57 -||

Even so, she itched to use it.

Contessa jammed the needle into Doormaker's back the moment Alexandria had released Lisa, and quickly backed up, pistol trained unerringly on the young man's swaying form, even as he fell to the floor, unconscious.

Alexandria straightened, flew to him, picked him up in a princess carry, and floated there staring at Contessa, for a few seconds.

"Could I at least get a reason?" Alexandria asked, emotionless.

"Could I at least get a reason?" Alexandria asked, emotionless.

Fortuna resisted the urge to sigh.

There were too many reasons.

To Cauldron, this was sudden. An unexpected betrayal. No warning, no seeming reason. She'd done good work on that front.

To her, however, this was a decision quietly contemplated in the rain-slick alleys of a dozen distant worlds, for countless hours, staring down the barrel of a rifle and wondering if she should continue this path, when it would cause so much incomprehensible destruction.

A few bullets. A three year war, with billions dead. A couple million triggers. Nuclear fallout in a world so distant that none would ever hear of it until it no longer mattered.

She could do it. She would do it.

But only if it was utterly necessary.

And she was no longer certain that it was.

That path still lay unfinished.

In a perfect world, they'd wipe Nexus out, and go back to their aimless flailing. The girl was not wrong that they were swinging in the dark, hoping to hit something, when she'd rejected Alexandria's demands of staying on that distant planet. Taylor wasn't right either, however. She was arrogant, and reductivist, unknowing of the whole picture.

But she hadn't baulked, or given up.

She'd decided to work on the same goal, in her own way. She heard about the end of the world and didn't bat an eye before going to establish a power base, to start working against the coming end, expanding her goal to fit the catastrophe ahead of them.

Cauldron didn't seem to understand how rare that was. So what if they destroyed Nexus? What would they have gained at the end of it, relating to the real goal, killing Scion?

Next to nothing. More useless vials from her power, like countless others.

And in the process of winning, they would lose an Eidolon-level cape that grew stronger while Eidolon grew weaker.

And that was the entire point of it all, the experiments, the vials, all of it. Powerful capes like Eidolon.

Eidolon and Alexandria would say that things would go back to 'normal' if they won.

They'd rationalize it by telling Fortuna that she would even have her power back. She'd be back in action, affecting change, instead of committing horrific atrocities in distant worlds just to make more people trigger before Scion took the mask off.

Eidolon would talk of his theory, full of generalisations and conjectures that had no evidence, sprung upon them too hurriedly to allow them to think it through, no time to let them pick holes in it.

A very convincing theory, a very convenient theory, but one that crumbled the more she scrutinised it, and one she simply couldn't trust because of Eidolon's obsessive ego that had been only given room to grow due to recent events.

Did he really feel that Nexus had to be eradicated? Was that his sole reason for pushing this forward without giving them a chance to think or strategize on it?

Or did he simply wish to prove he was the Trump by beating Taylor? Perhaps he simply wanted someone to give him a real fight, because at the heart of everything, Eidolon was not a leader, he was no visionary, he was hardly more than a well-intentioned fighter.

But nothing of worth would be gained from this.

Their chances would be as abysmal as ever. As desperate as they ever were.

It had been decades of work. Ever since she was a child, endless, tireless work. Every sacrifice, every bit of herself consumed by her power.

And they'd only made one Eidolon. One Legend. One Hero. One Alexandria. Four capes even worthy of consideration, worthy of being considered as an actual asset in the final fight, one of them already dead to something so much lesser than Scion, showing them just how powerful they really were at the end of it.

Bluntly put? Everything they had except the Triumvirate, Doormaker and Clairvoyant, was cosmetic in this world, against Scion.

The Case 53's, the countless connections, all the power they wielded, when push came to shove, all they really had to show for it, was four successes, three of them alive, and countless failures that would die the moment Scion glanced at them.

This wasn't working. There were no better alternatives, before, so they kept to it, and she simply walked along the path, but now…

Now, there was an alternative. There was an alternative that, as her power stabilised over the months, bit by bit, allowed her to recognize how outside the conflict system, the cycle, Taylor was, despite her actions leading to further conflict like absolute clockwork, the girl too unused to the concept of backing down.

The sleepless night had allowed her to recognize how outside the ruleset the girl was.

Fortuna's power still could see nothing but nonsense, were she to attempt a path into the future.

But she could still look at the past with more and more clarity, as time went on. The things that had happened, were infinitely easier for powers to establish, than calculations of what would. 

Even her closest allies seemed to forget that half of her power was knowing what had happened already, rather than what would. Precognition and postcognition.

It took some work to get answers to what had occurred through a Path, but it worked.

She'd rephrased the same questions and paths a thousand times until she got an answer for everything, except the most unknown quantities, that not even her power itself knew of.

So, while Eidolon had done his research to present a theory, a theory that sounded plausible, and just horrible enough to warrant immediate action, like he wished, she got the lingering feeling in the hours following, that they were simply being forced into unwise actions and manipulated by the man who'd inadvertently taken Cauldron's reigns and began to steer them into a wall. 

With Fortuna practically powerless, Alexandria half-mastered, too inwardly indecisive and passive to be the rock upon which Eidolon's tumultuous tides would break upon, like usual, and Legend as an outsider, almost, despite their attempt to begin to induct him, who was left to challenge him on decision-making?

The fact her power kept throwing out specific things that did not exist in this world, while trying to path something for the girl, told her that Eidolon's theory had a lot of merit, initially. Led her to believe that maybe the uneasy feeling she had, was all in her head.

But the deeper she dug, the less it made sense.

The brain scans, from the psych ward the girl went to?

Her corona was unfinished. Stuck in the halfway mark between dormant and active. It was no exact science, but it was yet another mark to point to the fact the girl was not a part of the shard network.

The greatest thing to dismantle Eidolon's theory however, was the witness testimonies of the girl's rescue of Gray Boy victims, organized and reported a mere two hours before this battle.

She had squeezed in the time to read them, and it had solidified her burgeoning, treasonous thoughts.

Every single person questioned had confirmed that Taylor had been mere feet away from people triggering, dozens of times. She carried them out as they did so.

Not once had she collapsed, even when others had, as they should.

Any Parahuman, every Parahuman, collapsed when someone Triggered in close range. Everyone. Alexandria, Eidolon, Ashbeast, everyone. It was the most common, most absolute rule of powers. Across every world they'd ever observed with human life in it.

Maybe Eidolon missed that detail. Maybe he didn't care, and just wanted to fight Taylor. She had no real way of knowing. Even postcognition was spotty against powers of that caliber.

But Eidolon's theory of other entities, while solid at first glance, seemed... far fetched, with those little holes she kept finding, those rule breaks.

Taylor was affected by the existence of powers in this world. She had a Gemma. But her abilities did not come from it, did not follow the same rules. She could Master Alexandria, because she did not follow the same rules. Either the entity responsible for Taylor's abilities was alien even to its own kind, or something else was in play. The question of what that was, would remain to be seen in the future.

Additionally, her power told her what Taylor had seen, during her trigger event.

It was not an entity. It was not a vision like they were used to. Not a world like they were used to, from what little descriptions she could drag out of the Path.

And from there, the theory that scared Cauldron into this war, the explanation of other Entities potentially entering the ring because of Taylor's nature? It lost too much legitimacy to consider it any more than a hasty theory.

She could present these findings to Cauldron, yes. She could attempt to convince them, in the last couple hours before they had to defend themselves from Taylor, and fail, because such an argument would surely last more than two mere hours.

But the boat had sailed, and there was no turning it back. Taylor would attack, even if they somehow agreed that this was unnecessary, and they would say it's now a matter of self-defence.

All she could do in the face of all this was… not really a betrayal, but a coup, based on her observations of non-lethality, that the girl tended to employ, when it came to people she did not consider monsters. Even when the Truce was broken against her, she only killed the man who ordered the Truce to be broken, not any of the capes on the ground.

Besides, convincing Eidolon and Alexandria to change their way of thinking, after all the recent stress they'd been under, after all their plots fraying like tearing thread?

She knew an exercise in futility when she saw one. The moment her power had lessened, her words and suggestions and plans had been given as much consideration as Legends' within Cauldron.

Not quite none, but not much either. Without her power to back her points, to guide the conversation as she wished, to provide absolutely certain, infallible points and counterpoints, anything she said could be regarded as an opinion, not fact, even if it was true.

She recognized it, often, but there had never been any other path to take, so she'd allowed it to go on, until it festered into Eidolon forming theories and plunging them into a war that they did not need.

There were two outcomes to this war, the way she'd seen it.

They would either go back into stagnation, having destroyed the first outsider of this entire system for untested theories and petty egos and Contessa's power…

Or they would lose, and be taken over and enslaved by a woman whose eyes had seen too much, a woman too much like Fortuna, before her power stripped the emotion off of her like membrane from a bone.

So Contessa would create a third outcome. Something more favourable, even if riskier. Even if she had to put her faith into an unstable amalgamation of humanity in the form of a teenage girl, held together by a blonde Thinker and deranged determination.

Could I at least get a reason?, Rebecca had asked. 

She rolled the question around in her mind.

If she had her power, she could probably convince her to switch sides. She was already Mastered, to some extent, by Taylor. It would not be too hard.

But Contessa right now, did not exist, not in the same capacity.

Fortuna, the half-powered woman left behind in her place, could not find a way to convince the woman across her that this was idiotic. Not in nearly enough time.

Her thoughts were starting to loop and repeat, so she ran an entirely inwardly directed Path to clear her head, directing her own thoughts into practicality.

Worst case scenario, realistic scenario at least, Cauldron won despite her interference, and took her back in because her power was too useful, now simply trusting her less than ever before.

She had little to lose, and much to gain.

"It wouldn't change anything." Contessa replied eventually.

"It wouldn't change anything." Contessa replied after a short moment of consideration, almost resigned.

Taylor felt like she was missing an ocean's worth of context for this discussion. What happened?

"You agreed we should kill her, when discussing this." Alexandria pressed, almost frustrated, but not emotional enough to show it aside from persistence.

"I lied. I simply saw an alternative, and I'm taking it." Contessa cooly replied.

Alexandria's face went blank.

"This… brutish, stubborn, selfish child. An alternative?" Alexandria said, voice on the edge of showing an actual emotion.

Still stuck on the 'child' thing, despite her being older than all of them by a magnitude of thousands. Even Alexandria was fooled by appearances.

She waited for a reply from Contessa, just as much as Alexandria did.

"Goodbye, Rebecca." Contessa said, simply.

Alexandria rose, blank-faced, and zipped away, a swirl of air as strong as a gale tugging behind her, ruffling their clothes, their hair.

The frontline was moving away from them. Her forces were pushing Cauldron's back.

Contessa lowered the gun, and turned to her.

Taylor had no fucking idea what to do with her. Or what to think.

Was this another bizarre ploy?

"Take me somewhere safe. It would be quite pathetic and anticlimactic to die here, after everything I've been through." Contessa said, simply.

Taylor could relate to that.

"I don't trust you enough. Get rid of all your weapons."

Contessa stared for a moment, before quickly tossing her gun aside, throwing another syringe out of her pocket, and digging into her suit into hidden pockets, a half dozen hidden blades clinking to the floor in seconds. Then she straightened.

With Syndra able to feel space, she was somewhat confident the cape had nothing else hidden up her sleeves, but she still hesitated for a moment, taken off balance by the entire interaction. 

Contessa raised a brow.

Still unable to get used to the odd sensation of their eyes meeting, the weird similarity, she nodded, turning and grabbing both of her charges with magical force, shooting back to the fort, engulfing them in protective energy.

Said fort exploded the moment she laid her eyes on it. 

Her eyes widened as a black figure excreting a cloud of vile, dark black smoke launched itself out of a blast hole into a smooth roll, two charred, bone-thin arms blindly firing grenade launchers behind him, while three misshapen arms made of condensed solid smoke, seemingly having torn themselves out of his mangled back, fired three shotguns at full auto for covering fire as the cape fled.

He wasn't one of hers.

And Magnet, for some reason, wasn't stopping him from shooting.

She grasped the cape with a flick of her foot, crushed him into the floor, making him halt immediately, and quickly pulverised his body into dust with a barrage of dark spheres, sent forth with a swipe of her hand. 

Flying low, over the torn, smoking bits of him, she went into the base through the hole, and stared in shock at the pure carnage leading into the building, then out, into the portal they'd come in through.

Everything was in pieces, everyone, almost. A few survivors, cape clones and not, scrambled around the building, checking for survivors, trying to remain vigilant of new attacks as they did so.

She identified several hundreds of pieces of metal, swords, spears, crystals and stone, several dozen feet of barriers, all torn and scattered to pieces. Half their makeshift fort was levelled.

It was easier to identify rubble than the mangled corpses strewn about the place in pieces.

She switched to the Rune of Domination, focusing on her blood-tracking auxiliary rune.

With a quick check, she confirmed that she'd not lost any of the most important capes, only Kaiser and Heartbreaker clones, and a lot of her soldiers. Everyone deeper inside, except Ballistic, had made it.

She took a moment to sigh, dissapointed and angry about the losses, and pushed it aside for later, setting Lisa down beside her.

She turned to Contessa.

"Who was that?" She demanded.

"He goes by War. Unaffiliated, war criminal. Standing Kill Order in sixty seven out of seventy officially recognized countries. Estimated kill count of sixty two thousand from his birth to now, mostly normals, some capes. Real name, Robert Elmond, born 1898. Functionally immortal. He has some kind of directional sense for finding big fights. PRT file ends there." Contessa said swiftly, seemingly unconcerned with being carried around by what used to be her enemy, a minute ago, nor about the cape she was talking about.

After taking a moment to digest that, she paused.

Immortal? What did immortal fucking mean?

She flew back a bit, and jerked her head to the crater where a strewn out corpse used to be.

It was empty.

She swept her gaze around the field, and found him…

Charging past her line, and diving into the fray against Cauldron, two swords and two guns whirling like a blur as he recklessly charged through a wall of energy blasts.

… Why did he attack her, then? How did he even know to get here? Why?

Shaking her head to push aside questions there were no answers to, she turned back to Contessa, zipping back into the base.

She switched Runes, activating Cosmic Insight.

For a moment, her very thinking process was swept away by a tidal wave of information.

She turned 'Cosmic Insight' off, to try again when things were less chaotic, and put Contessa down on the floor, finally, the woman instantly trying to straighten her suit.

What she got was that Cosmic Insight had way too much to say about Contessa. She was important to the world in a way nobody else she'd ever seen had been. Her impact on the world was too goddamn staggering, and her head was throbbing too hard to do this right now.

Contessa twitched, lips pursing as she stared at her, brows furrowed in uncertainty.

Should she restrain her? Treat her as an ally, or a captured enem-

"Eidolon just kidnapped your father. The relocation you'd ordered after the first incident wasn't enough, Cauldron found him soon after. Watchdog assisted. He plans to use him to lure you out."

She stared, for a moment, her thoughts slamming to a cold, furious halt.

"The plan from the start had been to exhaust your forces, making you enter the fight more and more to tire yourself out. Since you countered that strategy, they're trying to lure you out by using the few people you care about, banking on you being young and unstable due to your 'power' and past. The plan had been to kidnap or kill Insight through Doormaker and Heartstopper, whichever option was easier. I prevented both avenues of that, so they're moving to the next best target."

She grit her teeth.

"Why didn't you warn me, if you're now... against them?" She asked, low and slow, furious.

Not at her, just… this. Everything about this.

Contessa dipped her head.

"Because this wasn't in the official plans, they resorted to this just a few minutes ago. Additionally, I can no longer see the future, not around you, as Alexandria likely told you. Not on the same planet as you. I can only see the recent to distant past. I was rather occupied before with getting Lisa out of trouble's way and getting Doormaker incapacitated. Eidolon is currently looking for a power combination that will bring him here with your father." Contessa said, simply.

"She's- truth. Not lying." Lisa croaked, from behind, followed by a cough, and she tersely nodded.

"Where is Eidolon?"

"At your father's workplace, in a warehouse. Maybe it would be wise to wait for him to get here, rather than seeking him out." Contessa suggested, almost reading her mind. "He doesn't seem inclined to do anything without you watching."

She nodded, clenching her fists.

Eidolon, kidnapping innocents to kill people who had done him no wrong. Who were on the same side.

Some fucking hero.  

Why had she expected anything else? If Cauldron found her dad once, they'd find him again. Why hadn't she expected them to sink so low again? Why hadn't she bitten the bullet, and just brought him with her, with her forces, back in her base, safe in the underfloor?

A moment passed, anxiety riding higher and higher. Self-directed frustration.

She'd gotten complacent when it came to her father. She should have… she should have done something.

Eidolon would probably still manage to steal him unless she put him right next to her, yes, but it- it might've changed something, might have kept her poor dad from suffering any more due to no fault of his own.

He deserved to move on. To just fucking live.

And she was so furious that Cauldron kept dragging him back into this goddamn conflict that he had nothing to do with.

"Is-"

"He hasn't hurt him yet. I think he's undecided on what he will do with him, take it with a grain of salt." Contessa said, cutting her off, and she nodded, grinding her teeth.

"Insight, can you still lead? I need to think." She said, lowering herself to the floor, switching to Jarvan, pacing in place.

"Yeah, yeah." Lisa said. "I'll go find Coil. Is he dead?" She asked, an afterthought, sounding almost eager for him to be.

"No." She replied, dryly, "Twenty six feet to our right."

Lisa sighed, paused, and went off to do her work, offering a pat on the shoulder for comfort, too harried to stay. "Sorry. He'll be alright."

It helped, a little.

"If I leave, would he wait for me to surface, leaving my father alone?" She questioned Contessa, pacing slowly, her movements tight.

Contessa stared, tilting her head a smidge.

"I don't believe so, but I do not know." Contessa said, simply. "Whatever happens, do not kill Eidolon, if you're even capable of it. I need him for the final conflict."

She paused, side-eyeing the woman for a moment.

That… that was true. To some extent, it was.

But she was still not entirely convinced there had to be a final conflict.

And that wording puzzled her.

"What do you mean you need him for the 'final fight'?" She asked, suspicious all over again.

Contessa took her hat off, laying it against her chest as she took a long breath.

"I propose an alliance. No, a confederation, rather." Contessa said, likely immediately reading the furious twitch of her brow. "You do not want to deal with Cauldron and its schemes. Acquainting yourself with the organization you're taking over would take ages, would take time and effort you can't spare, not while focusing on your faction. Your moral objections to our methods alone would take a tremendous amount of restructuring, internal and external. So, a confederation. Work not with Cauldron, but with me." Contessa said, meeting her eyes, both equally flat and bare. "In terms you might be more familiar with due to your power's origin, Cauldron would be your vassal state, independent only up until the point of your objection. And I would be its lord."

That did make the image easier to understand, actually.

It was disquieting how much Cauldron had figured out about her, but she'd take it in stride.

She worked her jaw, considering the offer, genuinely. Contessa had a very, very good point.

But the main question remained, and she kept asking, because she needed some distraction from the thought of her father being in Cauldron's hands.

"Why? Why are you doing all this? What's the gain? Cauldron seemed united, up until now."

Contessa barely shifted, before breaking the stare-down they'd been locked in, looking out onto the battlefield in the distance, watching rockets and bullets halt midair to them.

Kaiser's clone, Magnet, must be back up. Good, he was valuable.

"A detailed explanation would take too long, I'll try to abbreviate." Contessa began.

"In simple, concise terms, Cauldron is experiencing a hidden power struggle due to your interference, and Eidolon is coming out on top. Eidolon is not fit to lead a hero team, nevermind Cauldron. He has landed us in this pointless conflict with you, after all, through doing as he pleases, like attacking you, and then justifying himself after the fact with erroneous theories and time pressure, manipulating us while pretending he is too much of an upfront fighter to be capable of such. I can't say I know for sure why. He's partially immune to me."

It took a moment for her to process what was implied.

"Wait, Cauldron didn't try to kill me from some unanimous decision? Eidolon worked alone, then you learned of it?" She asked, for clarification.

Contessa nodded.

"I can't claim to be able to read his mind, since even post-cognition barely works on him, but his power is fading, slowly. My best guess is that he's subconsciously trying to regain his sense of power by dragging Cauldron around to do as he wishes, because really, who will stop him? My power's half-broken, Legend is ready to leave, and Alexandria doesn't match up to him, and that was before the woman was defeated and compromised by someone he views as lesser than him, aka, you. Number Man is basically our accountant, he doesn't care, nor count in the equation. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. I don't have the ability or time to steer us back to the right path. That's why I'm here." Contessa finished, her hat still on her chest, seemingly sincere as she could manage.

She pursed her lips, eyeing her agents and clones as they rebuilt the fort, dragging the corpses out back through the portal.

Eidolon…

This was a lot to digest. Too much to think about while knowing Eidolon was holding her father hostage right this goddamn moment, but still, she listened, if only to distract herself from the bubbling fury.

"We need each other. I need you to take control of Cauldron, decisively. Properly Master Eidolon, talk to Alexandria, convince her we want the same thing, tell her the truth. She can't be Mastered, not fully. Give me the leeway and a path to communication, because I know we both want to save the world, and you can have your cake and eat it too. Likewise, you need me, because you have too much on your plate to take over a faction several dozen times your size without tremendous wastes of resources. It-" Contessa said, then paused, expression drawing into a stone slab of focus. "Eidolon's coming. Outside."

She switched back to Syndra, the Dark Sovereign, and rocketed out of the fort, rising high, eyes peeled, brows drawn into a steady glare.

But what could she do? She'd run into the same problem that she had run into with Lisa. There was no convenient way to just snatch her father away, while keeping him safe.

Legends flit through her mind, one by one.

Kayle The Righteous could do it.

But she would run into the same problem as with everyone else.

She could protect her father from anything, for a little bit, but the moment she did so, she'd burn through too much energy to then fight Eidolon and win, not without resorting to Smite.

Smite could deal with him on its own. But it would also one hundred percent just kill him outright, as well as reveal the full scope of her power, to not only those around, but to The Simurgh as well, assuming the precog hadn't been able to get a hint of its existence so far.

Smite was her trump card. Unless it was against the Entity, or the Endbringers, she refused to reveal it.

Her hands clenched into fists, unclenched.

How could she do this…

It came to her like the snap of a finger.

Mordekaiser. If she could just get close enough, she could drag Eidolon to the Death Realm, buy her father some time, close the 'hero' in, assuming he couldn't teleport out of it.

If her father had the presence of mind to just run for it, he should make it.

She flicked to her real self, for only a moment, dropping to the floor twenty feet down with a slight huff.

"Insight, send protection to my location." She barked into the radio, then switched back to Syndra, flying back up, eyes sweeping through the field.

A distortion she hadn't noticed, finally seemed to gain enough volume to catch her eye, and she tensed, flying low, almost into the battle, tense, ready.

Someone shot something at her, predictably, from Cauldron's side.

She batted it aside, and decapitated them with a flick of her finger, a localized implosion splattering their brains across their firing team, not taking her eyes off the growing… portal?

Legend zipped into her line of sight, and stopped, glancing around wildly, before his gaze met hers across the battle front. He dashed towards her, in his light form.

Assuming it was an attack, she was surprised to see Legend stop a few dozen feet away, and float in place, eyeing the distortion, and her.

"Hey. It's- is Contessa alive?" He asked, uncomfortable.

He- what? What the fuck did Alexandria tell him?

"She's defected to my side, so she's alright, regardless of what you were told. Now isn't the time to chat, go. Eidolon's got my father. Again. Leave before I assume you're in on this." She grit out, tearing her gaze away to stare at the growing distortion, increasingly nauseous.

Legend paused, conflicted, only moving to dodge a shot from a Purity clone, retaliating just as soon as he'd dodged, then hanging back a little, eyeing her and the portal with a confused air.

She didn't have time for his fucking conflicted feelings, she-

With a sharp crack, and a thunderous gale of wind that swept away debris and the short cloud of lingering dust that clung to the floor, they simply appeared in place.

Eidolon, his pretentious green cape dragging on the ground as he marched her father forwards, a red-glowing hand clamped on her dad's nape.

Her father looked halfway between really fucking pissed and about to piss himself, just as bewildered as the first time, only growing more overwhelmed as his wide eyes looked around the utter pandemonium around them. 

Eidolon's mask stopped during its quick sweep, landing on her as she flew closer, fists clenched.

"Eidolon." She grit out, feet touching the floor as she tried to keep her cool, walking forwards.

Just a little closer, and she could switch to Mordekai-

Eidolon simply stared at her, seemingly contemplating something.

"D- Eidolon, stop!" Legend called, zipping closer, furious.

Eidolon only spared him a quick glance.

"Back off, Legend. You're too soft for this." Eidolon spat, voice ratty.

She switched to the Rune of Inspiration, activating 'Cosmic Insight' on him, just in case she could learn something about him that would let her persuade him to leave her goddamn father out of this.

Unwitting, unknowing creator of the Endbringers.

She froze, eyes widening to the edge of her sockets, her entire worldview tilting, cracking, shattering at the seams as the edges of her vision blurred, every ounce of processing power in her mind crackling, laser-focusing on the second strongest man in the world.

Oblivious arbiter of their rules, of their fights. Created them during the Golden Age of heroes, out of a desire for an opponent worthy of his full effort. Is unaware of this. Subconscious. A heroic soul that wants to save people, corrupted by the desire to never feel as small as he'd once felt. Needs recognition to uphold his self-image of who he is. Fading power, terrified of it, terrified of being powerless again. Would rather die. Used to enjoy Endbringer fights, felt guilty of it. No longer enjoys or feels guilt over them. No longer finds them challenging, but an annoyance that drains his power.

Hates Summoner. Subconsciously wants her dead, equates the loss of power Cauldron experienced to his own loss of power, indirect and not. Rationalizes her death it as necessary to save the world, dismisses anything non-concrete that is pointing to the contrary. Fully believes he alone is the key to saving the world.

Will continue to create Endbringers, should any perish, for pride never reduces itself.

Would never willfully make Endbringers. Would shatter his spirit, if he knew what he had done to the world he was trying to save.

Her breath had frozen in her chest, the revelation so world-shattering that she couldn't even focus on moving forward to snatch Eidolon into the Death Realm, for just a single second.

She forced herself to take another step, wondering what to say, how to negotiate this, or pretend to.

"Soft?!" Legend called, outraged, moving away from Eidolon's side to hers, as if physically recoiling from his colleague, an innocent fly, buzzing to their right. "This man is inno-"

The hand Eidolon was holding her father with, flared, and before she could even react, there was a cloud of red mist and gibbets of flesh peppering her face, drops of blood and flesh landing on her open eyes, as she watched the air clear.

Unblinking, she watched her father's lower body slowly fall forward, just twenty feet away, cutting off at the lower ribcage.

Watched his organs spill over as the body hit the floor, blood pouring out like a river.

A drop of blood dragged down the front of her pupil, dragging down her sight.

It felt like the world had stopped, while she stared, uncomprehending, a familiar feeling of emotionless, disbelieving shock digging into her mind.

Legend shouted something, an unfamiliar noise.

Light flashed across her vision, an explosion followed. She felt two men fly dash around the air in front of her like flies, but did not see them.

She saw nothing but the body in front of her.

She saw nothing but what she imagined her dad's new life would be like, one without her, without the danger she'd expected to follow her.

She imagined that maybe, he would date again.

Maybe he would marry a nice woman, move on from her mother, and finally, accept that Annete was gone.

Maybe in the future, she'd have a sibling, one that would never know her, but one she would watch out for, regardless, in the future.

Maybe she'd watch proudly from the shadows as that kid grew up, graduated, maybe she'd introduce herself one day.

Maybe one day, she could take back what she'd done to him, long after she had put all of this behind her, if such a day ever came.

Unfulfilled daydreams, hopes, nothing more.

There was a series of cabinets within her mind.

She could feel them crack, one by one.

Faces, names, flashed across the back of her eyelids.

Brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, parents.

Among them, Daniel Hebert.

The last person alive who still loved her, her, not a legend, but her, Taylor Hebert, no matter how flawed the man was, no matter how many mistakes he'd made.

She could bring him back, she thought, and switched to Zilean, the Chronokeeper.

She grasped for him, but… there was nothing there to grab onto.

Why? Why? Why wasn't there- this should be working-

She tried again, ignoring the explosions around her, the pillars of ice and light and fire that fought off things she couldn't process.

She had to get his soul. She could bring him back, eventually, if she had his soul.

She switched to Thresh, The Chain Warden, and stepped forward, staring with incomprehension at the void in front of her.

There was no soul to take into her lantern.

Only the fading wisps of a soul that had accepted its fate, and moved on to oblivion.

Zilean couldn't bring back corpses. It was not the same as a person, it could not be reversed into life.

She stared, for another moment, the phantom sensation of her heart clenching itself into a jagged shard of glass filling her mind.

Thresh's scythe slid down from her hand, the chain rattling down with dull clinks.

Could she turn back time?

She switched back to Zilean, and felt her mind expand into the dimentional grid that upheld reality, into the twisting fabric of the world, into the strings of time itself, feeling her mind, her presence, erupt, shatter, twist into the stars, as her body stood still, her mind's eye casting formulas long lost to prehistory.

She grabbed one of time's strings, and tried to halt it, to freeze time.

Her mind screamed, as time slowed, but continued to flow. Agony washed away her very self, for a moment.

Her vision blurred, back into the real world, the connection snapping, slipping out of her fingers.

She couldn't stop time, nevermind reverse it yet.

To try would be to die.

She switched back to Thresh, then Jarvan, then-

Then nobody, just herself, stumbling forward, watching debris and chunks of ice and crumbling porcelain tumble over her feet, feeling shockwaves slam into her like punches, making her dizzy. 

She could bring him back. She had to, there had to be a way.

Yorick-

No, she'd only be bringing back a mindless ghoul. A flesh puppet.

Something, something, there had to be something, without a soul and a body, she could do something-

But there wasn't.

There was nothing she could do.

Her father accepted death too quickly. He didn't even give her a chance to bring him back, to-

Had she not given him enough hope for the future? Was this her-

Of course it was her fault.

All of this was.

She felt sick. Her chest hurt. It hurt to breathe.

What was she even doing here? It was all her-

A warm, humming thought of denial, swept through her mind, a sad, silken tug of a guitar string, a forlorn rumble of comfort from a tsungi horn, a warm hug.

A musical note, tinkling like bells in the wind. 

Tears rushed to her eyes, blurring the mangled corpse in front of her, as it began to sink in, really sink in, that her father was gone.

Not your fault, the thought whispered, not her own. Not your fault. He left knowing you loved him, it continued.

A foreign vision filled her mind, of a small mote of light in an endless plain of darkness, its essence brimming with the presence of her dad, sinking into an abyssal void, like a deep, calming sleep, a true nothingness, a gently falling little star.

Her dad didn't fight for even a moment, to stay.

He was serene, in his last moments.

He thought of her and her mom, in the last echo of thought and memory his soul could muster, and it gleamed with joy for having them, for however little time they were truly with him. He swelled with happy memories, remembering the good times, as oblivion erased him.

The vision passed, and she switched Legends, mindlessly, flickering from one to the next, a warm, phantom hug of starlight wrapping around her as Bard comforted her from pain she simply had not expected, his presence shifting around in her chest like a guardian angel that she did not deserve.

Her father had been ready to die for a long time.

With her having given him closure, a way to move on, he did just that. He moved on, when given the chance.

Just not the way she had expected. Not the way she wanted him to. Not the way she needed him to.

He made his choice, Bard whispered to her with her own thoughts, insisted, and she couldn't help the tiny sob that left her as she crumpled to the floor, on her knees, feeling less like herself, less like a stitched together abomination of a hundred souls and more-

More human than she ever felt comfortable with.

She remembered the good times. The yelling matches he'd get into on her behalf against the school administration, back when she thought the bullying at Winslow could be curbed. The little things, the way he'd overcook the pasta half the time, the way he'd do all she asked when she was little with an indulgent smile, when he would drive her to Emma's house on any whim, at any time of day, the way he'd smile at her mom, the way he would ruffle her hair, the way he would talk to the ice cream truck for her because she was shy... 

Just... the good times.

She knew she might lose him when this started. This endeavor wasn't safe. That was the reason she distanced herself, but it didn't matter one bit in the end, had it?

She still hadn't expected it to hurt so much. To hurt just as much as it had the first ten, the first hundred times she'd lost someone.

A long, quivering breath shuddered into her chest, her shoulders shaking.

It always hurts, Bard's bells tinkled in the back of her mind, a foreign warmth flooding her freezing limbs. And you always push on, he continued, her mind turning his notes into comprehensive thoughts, spoken like a fact of nature, a simple natural law. Like he'd known her for longer than she thought.

A moment that stretched into infinity, of her digesting the new reality she was in, of her accepting her new circumstances, of her gathering her quivering legs underneath her and steadying herself, getting up, straightening, clattering teeth slowly slowing to a grind.

"-or!" A voice screamed, an iceberg cracked, and she switched legends again, ridding the tears in her eyes, taking a deep breath.

She could feel Bard's presence fading, a light tune of farewell playing in the back of her mind.

Thank you, she thought back, as she straightened, as her ears slowly stopped ringing, and her mind focused back to the real world.

When had her eyes closed?

"SNAP OUT OF IT!" Someone screamed, above, in between a cacophony of battle.

Her eyes snapped open, glancing down at her father's corpse for only a moment, then raising her gaze.

Around her, was carnage, enveloping her like a blanket.

A dozen of her capes, and Legend himself for some reason, zipped around each other, blasting back at Eidolon as he tried to snipe her out of her allies.

Scale-like forcefields surrounded her, as easy to see through as glass, and she noted the presence of Lung's forcefield clone, ducking around on the outer side of his construct, trying to stay out of sight of Eidolon.

Just a few feet around her, a thick circular shield wall of ice enveloped most of her, its outer surface splattered with canine-like bodies, covered in scales.

Hopefully none of them were the real duplicator. 

She saw Eidolon yell something at Legend in frustration, teleport to the side, directly in her line of sight, and blast something at her.

A laser caught it, making it explode half-way towards her, the ensuing black hole tearing most of the ice wall around her, and several more Lung duplicates, and crushing them into nothingness, tearing chunks of the floor out near the center.

The barrier walls quivered, trying to stay in place.

She stayed rooted, mana flooding outwards from her feet, an anchor.

The entire battlefield had shifted around them, Cauldron's remaining forces grouped behind Eidolon, her own forces all around her, protecting her, having even used themselves as shields.

Her fists began to quiver as the shock finally began to wear off, and reality settled in.

Eidolon had killed her father, just to try and enrage her enough to fight him.

Eidolon had created the Endbringers.

Eidolon had started this pointless war.

A deep breath, quivering with rising rage. Hatred. 

She hated Eidolon, more than she could have imagined.

He wanted a good fight.

She'd give him his last one.

For her father, for the Case 53's that met their end here, for all her men and clones, for all those who'd fallen to the Endbringers.

She picked Pantheon, The Unbreakable Spear, and steeled her heart.

Notes:

Hey.

So.

It's been 6 months since i last uploaded. Feel free to jump back like 5-6 chapters just to remember what happened, because dear god 6 months is a long time to not update.

However, I have 3 reasons for this delay.

One, this chapter. It's been one of the hardest chapters to write in the entire story, both technically and mentally. Its been rewritten six times. I had to fight through the feeling of "this chapter sucks" every single time, and this is the only iteration of it that feels- not good, just OKAY. Maybe all the criticism is sticking to me, maybe it's just the perfectionism inherent in every artist to some extent, but jesus christ every time I rewrote this chapter I felt like a worse and worse author. Really crushed my spirit and self-esteem tbh.

Two, life. You know how shit is, it tends to get in the way, leave for a while, then return.

Three. General lack of confidence in the story, recently. If I didn't go back to old chapters and read all the nice comments, I might have actually dropped this story. Probably that thing in people's heads that sticks to negativity more than positivity.

I set out to make something of a truly massive scope, and inevitably, that leads up the story not being perfect. There are tons of places and mechanisms and characters, and all those things must play within the canon rules to some extent or people complain that 'it makes no sense' or that 'this character is OOC', and Cauldron in particular, is SO FUCKING HARD to write.

NOBODY can agree on what Cauldron is like. I remember them one way, someone remembers them another. Someone writes Cauldron a certain way, half the comments say it's on character, the others say 'stop making Cauldron stupid' etc. I have never liked writing Cauldron because of that. I don't think most of the fandom likes writing them for that reason.

So if you think Cauldron's decisions make no sense, and they're dumb and I wrote them stupid, okay, fine, leave me alone.

That said, I want to reiterate.

It was all the lovely comments in the previous chapters that made me stop, calm down, and realize that you know what, most people enjoy this story, and it's not rancid dogshit, so I'm going to keep at it.

If you're ever wondering why authors ask for comments so much, this is one of the reasons. It forces you to get out of your head and read what people are saying and realize hey, your story is liked. It's not a plothole ridden, logic-defying turd bucket. No reason to delete everything and vanish off the face of the earth.

So, thank you for those lovely comments, everyone. It's what literally kept this story going as I was at my absolute fucking wit's end on the fifth rewrite and wondering to myself 'is this even worth continuing?" You saved the fic, fellas.

Somewhat related: Voice your criticism if you have any, respectfully. I'm no longer taking shit from people who can't seem to understand that this is free content I make just to entertain people for no personal gain. If you're rude and disrespectful about voicing your issues with the story, I'm blocking you from commenting on anything of mine ever again.

As for chapter specific notes: God above, I hope I didn't fucking butcher Cauldron too much with all the turn-coating happening, but I've been trying to set up breadcrumbs for this happening for ages, and it's only when I got to this chapter that I realized that said breadcrumbs are too fucking scarce and might make these 'betrayals' feel out of nowhere. Which. After 400k words of setup.

Would absolutely make me consider bashing my skull into a rock.

They're not out of nowhere, but I'm worried it'll feel that way. Let me know how that went.

Since I first wrote the start of this story, I was intending for this fight to go this direction, hense taylor making her father 'move on', and having multiple short segments of Cauldron division inserted around, but... they could just be read at surface level and nobody would notice much, I realized.

Regardless, I have a love-hate relationship with this chapter because it's tortured me for months, and I cannot fucking WAIT to be done with writing heaps of Cauldron. God I hate writing these fuckers even if I like their characters. Fanon infection might have to do with that though.

 grammar issues cuz i do not have a beta reader and i never will