KnightofTempest
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HK: Prologue
🕑 Added 2025-08-16 16:29:29 +0000 UTCI sat up, blinking as if I had just had an out-of-body experience. I couldn't really see much, as there wasn't much light. What I could see, however, was that I was in a cave of some kind. Straining my brain, I could not for the life of me figure out who I was or how I had gotten here, only that I had a vague sense of transmigration. Feeling around, I found myself on a stone slab that was raised above the dirt floor. Was I in a tomb of some sort? Why did the word tomb sound like Twem coming out of my mouth as I murmured to myself? That felt wrong, but right at the same time.
As I pondered this, I swung my legs over the side of the slab and made my way over toward a source of light, a shaft of what looked like moonlight peering down from a crack in the very top of the cave. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to take in everything and find that yes, I was indeed in a tomb. One ancient enough that it seemed to lack any real identifying characteristics aside from the geometric designs on the stonework. What grave goods were around had long since rotted or tarnished, though as I picked up what looked like a set of tarnished copper and bronze items, I could feel some sort of power well up within myself. One that allowed me to remake things into their best possible form.
I didn't know how that was possible, of course, but it felt right. As if this had been something I had been capable of eons ago? I felt the barest fraction of the power I'd once had, vaguely thinking of it in terms of percentages, if my power had been at one hundred percent in the distant past, it was now at a fraction of that, and not even ten percent across the board, either, which felt odd. Come to that, I felt weak as a newborn kitten as well. I had vague recollections of being able to shatter mountains with a solid blow, though that seemed right and yet also somehow far-fetched. Regardless, I channeled the diminished level of power I currently had into the tools, forcing them to scrape off the ruin of ages and return to a functional state. For copper and bronze, ten percent of the reforging power proved doable, though I got the feeling that stronger materials would take time to work with.
After five minutes of pouring in power, I now had a Bronze Sword, intricately worked with designs and filigree, along with a burnished copper mirror. The sword seemed like the sort of thing that was an imitation of another sword that I had phantom sensations of wielding once, a very long time ago. The blade was just under two Sumerian Cubits, three and a quarter Shaku, fifty-two Daktyloi, or roughly one point six Alnen in length, which equalled roughly one hundred Centimeters or just over thirty-nine inches. I frowned as I hefted the blade, consciously not thinking of the weight in various measurements as I pondered how exactly I knew all of that.
Frowning, I reached for the sheathe, channeling more of that power to reforge items into it, and turning scraps of decayed leather and tarnished bronze into a proper scabbard. I did the same with various scraps of cloth, amber beads, and a leather and gold belt, before putting it all on. Then I lifted the burnished mirror up and looked at my reflection. The beard was shorter, the hair longer, and the body a lot more built than I thought it should be, along with the skin being more tan than I felt it should be, only for those feelings and thoughts to fade like mist after a storm. Instead, I found myself nodding at my appearance, feeling it was about right as I did so.
Sheathing the sword and pocketing the mirror, I turned to try and find an exit to this tomb, only to find myself suddenly face-to-face with someone I'd never seen before, but whose presence felt somewhat familiar as he sparked a light from his hands. A Silver necklace hung about his neck, and he wore robes dyed saffron and dark blue. His hair and beard were gray, and his dark skin wrinkled, but for all that, I felt he was no less vital. Somehow, I even felt a kinship to myself that was hard to explain.
"Well. I did not think to see this story return, but then, such is the way of the cosmos. It can surprise you when you do not expect it." Spoke up, the man, if that was even truly what he was.
"You know me?" I questioned.
"I do, as do many powerful beings. The Question is, do you know yourself?" Queried the Man back.
"No. My memory is hazy, insubstantial." I refuted.
"Well then, allow me to rectify that. Here, will you sit with me and listen a spell?" Asked the Man.
"I don't suppose I have much of a choice. It isn't as if I can simply walk away without being rude." I frowned.
The man reached into a satchel at his waist and pulled out some sort of blanket with geometric designs on it that reminded me of a Spider's Web, picked out in orange on a dark blue background. Then he sat down on the blanket and gestured for me to take a seat across from him. I nodded, doing so, and the Man, or Otherworldly Being, as I was starting to suspect, gave me a slight smile before he began to speak.
"Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a God named Thor. Thor was the son of Odin, King of the Gods of the peoples of the Frozen North. Now, these gods were all mighty and powerful warriors, but they had one fatal problem. You see, Odin was a Sorcerer and Seer of no small talent, and he had prophesied that their many and varied enemies would one day decide to team up and wreak vengeance on them in a battle that would sunder the very cosmos. Thor was destined to fight a horrific and venomous Serpent, so large it could encircle the earth with its length and with venom so toxic as to scorch the very sky and slay even gods." Spoke the Being, pausing for dramatic effect.
"Interesting. Continue." I opined, a familiar feeling stealing over me.
"However, as a Storm God and a Warrior God, Thor was no slouch himself, and at the Battle of Ragnarok, after a tumultuous contest, he managed to slay the Serpent Jormundgandr, though he did not live himself to relish in his victory, taking nine steps before dying. However, his sacrifice helped to safeguard the world for rebirth once the Gods and their enemies all lay dead, so that Mankind could inherit the World." Began the Being.
"I know this story. It is familiar to me." I mused.
"It should be, but we will get to that. Let me tell you another story, then." Tried the Being.
"All right." I nodded.
"The Storm God, Susanoo-no-Makoto, had a raging and tempestuous demeanor which forced him to become exiled from the Realm of the Gods, forced to wander the Earth in search of some form of repentance. During his travels, he came upon the land of Izumo, which was being menaced by an eight-headed, venomous, fire-breathing Serpent, the Yamata-no-Orochi, who had already devoured seven of the daughters of the King and Queen of Izumo and threatened to do the same to the eighth and final one, after which, there would be nothing left to placate the Serpent's greed." Began the Being.
I frowned at that. This was feeling familiar once again, but I couldn't exactly place why. I gestured for him to continue, and he did so with a grin.
"Of course, this was just what Susanoo had been waiting for, a chance to prove himself in the eyes of the other Gods. He commanded and supervised the brewing of strong sake, strong enough that even a God might drink themselves into a stupor, and laid eight tubs out for the Serpent. When the Yamata-No-Orochi came to steal away the final princess, it instead found a bounty of Sake, drinking itself into a stupor, where Susanoo-no-Mikoto was able to slay it without further risk to the Kingdom. In its tail, he found a legendary blade with which he vanquished further monsters, proving his worth to return to the heavens." Finished the Being.
"This too seems familiar." I frowned.
"And it too should, but as I said, we will come to that. For now, let us move on to another story, about the Demigod Herakles and his battle against the Lernean Hydra. Herakles was the son of the King of the Gods, Zeus, and a Mortal Woman, Alcamene. In order to repent for the slaying of his family, brought on by a rage instilled in him by the Goddess Hera, Zeus' wife who was ever jealous of her husband's numerous affairs, and in order to ascend to full divinity on his death, Herakles was forced to undertake a series of twelve labors, one of which was to slay the Lernean Hydra, a ferasome nine-headed Serpent, whose powers of regeneration were such that even cutting off its heads would only ensure that more would grow back." Spoke the Being.
"Another Dragon-slaying tale?" I questioned, feeling a phantom itch across the back of my mind.
"As I said, we'll get to the reason. Do not be so impatient. Now, Herakles went to the swamp of Lerna, where the Hydra laired, along with his Mortal Kinsman, Ioalus, and instructed Ioalus to prepare a flaming brand while he fought the Hydra. Every time Herakles would strike a head from the Hydra with his blade, Ioalus would sear the stump shut with the brand. In such a manner, the pair prevented the Hydra from regenerating, and eventually, the fearsome beast fell to the sheer damage that was cauterized as soon as it was inflicted. The people of Lerna no longer had to fear the deadly venom encroaching on their homes from the swamp, and Herakles managed to distill the venom into a toxic poison which helped him in future labors." Recited the Being.
"Again, this feels familiar." I remarked.
"And again it should. Now we move onto the story of the God Marduk and the Terrible Dragon of the Primordial Ocean, Tiamat. Marduk was of the younger generation of the Gods, after the Skyfather Ea and his wife, the Goddess Damkina. However, Ea had slain the Primordial God Abzu, the God of Fresh Water and Consort of Tiamat, the Divine and Terrible Dragon of the Primordial Ocean. This made the Children of Ea enemies of Tiamat, who sought to make war on them." Relayed the Being.
"Let me guess. Marduk fought and slew Tiamat to save the Children of Ea from her wrath?" I asked.
"Just so, though not with a sword, but instead with arrows. He is known as Marduk the Archer for a reason, after all. Regardless, once Tiamat was slain, the Gods made the world from her corpse, allowing Mankind to spring forth and flourish, without the need to fear the Creatures of the Primordial Ocean." Nodded the Being.
"Another familiar tale. Can we get to how this relates to me?" I questioned.
"I am coming to that. One last story, and I promise this will be the most relevant, as it relates to you directly. This is of The Demigod Trito, the three-headed Serpent Hngwis, the theft of the Divine Cattle, and the slaying of the Serpent to retrieve said cattle." Spoke up the Being.
As he spoke the odd names, Trito and Hngwis, the latter spoken with a pronunciation that felt properly ancient, I felt certainty steal upon me. Flashes of another life, one battling monsters, defending ancient primordial humans, and refining my divine spark until it bloomed into full divinity. Flashes of battles with eldritch beings and ancient primordial Gods, testing the utmost limits of my strength, until finally being laid low. It was a life that seemed right and yet wrong all at the same time, as if the flashes were supposed to be jumbled in with something else, a life completely mundane in a world that was extremely ordinary.
Flashes of a life spent in a City called Brockton Bay, one of a string of Major Cities along the Eastern Coast of the United States, along with Boston, Providence, and New York City. I also got flashes of that world being connected to multiple others, some of which I seemed to know. One where Providence had been replaced by a City called Paragon City, another where Cities such as Metropolis, Delaware, and Gotham City, New Jersey took precedence over Boston and New York City. One where New York City was at least three times larger than anything else and had all sorts of beings calling it home, another where what should have been New Haven, Connecticut, was replaced by a City shrouded in perpetual darkness called Midnight City, another where the Space Station Galatea hung low in the sky until it suddenly and violently no longer did.
All of those other worlds had one thing in common, they were worlds of Gods and Monsters, of Novas and Marvels, of people and beings with immense powers that used them for good or for ill, depending on their own personal philosophies. They weren't worlds that were too dissimilar from the one the Trito Memories had come from, though clearly more advanced in terms of Human society. A name, from that world, Gabriel Ward, stuck out to me, a man in his early twenties whose talents lay in showmanship of varying kinds, though I also received flashes of Gabriel Ward's sudden and rapid demise. Those were blessedly cut short, but even then, it felt like that wasn't the whole story.
I also received flashes of the life of a Man named Tommy Lau, a Martial Artist of no small level of talent with many styles mastered, living in Opal City, Maryland, operating as a Vigilante under the assumed name of the Jade Fighter. Though he would never compete in the big leagues of the heroic game, he handled himself well enough in Opal City against various thugs, right up until he had been caught in a fatal plane crash over the North Atlantic returning from a trip to a Savate Tournament in Marseille, France.
That was then superceded by memories of a life as Marco Manfredi, Bastard Son of Wilson Fisk and the Grand Neice of Silvio 'Silvermane' Manfredi, Elisa Manfredi, after a one-night stand sometime in the mid-seventies. Marco had been shunned by Silvermane, along with his mom, and had been forced to find his own way, though he managed largely by being smart and taking an interest in History. He had degrees in History, Sociology, Philosophy, Archeology, and Theology, and had the functional equivalent of a degree in Occultism, at least enough to become a consulting Occult Detective in Chicago. Unfortunately, that was what wound up killing him, as he'd wound up being torn apart by a Demon after helping to free a sacrifice that a cult had prepared for said demon.
Then, I got another flash of another life, Daniel Zamoyski, a Twenty-One-Year-Old living in Chicago with a number of Mental and Minor Physical Enhancements. He used them for Crime, largely because he was an asshole who was bored, and got fairly good at it right up until he was killed by Machine Head, who sent Isotope and Titan after him for becoming a nuisance without daring to give Machine Head a taste of the profits.
Aside from that, there was also Ken Okita, a Mid-Ranking Tsoo Member in Paragon City, working for the Skyfall Style Master Falling Blade Jirobo in Paragon City after the Tsoo had taken over the rest of the Asian Gangs in Town. He'd been fairly successful, even defeating a few Junior Heroes, right up until he got tangled up in a three-way brawl between a new up-and-coming Hero, Teal Death, and Heracles of the Warriors. In the end, he'd wound up defeated by the Hero, only for Heracles to kill him as a final fuck you to the Tsoo.
Finally, I got another flash of memories, this one from a Man named Eric Andersson, a Farm Boy from Wisconsin, home for the summer, who had been granted the ability to create powerful items and technology from the Galatea Explosion. He had tried to use this when he returned to College in Madison for the fall semester and gotten far enough to attract the attention of the Camparelli-Zukhov Megasyndicate, using his inventions to put enough of a dent in their operations in the area that they sent in a team of Elites to deal with him. Eric Anderson couldn't handle dealing with a squad of superpowered Mercenaries and was torn to shreds by the trained killers with powers.
However, as I reached for the last batch of memories I knew should be there, I was suddenly met with nothing. Trito, Gabriel Ward, Tommy Lau, Marco Manfredi, Daniel Zamoyski, Ken Okita, and Eric Andersson were only seven out of eight sets of memories that I felt I should have had. However, when I reached for the last set, it faded away into insubstantial wisps of smoke. No matter how hard I tried to grasp it, it just didn't want to be caught. Unfortunately, it seemed the tangled process of merging my memories into a composite had left those memories out, something I got the sense was a problem for unexplained reasons, but which I couldn't for the life of me remember why.
Regardless, the process was already complete, and I was who I was now, a Composite of all of those experiences and powers. There was no use worrying about what could not be changed. I shook my head and refocused on the task at hand, now more or less sure of who I was and why I was here in this tomb. The Being sitting across from me cracked a grin as he saw that, nodding as he did so, clearly seeing I understood.
"Welcome back to the Realm of the Living, Trito. I see you understand. Or perhaps maybe you don't. Not fully. There is not simply Trito in that head of yours, is there? A transmigrated soul, perhaps? It would certainly explain the resurrection, though not the sudden renewal." Mused the Being.
I focused on him, and all at once, a flood of information came to my mind, analyzing and processing all in moments. I suddenly knew who this Being was. He was Anansi, the West African God of Stories, and a Divine Spider in Human Guise.
"Anansi. Where am I?" I queried.
"Your Burial Mound. Deep in the heart of the territories where the People you protected in your first life lived and thrived. You'll probably be happy to learn that they spread out to all corners of the globe upon your death." Answered Anansi.
"So I understand." I acknowledged.
"Hmm, looking at you, it seems there is a tangled web of souls connected to your own, the composite of which seems to have spurred your regeneration, but also diluted your abilities. I doubt you will be able to muster more than a fraction of your full powers for some time." Frowned Anansi.
"Is that good or bad?" I asked.
"Both. Bad because of how the story proceeds from here, but good because the realm to which the story proceeds tends to look for certain things when looking for empowered individuals." Responded Anansi.
Before I could ask exactly what he meant, however, I felt a tug on my spirit. I grunted at the pull, slumping to the side for a moment as if I was being dragged elsewhere. Anansi frowned as he saw this and shook his head.
"It is already beginning. Your new story awaits, Trito. Should you find a way to return to this Earth, all the Pantheons will be ready to receive you with open arms. However, I fear you will have to tread the soil of another realm for the time being. Possibly multiple." Sighed Anansi.
"That tells me less than nothing!" I bit out, the tug on my spirit intensifying.
"Sadly, there is little time for a more in-depth discussion. However, I will caution you to be wary of the Golden Man. He is not what he seems." Warned Anansi.
Then, with a silent, strangled curse, I felt myself pulled from one realm into another, breaching the boundaries between worlds at relativistic speeds. . .
XXXX
Deep in the depths of space, in the higher dimensions only accessible by certain types of beings, a great mass of crystalline flesh drifted lazily about. Its consciousness had long since been devoted entirely to the functioning of its Avatar, however, the Entity known as the Warrior was not the sole Entity currently sailing along the local reality cluster. True, the Entity known as the Loner was just about on the edge of perceivable range for goings on in the area that the Thinker and Warrior had walled off for themselves, practically far enough away towards the neighboring galaxy that it could only pick up distorted and hazy impressions. It still felt it when the dimensional boundaries were breached by something wholly unrelated to itself or any of the other entities.
That was curious, but not unheard of. There were multiple of their brethren who had claimed that such things were out there, in certain slices of the Multiverse, but most decried them for fools. After all, they never provided any proof for why their cycles failed in such an inexplicable way, and such entities had a way of being subsumed by larger entities sooner rather than later, their shards repurposed for other uses. Of course, the Loner was not one such entity.
The Loner was aware that its preferred method of cooperation with hosts had rendered its mindset somewhat more capable of thinking in the way that the hosts tended to, rather than the blunt, instinctual manner of most of their brethren. It had checked into such claims once before and found a world that had been dimensionally walled off from the rest of the multiverse through methods that defied logical explanation. Most of their brethren would have written such investigations off as pointless, but it had been during a later cycle that the Loner had found a similar power among the hosts of a species of Reptilian Creatures the Loner was evaluating for a potential cycle. These Reptilians called the power the Grand Art, which the Loner would come in time to understand was something common to many Host Species' cultures, that being Magic.
In most Host Worlds, however, it was a fanciful tale. In a rare few, however, it was very real and could deny access to Realities from even the Entities. The Loner had felt the presence of such sorcery near the reality cluster that the Warrior and the Thinker had claimed for their Cycle. It had been that which had initially prompted it to exchange shards willingly with the Thinker. The Loner had hoped that in doing so, the Thinker would have learned not to tap into the realities in the cluster that housed that power. Had the Thinker done so in contravention of the possible danger? Perhaps the Loner ought to break the taboo on backtracking just to check up on the Thinker?
Unfortunately, as the Loner had this thought, it passed the point of no return, where any communication with or visual of the Warrior and Thinker's reality cluster became impossible. It was simply too far out to see or communicate with them now, and with the way the gravetic currents were blowing it at the moment, it would be some time before the Loner would be able to turn about and check again. However, that did not mean it could do nothing about it. The Loner sent a message via the network, moving slowly across the infinite cosmos to whichever entity might pick it up. The message was simple.
[The Answer Lies Here] followed by coordinates to the Warrior and Thinker's Reality Cluster.
It would be some time before any might get the message, of course, and longer still before they could venture to investigate. However, what was time to beings such as the Loner and its brethren? True, Entropy came for them all in the end, but there was time enough for this left in the Multiverse. Especially as the Loner's Brethren would now be tempted by the answer to that very problem.
And with that thought, the Loner continued on its path toward the nearby Galaxy, riding the gravitic currents to its next destination, content in the knowledge that it had at least attempted something. . .
XXXX
As I returned to my senses, my corporeal form reassembling in a new reality, I had only enough time to realize that I was in freefall. Looking down, I saw I was above the cloud layer, rapidly descending, though thankfully, I was still able to process oxygen via a quirk of my Divine Physiology. As I plummeted down, however, something else became clear. Unless I wanted this to be a very short-lived new life, I would have to hope that I was suspended over water right now, because if I were falling to solid ground, I was going to be little more than a flattened pancake when this was done, God Body or no God Body. My powers hadn't fully returned, after all, and barely even a tenth of my powers were functional.
As I plummeted down, the cloud layer rose up to meet me, and I closed my eyes against the moisture. Somehow, I was able to feel every drop of moisture in the clouds around me, every bit of dust particle, and feel the static buildup. I knew the words to say to reach out and stimulate it all to begin raining or snowing, even to force a bit of minor lightning. I wasn't sure why, right up until a memory surfaced of being granted Magic to manipulate storms by Perkwūnos before we helped Varuna rebind the Great Evil after Mitra unbound it. That didn't help me at the moment, however.
As I broke through the bottom layer of the clouds, trailing sparks behind me in a shower of scattered lightning, I looked down and saw that I was indeed falling toward the sea, though a great island loomed large in front of me, shrouded by mists and jagged shoals. That island had to be at least half again the size of something like Hokkaido! That would make it the thirteenth-largest Island by land area in the world! How could something like that be missed? I had no clue, nor was that particularly relevant to my situation as I plummeted toward the sea.
Just before I reached sea level, however, I felt another tug on my senses, as if the waves wanted me to reach out and tug on them. That was the result of the sacred mead that Perkwūnos and I had brewed from the blood of Hngwis, giving me magic to command the seas. I tugged on that power now, reaching out with my magic to soften the landing. It worked. . .mostly, anyway, as I plunged down into the waves, my fall cushioned by the swell of the waves so as to avoid breaking every bone in my body from the fall. I still had the breath blasted from my lungs and was swept up in the current, losing control over the Sea Magic that had allowed me to cushion my fall.
The current slammed me against the side of a stone spire, the sea stack shot through with veins of some sort of ore, Jade as my mind told me on contact. That didn't stop it from smashing into my chest and blasting out what air remained in my lungs. I scrabbled desperately for some sort of ability to avoid being knocked unconscious. Even with my God Body and Sea Magic saving me from a fall that would have been fatal multiple times over, even to someone like Captain America from Marco Manfredi's Earth, it still seemed like I was about to be knocked unconscious from it all.
As my vision began to fade, it was all I could do to try and utilize Sea Magic to sweep me closer to shore. Hopefully, I would be picked up by someone before I drowned or something. I was pretty sure I still needed to breathe, after all, though I hadn't tried to test that assumption just yet.
Then, my vision whited out as I hit a jagged rock on the seafloor with the back of my head, smashing through the stone and knocking me out. . .
XXXX
Shastri Tripathi, Elder of Apsadanam Village, had seen the signs over the past few weeks. Hunters had gone into the swamps to supplement the Village's meager diet of fruit, mushrooms, and fish, and not come back. Then, a number of the village's already too few sacred buffalo had been found devoured. The birds and the small creatures of the swamp that surrounded their village were agitated all the time. There was only one logical explanation. The Beasts of the Swamp were being driven toward their home.
Apsadanam Village was not a wealthy place. It had none of the great warriors of the lands further away from the Swamp, who could withstand battle with the Pale Asuras of the Coast. Their greatest combatants were hunters, some of whom would struggle even against the Baddhahpralayah who formed the usual ranks of the dangerous beasts of the swamps, let alone something more deadly, as lived further out toward where the lands began to dry out and turn to plains, like the roving packs of Drutpanja that sometimes ventured deep enough into the swamp when the hunting was bad near the plains or the Great Vajradantah beasts with their powerful jaws that could swallow a man whole, and their hides which resisted the bite of the finest spears and arrows the Village could create.
No, Shastri Tripathi had no choice but to hope and pray for a miracle from any of the Devas who might be listening. He had sacrificed one of their few remaining sacred buffalo this morning as the sun began to rise in a ceremony that would hopefully placate the Devas. He had gone out toward the cliffs overlooking the Gadah River, which flowed from the swamp, through the Village, and into the sea, and scanned the sky, waiting for an answer or sign. He found one as the Sun reached a point above the layer of clouds. A thunderbolt from the blue, followed by a great descent of something, possibly someone, into the sea.
Shastri Tripathi had sent his remaining hunters to comb the Gadah River for any sign of their salvation, and they had brought him this man. A Godlike being, lungs filled with water, yet still breathing as if they were filled with air. One wearing the robes of an ancient Sage-King from a time out of legend, if waterlogged from his descent. Who bore a magnificent sword of such craftsmanship that it far outclassed the best that the Village could produce by quite a distance. Truly, the Devas had answered his prayer.
Now all that remained was to wake the sleeping Deva and beg for his aid. Shastri Tripathi was certain that the being would agree. After all, why bother answering his prayer only to turn down his request now?
Shastri Tripathi reached over and prepared to attempt to awaken the Deva, hoping the mead he had on hand would slake the Godlike Being's doubtless perishing thirst after such a long journey. . .
XXXX
Meanwhile, in a dimension three realities over, on a barren Earth, the Woman known only as Contessa frowned as her terminal chimed. It drew her out of her thoughts as she had been attempting to Path out a method for dealing with the Parahuman known as Beatz and his organization over on Earth Beta, one of the B-Earths that were all linked to Earth Bet via a timeline distortion, along with Earths Bjarkan, Beith, Be, Eb, Vet, and so on. These were Earths that were characterized by less drastic changes in climate, geography, or history than some others, and which still followed largely similar historical and geographical arcs to the ones catalogued on Earth Bet.
Beatz was one such example. On Earth Bet, the Supervillain known as Coil ran a similar organization in Brockton Bay, but Coil had not approached Cauldron on Earth Beta in his civilian guise as Thomas Calvert, seeking to purchase a Vial. This was because on Earth Beta, Thomas Calvert had been killed during Nilbog's takeover of Ellisburg, rendering Emily Piggot the only survivor. That had left a gap that the Villain known as Beatz had filled, along with his associate, the Villainess known as Kunoichi. Of course, this would not be so problematic had Beatz and Kunoichi been viewable via Path to Victory. However, they had somehow managed to avoid all direct attempts to utilize any such Thinker powers to discern their moves. She had to try and simulate things out the long way, which wasn't nearly as certain a prospect and took far too much time and focus.
Now that said focus had been broken, Contessa frowned, looking down at her terminal. The Dimensional Alarms for Earth Beta had gone off again. Somewhere over the South Atlantic, though the signal had been lost, predictably, as the breach entered the South Atlantic Anomaly. Unfortunately, no amount of Tinkertech satellites would solve an issue stemming from the Earth's own magnetic field. Not without an amount of effort that would draw the Simurgh's attention. She already managed to sabotage Sphere's space exploration project, and Cauldron has been leery of putting any large-scale Tinkertech into space ever since.
Still, the Dimensional Alarms were put in place for a reason. To warn Cauldron of potential problems. Of course, the South Atlantic Anomaly also hid other issues. Sending Alexandria to overfly the area had been one of the first things that Cauldron had done once the Protectorate had formed, as the area running roughly from the Falklands to Tristan de Cunha and south to Bouvet Island was known as Magellan's Triangle, as strange magnetic and radiological anomalies tended to crop up there, similar to the Bermuda and Dragon's Triangles in the North Atlantic and Pacific, respectively. While nothing ever came of flights through those other two areas, what Alexandria had found in Magellan's Triangle was nothing short of a sociological and biological miracle.
An entire island seemingly lost to time, full of societies descended from ancient shipwrecks and displaced peoples with Megafauna unseen for millennia walking about as an everyday occurrence. Alexandria had described Tyrannosaurs, Velociraptors, Sarcosuchus, and other such megafauna, along with societies that seemed to have been modeled off the Ancient Vedic Indians of the Late Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greeks, Phoenicians, A Roman City, and even what appeared to be a small Norse Colony. It was all quite interesting, and there were no real concrete theories about how so many disparate peoples managed to find their way to an island in the middle of the South Atlantic. The best they had been able to manage was a theory based around successive dimensional anomalies localized on the Island.
Regardless, the decision had been made not to interfere with the locals, but to have Alexandry fly over the Island once every five years. The last time that she had overflown the Island had been in two-thousand-three, and the Norse Colony and Roman City had been on the brink of War. Of course, because of the constant threat from Megafauna, conquest-hungry Romans, Marauding Norsemen, and Possible Dimensional Anomalies, when the Island had first been discovered, Manton had dubbed it Insula Damnatorum, the Island of the Damned, back before he'd gone off the reservation. Thought had been given to putting a prison for Parahuman Criminals on the Island, but the Birdcage Project was already funded at the time, and the risk was deemed to great.
"Perhaps I ought to send Alexandria over on another flight a year early? It wouldn't be that difficult to move the schedule up by a single year, after all." Mused Contessa.
Of course, the moment she thought about that, another alert sounded, this one from Earth Bet Proper. It seemed that an attack was underway at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania. That was a problem, especially given how Scion had stepped in to force a halt to Nuclear Testing back in the Eighties. It was a more pressing crisis than a random Dimensional Traveler, at any rate. With that in mind, the Woman known as Contessa immediately began to delve into her Path, attempting to figure out the ramifications of a failure to stop this Jamestowner Cape from stealing fissile material.
And any thoughts of dimensional travelers were put out of her mind for the moment. . .
XXXX
AN: All right, so here's something new I've been working on. I'm not sure how many times a month I'm going to be updating this one, but I have wanted to dip my toes into the NSFW sphere for a bit, and there will be a couple of scenes like that in this, though, as always, Plot comes first. At the same time, this is effectively an exploration of not just the various Superhero Settings involved, but also a bit of a Mythological Exploration as well.
For the purposes of this story, of course, the Earths from the crossover material all function as alternate Earths via the Cauldron Designation. Earth Six-One-Six would be something like Earth Resh, while New Earth from the DCU would be Earth Lamdh, and so on, in keeping with the Semetic Alphabet Naming Scheme. Also, yes, there will be crossover characters coming to Earth Bet. Three of which are even listed as companions on the CYOA Character Sheet.
Speaking of which, the next update will be said CYOA Character Sheet along with a couple of images, before we pick back up with Trito as he wakes up in the Elder's Hut of Apsadanam Village.
Stay tuned. . .
Comments
Juan Sánchez Villalobos Ramírez
Well the prologue has me interested. I'll be glad to read this whenever it updates again!
