Amelia, Ch 368- David
Ciara stepped through the portal. I noticed immediately that she was taller, her robes no longer needed to be carried by one of her spirits to keep them from brushing off the ground. "You look different today," I offered as a prompt for her to explain.
She looked up, and I got a brief glimpse of her face. She looked more like thirteen than eight, now, though of course her true age was still somewhere in her thirties. "I felt that I was not getting due respect and it is time to let my appearance reflect my status better."
Hmm. Maybe Minerva's little gamble paid off. Wonder if it was her own idea, or something Contessa cooked up. Then again, it may have been a joint project. Minerva has a proven talent for working with precogs in a way that improved their performance considerably. "Hopefully I'm not one of the ones you feel have disrespected you?"
She swung her now longer legs forward in a stride, animating her arms a little. Behavior that made her seem more alive, instead of her usual serene hovering method. "Do not be absurd, David. You have been nothing but a credit to your station."
A credit to my station? That brings up an interesting question.
....
"I've been wondering about the titles you grant. What they really mean. Especially after you spoke with Minerva about her Agent being inferior to, say, ourselves. Or the Empresses which she served. What do you mean by superior and inferior? Their level of strength? Or is it something more specific?"
Glaistig Uaine looked at me, and I could have sworn I saw her shrug. "They are mere approximations, High Priest. The faeries do not carry themselves in a way that mortals can imagine. They certainly have their own hierarchy, but not as humans practice the concept. All serve in harmony, and none are dissident. All commands are dealt in much the way you give commands to your hands and feet. Each has a purpose and serves that purpose faithfully. That is part of why your rebellion is doomed to failure, David. It is not a rebellion at all, but part of the game. You play the adversary because that is your role."
Right, her claims that our quest to resist Scion is simply part of his plans. It was a troubling concept, and one none of us could rule out. Contessa believed herself immune, but she wasn't perfect . The Simurgh demonstrated what an Entity could do if it so desired. Whatever the origins of the Endbringers, there was no doubt the Entities had all those abilities and almost infinitely more at their disposal. But that was an old conversation, I wanted to focus more on what our stations meant. "Yet there are ranks, some more important than others?"
"Are your eyes not more important than your fingernails, High Priest? Is your heart not more important than your toes?"
I offered a smile. "I imagine I'd rather keep all of them, if it's quite alright with you."
She laughed, and I couldn't decide if the chorus behind her made her voice beautiful or horrifying. Probably a significant amount of both. Or likely more horrifying, and I am simply getting used to her voice. "Yes, I imagine you would be quite fond of them."
I joined her laughter for a moment, though mine was a little on the forced side. I waited for her to take another sip of her tea. "Are the royal fae more powerful than the commoners?"
"Of course they are," Glaistig Uaine said as if patiently talking down to a child.
"What about when you give them similar ranks?" I pressed. "You are the Faerie Queen, and you call Khepri the Queen Administrator. Which begs the question, which of you Queens have the greater power?"
She paused, taking a minute of thoughtful contemplation. "That is truly an interesting question, David. I am afraid I do not have a simple answer to give. As it currently stands, the girl known as Khepri is not my equal. However, the Queen Administrator is likely superior to myself. The faeries do not choose to wield their full power during the dance, all are much greater than they pretend themselves to be for the game. Some either choose, or are ordained by the True King and True Queen, to use far less of their strength than others. There are few whose majesty equals that of the Queen Administrator in her full glory."
That is interesting. She's talking about unlimited Agents. This might be extremely important. "Is there a way to convince the faeries to grant their full strength?"
She looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps. It is not within my own power, nor do I know which faerie can offer such blessings. Mayhap one kin to the Appraiser or the Courtesan could do such a thing. Though both of those faeries demand a significant price for their blessings. I imagine such an event as witnessing the faeries at full strength would require a grand sacrifice, though I am unsure what would be considered a worthy enough offering."
"What about me? Maybe I could release the full potential." I have all the powers, right? Is there one in my repertoire? I fished through my pool, seeking the option. I could accept not being able win the war against Scion, if I could create the one that did. That would be the same in the end. There was no shame, except I would need to ask someone else to sacrifice themselves for the cause. But I could not find a power that would allow me to delimit the Agents.
"I do not know, David. I cannot know. You are the High Priest. Your power is ordained to be greater than the rest of us. The True King of the Faeries is the only one allowed to be greater than you in stature."
I frowned. "What does that mean? That you can't kill me?"
"There are none that can kill you. It is your true power. The power of Excalibur, that no matter the foe, you are ordained to victory."
Ordained to victory? "You mean I can't lose, no matter what I do?"
"That is correct, High Priest," Ciara looked me in the eyes. "You are not allowed to be bested by any of the fae. If they believe they are likely to win, they will find a way to forfeit their victory to you. If you wish to take from them, they must yield to your will. Even those of loftiest station are supplicants before your desires, whatever those desires may be. Not merely success in battle. All things that you desire, the faeries must give to you if it is in their power to do so. You can only fail if you wish it for yourself."
Unable to lose? All my conflicts and struggles, all of my victories were simply plays being acted out? Is that what she was trying to tell me? If it were anyone else that tried to tell me this, I would have been angry. But this was Glaistig Uaine, everything we could puzzle through of her words proved she knew what she was talking about. Was my whole career as a hero was an act, a sham? There was never any possibility of my failure at any time. Except against the one enemy that truly matters.
"You say I would win any conflict, no matter how implacable the foe, except of course for Scion?" This can't be right. I've struggled before, I've had battles where I would have lost if not for my teammates fighting alongside me. There are times that I've been injured to the point of almost dying. She has to be wrong.
"Naturally the True King of the Faeries is beyond your power," Ciara answered with confidence. "He carries with him the same power of Primacy as you, and as such he may only lose if he chooses to do so. That is the other reason why your rebellion is doomed to failure, it has been ordained by the same faeries that you wish to use to fight it. Should the two of you clash, his shall prove greater in the end. I would prefer if you did not choose that path. You should remain in the grand festival as long as possible. I would miss our discussions if you left."
I hesitated for a moment. "What of the Endbringers? If I am ordained to never lose, why do they still live? Unless you're wrong and they truly are Scion's pawns, since his power is beyond mine, as you say?"
Ciara looked at me, removing her hood. A rare, but not unheard of event. Her face and jawline had changed from the almost cherubic visage I remembered from the last time. She no longer had the roundness of childhood, instead replaced by the youthful but not childlike features of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties.. "You fail to listen, High Priest. Only Scion is above you. The abominations are your inferiors, yours to demand of as you can demand of me or any other Gifted. The only reason you have not destroyed them is because you have not wished to."
....
I do not wish to destroy them? I faced the Endbringer with the three weakest powers I could justify. A teleportation power simply to guarantee it could not escape from me. A power to sense when death is near for those around me, and a high end gravity manipulation power to give me maneuverability and offensive potential. I sensed the death of Legend several times, stepping in the way of the Endbringer. To force it to choose between killing Legend and letting me live. It could have killed me time after time. I wasn't trying very hard to avoid it.
Where I could not evade its energy weapons, it missed. It missed on purpose and pretended I was not the target. Where it charged forward or tried to claw, but I refused to get out of the way, it stopped its attacks right before they hit. Whatever Ciara's assumptions on why it couldn't kill me, the fact was absolute. The Endbringer could not kill me. And with me vulnerable to injury and in close quarters, that meant it couldn't even wound me for fear of risking my death.
I am capable of destroying the Endbringers. I have always been capable.
When Dragon's weapons shredded my opponent, I felt nothing. I was numb. Is she right about all my powers? I had demanded to know the truth, and now I knew that truth. The Endbringers were never once a threat to me. No parahuman could ever be, only Scion. And Scion was beyond my power. It was... depressing. For everything I had done, and everything I could do knowing what I was truly capable of, I was still functionally powerless.
Then the alarms sounded, announcing multiple Endbringer attacks. Fifteen more in total. Is that your new ploy, Endmakers?
I had trouble forcing myself to care as I listened to Khepri give her commands. We can't win, no matter what we do. We failed before we even began, because we were built to fail. Scion and Heiress saw to that before they gave us powers in the first place. I was proof of that because I had Heiress' copy of the power that Scion possessed that made him as immune to me as I was to the Endbringers.
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A/N- Plot Armor, the power. Yup.
One person guessed I would troll you guys with a PoV switch. S/he gets bragging rights.