[Warpworld] Ch 22 – I think your Leaders are a bit Daft

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            He came in not quite directly, shifting back and forth to see if we responded, but Feature just ignored it all patiently, wings spread wide and out, his Tail dropped low to whip in any needed direction, too many multi-colored flames about him to do anything but impress this creature that seemed to be trying to invoke too many savage barbarian tropes.

            In the end, the ‘dactyl swept up carefully to the hovering bar of force and settled onto it, looking a bit surprised that it held without any problems. It was obviously quite ferocious, preening its painted body and flexing for the benefit of Feature, who responded not at all to the display, as if the ‘dactyl wasn’t there, or wasn’t worth acknowledging.

            Which he wasn’t. Feature could cover the hundred feet between us in one long lunge with no problem, and yeah, it was a tough dino-critter. Feature would definitely take it out VERY quickly.

            “Well met,” I said plainly, staying there, the constant cold wind not even ruffling my clothes. “I see you did not head to the ground. Am I to understand that your intentions are hostile?” I asked diplomatically.

            “The great Elder has spoken, and stated that your Pyramid is an affront against the Makers, and must be expunged!” the toothy fellow shouted out in a clicking, hissing language, waving his jagged Spear for emphasis, feathers and ruffs and all. “It dares to threaten the design of the Ancients, and will be destroyed!” he rephrased for emphasis.

            “Mmm, no. That is not what is going on at all.” His bright yellow eyes blinked at my casual denial. “I am Beyond Fate and Chaos. I cannot be interfering with something that could not include my existence in the first place, and this is a place of the Warp. There are no Designs here by any outside of the Warp, and that is Truth.”

            He stared at me for a long, silent moment. Then bright greenish blood began to trickle out of his nostrils, and his eyes rolled back, his mind being crushed between absolute obedience to his masters and absolute knowledge that they were totally wrong.

            His mount wasn’t smart enough to really comprehend that, but still wobbled at the presence of a Word so far beyond its own existence. Its instinctive posture went from aggressive to submissive in a startled second, wavering as it sensed something so utterly above it.

            “I understand if your duty compels you to fight,” I added calmly. “However, know that you will fight and die for a lie. Your Elder is either grossly misled, grossly fooled, or is simply insane, and his desires serve The Warp. I do not know what he desires to see accomplished, but it has no bearing here.

            “You are not a natural species. I can see you are a Created Race, without the history and heritage of things born of the Land. What your Makers are or were, I also do not care. In this time and place, I am here to hurl the Warp Gods back out of the mortal realm. If you seek to interfere with this, I will feed you to the Land I seek to restore, as you are part of the problem, not the solution.

            “Know that if you press your attack, you are serving the Gods of the Warp, and you will be punished accordingly.

            “I have spoken Truth. You may leave.”

            I was speaking to his mount. The thought-locked rider just barely managed to hold on as his mount turned rapidly around and fled from us.

            I watched the ‘dactyl retreat right through the riders he had led into here. A bit confused, they turned around and followed him back out of the Domain of the Pyramid, sending suspicious looks at me.

            “Elders, your instincts were correct. It seems one of the leaders of these saurids believes that what I am doing is going to interfere with some great plan of their creators, and is moving to stop us. I should not have a problem in dealing with them,” I Magevoiced back to the waiting, watching Elves.

            Truth to the forebrain seemed like a wonderful thing to try. These saurids seemed to be conditioned to regard their superiors as infallible. When Truth forced them to realize they weren’t, it literally caused their brains to lock up.

            Then again, if all they cared about was loyalty and obedience, not truth, it would not matter. That would be fine.

            Lawful chowderheads were always the most annoying. I didn’t want to kill them, but as soon as they passed judgment on me, welp, that was it, they were going down.

------

            It turns out that they didn’t move that fast. The forward elements on the ground caught up quickly, especially the raptor-riders, but the retreat of the aerial force seemed to have made them uncertain, as they stewed around the border waiting for the footsloggers to arrive.

            The floating throne with the bloated, oversized scaled toad-thing seated in it, magic trembling around it with restrained power and control, was the obvious centerpoint of the army.

            Feature was hovering down near the ground as they breached the Domain field and felt the vivic mist as it poured down and stained the ground, sniffing in distraction as they entered and found the air incredibly clean and coldly pure.

            “If you are here to stop me from sealing away the Warp Gods from this world, raise your spears and continue to advance, and be ready to die.

            “If you are here to see that the Warp Gods are Sealed away forever, then come forth honorably to talk.

            “Either answer is acceptable.”

            The mighty leaders at the forefront of the army, standing heads and shoulders over the various sizes of reptoids there, paused a moment at my words, staring at me standing there on Feature’s undulating jet and silver as my Eidolon Familiar slowly moved backwards in pace with the Pyramid’s progress. A couple of the commanders were mounted on dinosaurs of great size, with one monstrous version of a triceratops hauling the golden howdah-seat with the bloated race-prophet in it around.

            Muudr, the racial Assay said, just a topical scan of species. Not even the same race or species as the other creatures, but the creatures didn’t even breathe, or have real genders. They were a created slave species of magical anthroids, there to work for whatever made them, and couldn’t even replace themselves naturally. Nitzls, Komos, and Gtors, by increasing size, formed the rest of the creatures.

            The only thing that was natural were the dinosaurs, and even they showed signs of gene-shifting, making them naturally submissive to the reptoids on a spiritual level.

            I felt the Muudr’s attention come upon me, poking at my Astral Ward and trying to get through it. I flicked a finger and rebuffed its magical awareness, just a cutting edge that made it flinch back in its seat.

            “Rude,” I stated simply. “Are we fighting or talking, creature?”

            It waved its proportionately small hand, and the army of reptilian saurids reduced speed to a slow walk that kept pace with the Pyramid ahead of them.

            “You are not of this place, and should not be here,” its croaking voice declared to me across the distance. “You disturb the strands of Fate, and will derail the plans of the Ancients, little apeling.”

            “Interesting how you are lying to me and to yourself, artificial thing. I happen to know I have no presence in the weaves of Fate, so you cannot even see a future I exist in. How can you tell if I am upsetting anything other than your own limited view of the future’s possibilities when you can see absolutely none of them? You are as blind as any other being, including the ones who are deceiving you, as to the consequences of my actions.”

            I could clearly see its large, bulbous eyes open, and it did indeed go sifting into the short-term foresight arena, trying to read the possibilities of what was happening here. Temporal strands knotted and writhed around it... but none of them came from me.

            Indeed, he couldn’t read a damn thing about the Pyramid because of that! Not a single future it could discern even had the Pyramid in it!

            “Anomaly! You are an anomaly!” it belched, staring at me.

            “No, I’m enforced normality. Things that can see through time, they are anomalies, and I shut them down. You have exactly the same amount of ability to read my future as those of the soldiers you have brought with you, and of nearly all mortal creatures.

            “How does it feel, not knowing what the future holds? Wondrous and terrible, is it not?”

            The saurid officers especially were looking at their leader, who was definitely upset as it stared at me. “I cannot be wrong about the plans of the Ancients!” he thundered back at me.

            “Of course you can, and that is Truth.”

            The bellow of pain from the Muudr was astonishing. It shuddered and flapped in its chair, the absoluteness of the Word warring with all its beliefs and showing them to be what they were: desperate suppositions, incomplete predications, frantic predictions, hopeful desires, crazed zealotry before the horrors of the simple Truth.

            It didn’t know, it was only guessing. It was playing against beings vastly more powerful than it was, older, wiser, who knew the game.

            And now it knew it had come here because of a lie!

            How could it have seen a vision of this Pyramid forever denying the return of the Ancients, when with the Pyramid right in front of it now, its powers at their peak, it couldn’t see even scant minutes into the future, as if the four-hundred-foot mountain of stone didn’t exist at all, despite being right there?

            How could a simple apeling defy its magic? It tried to bear down again on me, to deny the absoluteness of the Word that was tearing at its comprehension of the world and the delusions it had fed itself in its senility and the passing of ages, and it got nowhere.

            It took long moments to regain its composure, the saurids standing there with their tails swishing nervously, waiting as it stopped shaking and quivering, gasping, choking, blubbering things incomprehensible.

            I just waited patiently, in no hurry. I could see the magic on some of the Banners and things they held, designed to alternately force things aflight high into the sky, or force them to land immediately and deny them the air, kinda the opposite of Stillflight’s geomancy in how it worked. But then, we weren’t that high above the ground, and Feature’s wings were only beating very lazily, for exercise, not for effect.

            Gasping for breath, thoughts still in turmoil if the lights dancing a bit crazily about it were any indication, something keeping the other saurids at a respectful distance, it finally opened its glowing yellow eyes and fixed them back on me.

            “The risk you pose to the return of the Ancients cannot be, cannot be...”

            “Calculated?” I supplied helpfully, and its green hide, already pale, mottled towards yellow as it helplessly began to do just that. “Please figure into that chance the fact that this world has already died at least a thousand times and then been restarted by the Gods of the Warp for entertainment purposes. Truth!”

            The Muudr convulsed again at the Word, which had remarkably little effect on any of its troops, although the officers looked at me sharply at that information. It didn’t mean they’d treat me any different, but just knowing that bit of information was rather unreal to them.

            “Yes, a great deal of the difficulty you’re having putting all the pieces together is because what you want to know has been known and done before, failed utterly to stop their triumphs, and when the restart happened and different roads were taken, different truths and futures past and present started overlapping in your thoughts.

            “You see what has gone before, only it looks like what will come again. You chase after shadows of possibilities that have always let you down, unable to see past a certain point with absoluteness, despite knowing other things absolutely... and now you know why.

            “But this, and I, have not happened before.

            “I am not from this world, as you have fairly deduced. I have no investment in it, I am not bound to its Fate, be it grand destiny or final doom, and I have absolutely no place in your predictions, plans, or the final reckoning that awaits you.

            “I am here only to break you out of the cycle and let Free Will once more take its place.” I noticed a lot of crests turn my way in great interest. “Knowing that this world has perished at least a thousand times in the past, Elder, what are the chances your Masters even believe you are alive, let alone that they will return in the face of a mightier foe who has access to your world?”

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