267 Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven – Tyrant and Emperor (1/2)
They were separated by literally thousands of miles, and yet their eyes met instantly. The ancient reptile who'd just received a +4 Intellect boost and full Ranks in Diplomacy and Sense Motive for his Kaiju hit dice, and the primeval ape who'd just received the same, looked at one another in astonishment, never having seen one another anything resembling this way before.
Naturally they knew one another, rivals as old as they were. Tyrant Fuego was older by far, and had more Hit Dice, meaning his overall spiritual force was higher. But Emperor Mono was definitely smarter and wiser, showing more depth, and had a deeper understanding of primal forces, other than fire.
That said, they both could tell the other didn't want to fight, they were not intruding on one another's territories, the same event had woken both of them, there was no reason to tussle, and they both had relative strengths the other did not.
Really, they were both kind of astonished they understood the other so well. A breath or two later there were surges of questions arising that they'd never bother to ask under anything resembling the past, sensory impressions exchanged of what was coming, they worked out where the other one was almost instantly, compared their impressions of the events, and what was going to happen.
And then they both Looked At Me.
The Door between them and I peeled back, and I was brought right into their /room, simply by raw willpower. Expected, but still disconcerting.
-You're in a Reality Shard, and the Land is coming in to reclaim it,- I /explained, and then Barus was brought in, both of us hot, hard white lights whose thoughts were far less powerful, but far quicker and more agile, to an almost dizzying extent compared to these two ageless behemoths... me naturally outshining Barus, but him showing that point of Exemplar Lite which got their attention for a transcendent bloodline.
His Commune with Nature went off, and these two Kaiju finally got to be aware of something sooooo much bigger than they were.
That awareness of pain, of the distortion in Reality that warped time and space, was made abundantly clear. The Land was finally able to expand into this area, reclaim it, heal the wound that was gaping open. It didn't get all of it, but part of it, at least.
Everything that they could look or see, that whole great wall of light? That was all a tiny little bit of pain being eased by The Land. All that power they wielded, the magic that they could sense and empowered them? It was so small on the macro scale that the Land scarcely cared, and yet so high on the micro that a being whose awareness was so profound could not help but be proudly aware of them.
They were less than gnats walking on the skin of the Land.
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Any ire they had vanished under that incredible awareness, tied directly into the source of all their might. They could recognize the Land; how could they not, having accumulated so much power, such insights, over so many years? But now, they recognized the power was not just power, it was something alive... and it knew and recognized them, favored little children the Land had nurtured through the eons.
There were spiritual rumblings like earthquakes all around me as minds accustomed to just moving on magnificent instincts were suddenly Enlightened. The Druidic power and knowledge that Barus held, the entirety of his enhanced understanding and feeling of Nature, was opened to them, and it rippled across their minds like crashing tsunami.
Elder Arg came in, his monkey brothers; every Caster, one by one; the Ironblooded; Kings and generals, opening up to those two massive presences, the Map sprawling open around them, the awareness of time and place and gods and magic and life, and the large, large world around them which they now understood far more deeply than they had before.
Reality came, and swept over them.
The mountain beneath Fuego's feet eroded and died. Those monkeys who couldn't reach Mono wavered, and vanished into ages reclaimed, millennia stolen now returned. We all watched the great jungle that was their home fall into ash, less than ash, taken and stolen away with all its creatures, leaving only the thousands of apes and monkeys atop and hanging from the body of the Emperor, who simply exerted his will and returned what needed to be returned, and kept what was equitable behind, aided by the vague wavering of the great Formation Elder Arg had raised around his ancestor.
The Wall of Light swept past on its four-hundred second journey, Mono's head turning, Fuego seeing what was coming, understanding as the vastness of the horizon was suddenly a very small area, less than half a mile across. The Fire Tyrant looked up at the sky, understanding without comprehending the signs and patterns and fracturing of the wave coming towards him, and awaited it calmly, absolutely sure it could do him no harm.
It washed over and past, and he held onto his Time, as the Land didn't care, and his will was strong enough to make it so.
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He lifted his foot, a taloned locomotive which was literally an arm's-length away from me now, and put it down a hundred feet away, turning as he did over top of me, turning to see the light advancing still as the ground jumped, his tail swaying slowly.
Less than a quarter-mile away, spitting distance for creatures like them, Emperor Mono, still adorned in monkeys, grunted once. With only a few screeches and grunts, the monkeys and apes got off him as fast as they could, streaming off him even faster than they had arrived. He turned his great golden head to watch the light sweep down the Shardzone, and Reality collapse back to what it had always been supposed to be behind it.
Ape and dinosaur eyed the Slow Zones to either side; I explained what they were with only the brush of a question, they comprehended, it was done.
Neither made a sign of aggression towards the other. Neither of them wanted to stay here, there was no territorial aggression, no status to affirm, no hunger. They could fight... but why? For now, there was no reason.
Briggs and I astutely began to withdraw from the area, not wanting to be stepped on by talons longer than a giant's pike. It wasn't all that far to the way out, and pretty much everyone else was withdrawing, too.
There were other survivors, of course: Evilborn and undead, mostly, some Aberrations who could endure the retracted time. Barus just turned his thoughts to those, his Communing with Nature, and the instant revulsion and unnaturalness of them hissed through the mental space like a swirl of foul shit.
Two pairs of great eyes turned from something big, down upon those things that were very small. A lot of eyeballs got very, very small, very quickly.
-Emperor Mono, touch your nose,- I /informed him. -Tyrant Fuego, second Rune on your Horn.-
Huge paws came up to touch a great snout, the Marks and the Patterns locked to them transferred to his palms. He looked at them, and the active Mark, while Fuego's burning eyes locked onto the intriguing glowing Patterns on his nose horn.