away from him so that he can work in peace, he continues to work unmolested.

And he is SO looking forward to a long nap after this is all said and done.

["Isolation Protocol initiated. Phase One commencing."]

Everyone, everywhere on the planet, heard the announcement. Announcements from the World Heart are a rarity, but recent history has had a slew of them. Such is the norm, as entire generations can pass without any happening. However, when one lives in interesting times, then interesting events come to pass. These types of events tend to be accompanied by destruction and upheaval on a colossal scale, but such is the price of progress, or at least change of some sort.

Certainly, we heard the announcement too, and almost immediately, we were sternly prompted to leave through a shortcut portal that would take us outside The Tower. And by that I mean that the demiplane of the "World Heart Dungeon - Apex" collapsed rather violently as soon as we hit the confirmation button on the terminal, and we scrambled to the exit as fast as we could. Not that we are cowards, but prudence dictates that finding out exactly what happens when one is still inside a demiplane when it fully collapses is not a good idea. The fact that our leading expert on demiplanes, Bonpricha, scrambled faster than anyone only confirms that discretion is the greater part of valor.

Gambino was the last to depart, and he had to roll his way out before he was crushed. Before it finally closed, he did reach his hand back in to retrieve his hat that he had taken to wearing with his latest costume. Bambina reproached his recklessness, but I am starting to get wise to their acting and I can feel the beaming pride that radiates through her person. Also, the sentiment is blasted through our empathetic connection, but that is besides the point.

Behind us, The Tower shimmered for a few seconds before disappearing entirely. We were almost knocked off our feet as a surge of air rushed in to fill the quite literal vacuum left in its absence. Other than that gust of wind, we could find no evidence of The Tower having ever been here, for the earth remained unmarred throughout the ordeal.

"Oh, how I missed the sky and the moon. Hello, moon!" It-Has-Pockets commented as she waved up at the sky and our one and only moon.

Somehow, I feel as though there had been more moons, and the more I thought about it, the more my head hurt. However, I thought about it some more regardless, and suddenly, there they were.

Thousands of moons lingered in the sky, each one bigger than the last. There was no room left for the stars, and our One True Moon had her beauty and splendor overshadowed by the others. Suddenly, awareness overcame me, for the truth and the lie became known to me in a moment of enlightenment.

The other moons that I had known my whole life had only ever been imposters and usurpers of our real sky. They had been phantasms that the entire world had believed other than a few individuals that society had deemed lunatics. Each one had been a prison, and as I watch, I can see the chains on each appear. Though the sky is far away, it is plainly clear that the chains are breaking and corroding. Soon, they will be entirely gone, and what they had sealed away will be free once more.

The horror of this realization and what I had unleashed washed over me. I had taken us out of the pan and cast us into the fire. The Devourers were now contained, but whatever would come next had only been contained due to extreme circumstances. Considering the gods or someone else just threw us a bone by summoning The Tower to fix our latest disaster, we would probably not be getting such an easy out any time soon.

"Did you know of this?" I asked Gambino as I turned to look at him.

"Of course I knew," he huffed as he looked up at the sky. "Bambina and I were there long ago when the [Hero] climbed The Tower to seal them away." The contempt in his voice when uttering "them" spoke volumes about his animosity. "We helped him to succeed."

"'Them' who?" I asked.

"Slants!" he replied while spitting on the ground.

That didn't help much, but fortunately, Bambina clarified.

"The Fae. Fairies, if you will," she explained before she likewise spit on the ground. "They are a capricious and chaotic enemy. Their stories are weak, their acting terrible, and their rhymes," she continues while shuddering, "slanted more often than not."

"They are marauders and raiders. They come into our world at their leisure to hunt mortals for sport or to take prisoners. They follow their whims and their twisted stories with no regards to how it impacts us. They are powerful, and it is difficult to predict when and where they will strike. They could just as easily target a random farm in the middle of nowhere as they would a palace. Sometimes people go missing. Sometimes, something that isn't them returns, even if it looks and acts like those who had disappeared."

He shakes his head as he continues.

"They cannot be truly killed, for they live on as surely as their stories live on. Only the ravages of time can snuff out a story, and in their wake, new waves overtake the old, and thus new stories are fashioned. They are pests at best and a plague at worst." He turns and looks at me before he continues, his expression serious and grim. "I did not know for sure that the Isolation Protocol would unleash them, but it makes sense. It seems to have reset the connections of this world to the default, which would include the world of the Fae. I could have warned you, but you would not be swayed from your path. How could I expect you to believe the existence of fairies when you cannot even keep straight how many moons there are from one day to the next?"

He made a fair point, and I could not gainsay the choices he made in leaving me in the dark. Dragons are incredibly resilient to mental attacks, illusions, phantasms, mind control, and so forth. Emperors are the most resilient of the bunch. I had heavily invested in my Skills to double down on that mental fortitude. And still, even after all that, I too had fallen prey to such deception. Such facts gave credence to the idea that the Fae could be more powerful than The Devourers, even if they are not as relentlessly antagonistic.

"We best return to World's End and assess the situation. Surely, something is happening over at World's Hope to curtail The Devourers."

"You know," chimes in Jericho, "the Devourers may be disconnected from our world, but they are hardly defeated. Surely, we are just kicking the can down the road. They could just as easily try to establish a connection immediately as they could bide their time while their remaining agents work to wipe out all records of their existence so they can strike again some day."

While none of my companions are meatheads, Jericho is certainly the closest to being one. She had spoken out loud what many of us privately feared to be true. That she almost immediately came to that conclusion is either the work of divine providence or it was the most logical conclusion. I suspect the latter is more reasonable.

Either way, we know that the Isolation Protocol is not an instant process, and so we have a few days to deal with each phase of it before it is complete. With any luck, we will be able to redirect the world's attention to this new threat before our unity dissolves away in the presence of ancient grudges and petty disputes that have been left on hold for too long for most people's taste.

We would soon find out if our unity could survive the end of one crisis and the beginning of another.

"Ah, after 10,000 years, I'm free!"

"I have such a crick in the neck."

"Not quite time for that," another replied dryly. "We must await the finale of the Isolation Protocol."

Still, despite one of their number speaking in haste, The Thousand Moons and More were abuzz with excitement. They knew that their durance was breaking, that they would be free to walk the realms once more.

They would also be able to fall back into petty infighting, but that was to be expected.

One among them remained quiet, for he did not concern himself with the buzzing of flies. The One False Moon, ever scorned by The One True Moon, found his bride-to-be ever adamant in her refusal of his proposal. She would not even meet his gaze.

However, one did, unerringly, meet his gaze. The One False Moon looked across the planes of existence and into The Void, and there, Sanagba Imuru, He-Who-Saw-The-Abyss, looked back at him. No words were exchanged, no messages transmitted, but he knew. Oh, he knew!

This would be his last chance to achieve his goals before his own story faded away. And for success to be his, an Emperor must die!