The Great Core's Paradox

The rocks shifted as, somewhere outside their prison of stone, one of the remaining Flat-Horned Chargers crashed against them. Again.

Beside Triss, Yerin let out another groan of pain; his right leg resembled little more than a pulped mess, and was only becoming worse with every movement of the stones that pinned it. His breath came in ragged and pained gasps, his eyes wide and unseeing. The others weren’t much better, injured and dazed by the collapse. From the sounds of scraping and clawing near the back, someone must have been frantically digging. From the sounds of muttered cursing and pained grunts, they must have been failing in the attempt.

Triss knew what that was like.

One hand traced the Totem around her neck as the stones around them - both prison and protection - shook again. The other hand propped up her spear, maneuvered as best she could in the cramped confines to aim in the direction of the threat.

Triss couldn’t decide which was worse; remaining trapped in her prison, or a sudden and altogether brief moment of freedom. When the stones rocked again, she tried to fight down her panic again.

This time, even the calming sensation of the Little Guardian’s Totem wasn’t enough.

Not anymore.

Terror flooded her senses.

“Please…” she whispered, “If the stories are real, please save us. Please find us, Little Guardian.”

Despite everything, she wanted to live.

===

[TERROR/PANIC/DESPERATION]

Emotions flooded through the link to my [Little Guardian’s Totem], and I dropped into my mind-nest. There was something terribly wrong - something far worse than the need and fear and sadness that I had received from my tiny Coreless. Those emotions were powerful, but they weren’t pressing.

Not like this.

I followed the thought-hiss to its source, letting Tiamat’s habitual attempt at dominance bounce off of me in my focus. I hissed in frustration when I found it.

It was outside of the many-nest.

That made things more difficult; I couldn’t cross the black-water on my own. Even the thought of attempting to swim across the dangerous waters made my instincts blare in alarm. One of my Coreless would have to take me.

Again, I simmered in my frustration. Somewhere out there, one of the Great Core’s Coreless was in danger.

I was its Champion; I was their Champion, and the Great Core’s Champion could not be seen to fail. I had only just begun to bring the Coreless under the light of the Great Core; their faith could still be broken.

I needed to know more, if I was going to save the frightened Coreless.

I sunk the fangs of my mind into the Totem’s connection, hoping it would be enough. I had tried this a few times before, curious to know what my tiny Coreless were up to, and had noticed that greater emotions were more likely to carry faint hints of what the Totem’s bearer was seeing. A blur of images flashed through my mind, similar to the way that Tiamat had shown me images of her origins, but harder to make out.

Murky.

It would have to be enough.

I flared a beam of light straight upwards, flashing it so quickly that it didn’t exist for more than the blink of an eye. I needed to grab the Coreless’ attention, but I couldn’t afford to spend more of my reservoirs for it than that.

They stopped what they were doing, turning their attention to me with faint hints of alarm and confusion filtering through the Totems that they carried. At the very least, the Totems would make things a little easier. I’d just have to show them what was going on until I noticed the correct response.

I pulled at the light around me, thankful that my reservoirs had already been relatively full. There might not be much time, I knew.

The clearest portion of the image I had received came first; one of my Totems, the fingers of a Coreless clasped around it while an almost imperceptible glow filtered through the gaps.

“What’s going on?” One of the Coreless made a few noises; I ignored it, not bothering to do more than check on the emotion that filtered through the Totem in his hand. Confusion. I checked the others. They were the same.

I kept going.

The rest of her body formed. It hadn’t been one of my tiny Coreless like I expected. It was a warrior, though weaker than my original Coreless. Her ore-flesh skin was a dull gray, without the mana that the more powerful warriors of the Coreless infused into their skins. Her weapon, though, held a glow at its tip. I didn’t recognize her.

It didn’t matter. She was mine, now. She was the Great Core’s.

She would be saved.

I cared less for the others, the wounded warriors that I had seen scattered around her. They were not ours. Not yet, anyway.

The Coreless around me made noises again, jabbering at each other heatedly.

“Is that one of the Totems in her hand?”

“Does anybody -”

“Is this one of its visions?”

I checked the Totems again. Still not the reactions that I needed. I kept going.

The reservoirs within my scale-flesh were beginning to run low. I reached out and ripped away the light and heat from a nearby flame, letting its spot on the wall go dim. Cold.

I reached out for another, feeling my scale-flesh begin to burn with the strain.

With a flex of [Illusion Spark], I released most of what I had gathered. Another Coreless appeared beside the first, a leg crushed under fallen stone. I pulled at another torch, and the nest grew darker. Another Coreless appeared, scrabbling at a stone in a desperate attempt to escape. His fingertips dripped red. After a moment of frantic attempts, his image froze. I couldn’t keep such a complicated and large illusion in motion.

I checked on my Totems, devouring another torch. With the way that my reservoirs hissed and burned with the effort of crafting the illusion, I was feeling more than strained. The upkeep on the illusion alone was tearing through my reserves. If there hadn’t been so much nearby light to consume, I would have probably been forced to push some trait points into [Illusion Spark] and hope that did the trick.

Instead, I swallowed more light, dropping the nest into darkness. Only my illusion, the glow of ore-flesh, and the soft light of the Totems remained.

“Captain Wren, do you have any-”

“What is this supposed to be? When is this supposed to be?”

The stones expanded, transforming from a few to many, turning into a wall that rocked itself occasionally, dust drifting down through the cracks where a few began to shatter. They froze a moment later, and I focused on something new.

The corpse of a bad-thing appeared, one that I didn’t recognize. It was a bulky thing, a giant mass of powerful flesh topped with a blunt, yet still dangerous-looking horn. A few of the Coreless breathed in sharply. A quick check of their Totems revealed that they were feeling concerned. Alarmed by what they saw.

Good, but it still wasn’t enough. They were still confused. I needed to see something else mixed with those emotions. Understanding - a sign that they recognized what they saw. Resolve - a sign that they would act on it.

From the size of those stones, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to save the bearer of my Totem alone. From the distance of the connection, I wouldn’t even be able to reach them before the bad-things that I had heard slamming against the walls brought them crashing down. It wasn’t like the problems of the tiny Coreless within the many-nest, able to be solved with an encouraging hiss or a colorful illusion.

I wouldn’t be able to save my Coreless. Not alone.

Again, I hissed in frustration. Why couldn’t they just understand me?

The Coreless argued among themselves; the confusion and frustration that radiated through the totems made that clear, the overwhelming noise quickly drowning out my frustrated hiss.

I had let them see everything, and still they did not act. They did not understand. I had nothing more to show them. I hissed again, more frustrated with our lack of communication than ever. I did not understand them. They did not understand me. That was all there was to it.

I was going to fail. One of my Coreless was going to die.

I thought back to what I had seen, transferred to me through the [Little Guardian’s Totem]. The things that I understood: the panic, the terror, the desperation. The wounded, the endangered, the trapped. The crash and clamor of bad-things against the stones that kept them safe and kept them prisoner.

I thought about what I didn’t: the noises that my Coreless kept repeating over and over, a faint hint of conflicting hope and despair underlying them.

I hissed loudly, amplifying the sound far above the noise of the Coreless with [Sound Shaping].

They fell silent, totems filled with confused/alarmed/worried/curious.

Then, I hissed again; quietly, carefully. I let most of my illusion fall away, unable to sustain the light or focus that it required. Only two pieces remained: a [Little Guardian’s Totem], a hand clasped around it, and the body of my Coreless as she looked down at the Totem.

I could barely hear the droning hiss that spilled from my own throat, beginning to twist into something unrecognizable where it reached the illusion’s own mouth. The mouth began to move.

“Pleeeeeaasssssse…” it said. That didn’t sound right. I focused more, trying to ignore the increasing pounding of my head-scales as I twisted the constant hiss through [Sound Shaping]. It didn’t seem like [Sound Shaping] was meant for something as delicate as this. It took too much concentration, required too much willpower.

It wasn’t like the extreme blasts of sound that tore at my throat-flesh; there, the problem was that I forced my throat-flesh to withstand far more damage than it could handle. This was different.

It was a pounding in my head-scales, a blurring in my vision, a panic in my thoughts that told me one thing: [Sound Shaping] was not made to do something so deft, so careful. It was force and power, not delicacy and precision.

Using it this way hurt; I did it anyway.

“If the stories are real, please save us. Please find us, Little Guardian.”

I didn’t know what the sounds meant, and I couldn’t even be sure that I copied them correctly. Actually, I knew that I didn’t. The noise stretched out oddly, in a way that the original didn’t, warping in places and changing entirely in others.

I had to hope that it would be enough.

I looked at my totems as the Coreless erupted into senseless noise.

[confusion/worry/concern]

It didn’t work.

Then, just as I gave up hope, one of the remaining lights in the room shifted. The-female-who-was-not-Needle began to move. Her glowing skin of ore-flesh outlined her figure as she reached down to run a finger along a Totem that hadn’t yet been touched.

Her brow furrowed in thought, and I stretched my mind towards her Totem as she raised her other hand. The jabbering Coreless fell silent.

[understanding/determination/urgency]

“I think I understand,” she hissed to the others. “It’s happening now.”