TYRIA'S REAL!?
Summary: A chapter to recover in, to digest chapter ten eleven with.
Chapter twelve: Destiny's Edge
Author's Notes:
The title says it all, guys! Yes this chapter was so fun to write, and I hope I kept it all in character. (I serisouly doubt I did, though.)
My brother keeps mispronouncing 'Ayla', so here's a pronunciation guide: 'Aay-la' (not 'eye-la')
And I got over 200 views! Yay!
Okay, here's the story now:
"Tiffany! Fiona!" Ayla shouts. "I perfected my Whatever!"
"Your what, now?" Fiona asks, poking her head in the door with a puzzled expression on her face.
"My Whatever!"
"Tiffffffany! Ayla made something she calls a 'Whatever!' Any ideas on what it could be?"
"A... Whatever?"
Passing by, and not hearing much except 'whatever,' 'whatever' 'whatever', Petra's eyes widen and she dashes downstairs to find Andrew.
"Dad! They're doing whatever again!"
"They what? That 'everybody gets whatever'd' was my best idea! To make them stop! But they still went to all those cities and did it anyway, just like they said they would..."
"Even the part about the dragons, yep."
"Yeah, that was embarrassing. Especially that last one - 'Primordus, you hatchling, I'm not gonna kill you, I'm gonna curse you! Whatever!' at least they did kill him..."
"Honoring Deborah's memory, yep. Though why they chose that to remember her with, I don't know..." Petra sighs.
Back in the workroom, Ayla is still trying to make Tiffany and Fiona understand.
"It's a Whatever." she says exasperatedly. She gets blank looks. "You're both whatevers," she says flatly.
"OH!" Tiffany says, a lightbulb goes off in her head. "The curse!"
"You named an invention Whatever?" Fiona demands. "Deborah would have loved that," she sighs.
"That's why I named it that. We'll call it a Whatever, but to everyone else it'll be known as the Blaster."
"What's it do?"
"It shoots red bolts of energy at people. It burns. See?" she fires the invention at the wall, and a thin, red line of light about a foot long shoots from the tip of the invention, and a charred, burnt indent appears in the wall, smoking. "It's more powerful than I thought it'd be," Ayla says, peering down the barrel of what looks like a small handgun.
"Ayla, careful. Don't want to shoot yourself," Tiffany cautions.
"Inafit... ekil Rats Seraow? Retsalb?" Fiona mutters to Tiffany.
"Rats... stath look." Tiffany mumbles back.
"So, it shoots ley-line energy?" Fiona asks. "What would it do to a person?"
"Well, if you could hold the bolt of energy, you could probably slice someone's arm off with it. And it would cauterize the wound."
"Rebastihl, Anoif," Tiffany whispers. "Esh sah..."
"I wonk, won eb taique." Fiona growls under her breath.
"Want to go and thaw out the Shiverpeaks?" Tiffany jokes.
"Oh, you'd need a bazillion of these to thaw them. They're cold."
"If there were any Elder Dragons left, it'd probably kill them," Fiona offers.
"But there aren't," Tiffany points out.
"Yeah, well, we could find Trahearne, and get her to resurrect Kralkatorrik, and we could kill him over again, for vengeance." Fiona says, her expression darkening.
"Kralk's been dead for like seven years, even Trahearne couldn't raise him." Tiffany rolls her eyes.
"Yeah, and certainly not anyone else we might know who happened to die in that time frame..." Fiona grumbles.
"Kralkatorrik likes taking friends with him. First it was Snaff, back in 1320, and then, in 1332... well..."
The girls were quiet for a moment.
"Look what I learned!" Mat cries, running in. He is covered in flames. "I finally built up my immunity to fire!"
"That's cool, Mat! What about the area around you?"
"I just maintain a puddle of water under my feet. It's easy. Or I fly."
"Are you immune to drowning yet?" Fiona asks dryly. "What? If he can be immune to fire, he can be immune to water, too."
"And, following that logic, he has to be 'immune' to air, as well." Tiffany says flatly.
"Wish I was immune to Eir," Mat grumbles. "She keeps picking me up and throwing me over her shoulder, before tossing me in Garm's pen and forcing me to defend myself. I tried to fly out with air, but she's got this barrier. So I had to find a way to escape without killing Garm, but I don't have any shields so Garm was all over me and stuff - I can't defend myself from that, not without killing him! And - "
Tiffany and Fiona burst out laughing. Tiffany is rolling on the floor, laughing her head off. Fiona is smirking and grinning.
"Eir, Garm, the pen, and the barrier were all illusions," Ayla tells Mat absentmindedly.
Mat stares at Fiona in openmouthed horror. "You did what?"
"Yep," Fiona says, nodding smugly. "Mmmhmm. And then I went and told the real Eir all about it."
"WHAT?" Mat shrieks. The flames covering his body are replaced by flowing torrents of water, and a jet of water flies out of his outstretched hand, dousing Fiona.
"Watch it, Mat!" Ayla shrieks. "This is my workroom, and you're going to short-circuit everything! At least use some other element!"
"You'll just recreate it again," Mat says grumpily.
"Not this!" Ayla says angrily, waving her Whatever in his face. "This is the only working prototype I have of the Whatever Blaster!"
"Whatever Blaster?" Mat says in confusion.
Ayla fires the blaster out the window. It burns through the glass and the bolt of energy sails out into the atmosphere, dissipating against the clouds. She fires it at the wall, and another blackened, smoking crater appears.
Mat stumbles back in awe. "You made that?"
"Who else, these two?" she asks, gesturing to Tiffany, who is just recoving from her laughing fit.
"It's not like I could ever make something like that," Trahearne says, leaning against the doorway. "That thing blasted those holes?"
"Yep," Ayla beams.
"I think we coulda killed dragons with it, if any were still around. Woulda saved some people if we'd had this then.
"No need to mention that, everyone knows it," Zojja says grumpily.
"How about we just find that dragon's body and zap it full of holes? Might work," Braham says.
"It could... and we can go blast all the dragons." Tiffany says. "That would be unsettlingly satisfying."
"Yep. Now tell me, what's Rytlock been up to these days? I haven't seen him in a while," Mat asks.
"You would ask," Ayla says, closely inspecting her blaster with a magnifying lense. "He's like, your role model or something."
"Really, Ayla?" Mat sighs.
"Actually, Rytlock's been dealing with another uprising of ghosts in northern Ascalon recently." Caithe says, unstealthing.
"I thought we dealt with those?" Fiona says in surprise.
"Apparently you can't kill a ghost. It just keeps coming back," Caithe sighs. "You'd have to put it to rest somehow."
"And no one knows how," Rox interjects. "We've tried so many things, but they do just keep coming back. They don't come back where you killed them, though - it's like they have some underground anchor or something, they sprout up from caverns generally."
"That's not good," Tiffany says, frowning.
"Of course it's not good," Canach says. "Nothing about ghosts is ever good."
"Not necessarily bad, though," Marjory says. "If killing them worked, they'd just dissolve, most likely. Their spirits would no longer roam the living world, but they'd still be restless and never get to... wherever resting spirits go."
"Well that's not good," Kasmeer says. "Think an illusion of, like, no charr left in Ascalon would do it?"
"If the illusion was lifted too soon, it'd probably fail," Fiona says. "And none of us are powerful enough for that."
"Yeah. Too bad they never talk or give you a chance to talk to them." Mat sighs. "Oh!" he says, brightening up. "I got my fire immunity completed! Check it!" he engulfs his body in flames, rising a few inches into the air so as not to light the floor on fire.
"Now see, that would have been useful against Primordus," Eir says. "I don't suppose it works on other people?"
"Naw," Mat says. "You need to have an affinity to the element before you can begin working up an immunity."
"We wouldn't have been able to curse him if Mat'd been able to do that - or been old enough to help," Tiffany tells them.
"Curse... oh, not this again," Logan says in despair.
"So, Tiff. Ever think about home much?" Fiona asks.
"Oh, all the time. It's been a while since anyone visited."
"Well, we're here now," says Phillipe, him and the rest of the family materializing in the hallway.
"Yes!" Tiffany says happily. "It's been so long!"
"Got any better at drawing maps?" Falcon asks.
"Oh, yes. I can draw Rata Novus - Rata Novus - with just a vocal description."
"That is improvement! You ready, then?"
"Oh, yeah. Certainly." Tiffany nods enthusiastically. "It'll be so cool to have a map of Earth, I don't remember my geography any - "
"Well it's been fifteen years, no one blames you," Joslyn inserts.
"Yeah, it's still kind of weird to think it's 1340. I mean really! We came here in, what was it, about 1325?"
"Yeah, that's right," Fiona nods. "Remember, the personal story of... it was something wars, wasn't it?"
"Guild Wars 2," Falcon rolls his eyes. "Honestly, you're so forgetful sometimes."
"Only of things that don't matter. Remember, before we came here, I was all moany about how Trahearne had died?"
"Oh, yeah. That was when we fought... Mordremoth, right?"
"Yeah, the plant monster. The mind monster. Whatever you want to call it monster." Tiffany says, flapping her hand.
"Mat's flames would've been useful."
"Mat was like, nine." Tiffany says flatly. "Just because he's almost twenty now - wait, Mat is almost twenty?"
The two girls stare at each other.
"That means Nate is almost twenty."
"We told you that," Harrison says in confusion.
"Yeah, but it didn't sink in. It's like back when I was thirteen, and I was like 'wait wait wait wait - I'm gonna be fourteen in a few months? Whaaat? I know it's happening, but it's just so unbelievable!"
"I know. Well, let's get that map drawn! What's the scale?"
"We're just doing the places we knew. You remember them best. The scale... well, you tell me what the scale should be for this size paper," Tiffany tells Phillipe, pulling out a gigantic sheet of paper.
"Okay. First, you need to draw the border of LA about..."
"That was tiring," Tiffany says, wiping her forehead. The map she'd drawn painstakingly over the last couple hours hangs on the wall, completed. It shows her home neighborhood in extreme care and detail, with notes saying what was new since she'd last seen it. "You're good at descrbing maps, Dad."
"I had to practice for forever," Phillipe says dramatically.
"Dad. You don't say forever."
"No, it was don't say always. Remember, we'd say 'he's always doing X,' and Dad would say 'no, he's not always doing X, only sometimes. You're not even always breathing. Or alive.'"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Am I late?" Tangwen asks.
"By several hours," Fiona tells her. "If you wanted to watch the painstakingly boring process of mapmaking, which, I assure you, you don't really care about. But if you wanted to talk to us after the map was done, then you're right on time."
"Great. So, what's been invented recently by the A-girl?"
"She made a Star Wars blaster." Tiffany tells her.
"That is so cool, I need to see that," Tangwen declares. "From the originals?"
"Yep." Tiffany tells her, before getting a confused look. "You mean they got a new type of blaster for the newer ones?"
"Sadly," Tangwen tells them. "I liked the old blasters."
"Ayla!" Fiona yells. "Come show Tangwen your Whatever Blaster!"
"She calls it a Whatever Blaster?" Tangwen says, raising an eyebrow.
"Yepp..." Tiffany says happily. "Fi, cover the map with an illusion, don't want Ayla asking about it."
The wall ripples and the map disappears as Alya comes in.
She aims at the wall ( not the one with the map) and fires. The smoking crater left behind leaves the Tassof family in shock.
"That is one powerful blaster," Tangwen says in surprise, darting a wide-eyed look at Tiffany and Fiona. "How do you fix the holes?"
"Ya don't," Ayla says flippantly. "It's ley-line energy, you'd have to replace the beam or somthing."
"Wow."
"And Mat got his fire immunity working," Tiffany says, snapping her fingers. "I knew there was something I'd forgotten. Go get him, Ayla?"
"I don't have to," Ayla says, reaching into a pocket. "Mat, Tiffany requests you in her room," she says into the little, black box she holds in her hand. Her voice echoes all over the house, causing the Tassof's to wince.
Tiffany looks at the box in awe. "You made a voice-transmitter that works in multiple places at once! Like a group radio!"
"Yep," Ayla says, bouncing the box in her hand, like Fiona so frequently did with her energy orbs.
Mat comes in, rubbing his ear. "You didn't have to put one of those in my meditation corner, Ayla," he snarls.
"Ouch," Fiona winces.
"It's a crisp now, anyway," Mat says cheerfully. "So, what'd you want me for?"
"These people want to see your fire immunity."
Mat grins and lifts off the ground a few inches, before bursting into flame. "Look what else I can do," he says. Multiple orbs of water appear in ever more complex rings around him, and his hands are encased in earth. "All the elements at once!" he says, gritting his teeth.
A laser blast rips through one of Mat's water orbs, but gets absorbed into the water. Mat blinks. "Hey, it gave me it's energy!"
"Water is very energy-conductive," Phillipe says, nodding.
An illusion of a power line drooping through a puddle of water, and sparking with electricity, appears on one wall.
Ayla kept shooting Mat's water orbs.
"You know, if we ever get in a serious fight, I'll just maintain a water orb for Ayla to feed ley-line energy into, and I won't tire out," Mat tells them.
"Good idea," Tiffany nods. "Especially if the enemy does this," she shoots a special arrow into the water orb and disappears. "Gotcha," she sings out, putting Mat in a chokehold briefly, before releasing him.
"Right, well I have to go," Tangwen tells them. "See you later, guys!" she waypoints to Shaemoor and logs out.
"Same here," Phillipe says. "We have places to be."
"Seeya!" Tiffany says as they all waypoint.
"Well, I've got to improve my communication system," Ayla says, picking up her blaster and leaving the room.
Mat's elements disappear and he lands lightly on the floor. "Feeling surprisingly refreshed, for all that. Good energy, those ley-lines have." he says, nodding. "I'm gonna go meditate."
After Mat leaves the room, Fiona's illusion on the map fades, and she and Tiffany spend the rest of the afternoon remembering different events that had occurred in their neighborhood.
"Remember when we'd go on walks with Granny?" Fiona asks, tracing the street their house is situated on.
"I kinda do... Yeah, I suppose I do!" Tiffany says, brightening up. "I remember the first time I brought my bike along, and there were a couple extra rules 'cause I was the only one with a bike."
"Yeah, you always 'suppose' things. Ha! You even 'supposed' that Mordremoth could knock the Pact's airships out of the air," Fiona says dryly.
"Really?"
"No, not really. You made entirely certain that certain things wouldn't happen, and saying 'I suppose' wouldn't do that," Fiona says rolling her eyes.
"What the - " Tiffany stops, staring at the map. "No way. Fiona, it - it - it!" her voice gets higher and higher. "Fiona!"
"Tiffany, wha - " Fiona turns to look at the map. Her mouth drops open. "Tiff... you suppose...?"
"No, I do not suppose!" Tiffany says, barely above a whisper. "According to past experiences, we should be arriving - excluding any other stuff - in about half a minute."
"What'll Destiny's Edge think?" Fiona asks. Destiny's Edge had expanded to almost everybody, even Mat and Ayla.
"I don't know. But... it... Fi, it won't matter!" Tiffany says, her voice rising. "We won't be here, and it's only real for us! And them! What'll - will all out time just be erased?"
"I hope not!" Fiona replies, her voice rising in panic. "Will we be able to get back?"
"I hope so. Like world-hopping," Tiffany says. "At least we'll be able to see the family in person..." she shields her eyes. "If I had to choose... I don't know!" she says. "But the choice isn't ours, anymore."
Both girls face directly into almost-too-strong light coming from the map of home. The colors around them swirl, and they are once again in the room of nothingness where they had made the ranger and mesmer that had been with them for the last fifteen years. The only thing that is missing is the character creation control panel. They are in darkness, with the only light being a pale, directionless light that emits from the floor in a small radius around the two girls.
Tiffany glances at her side, startled at the absence of Beorn and their mental link. The familiar weight on her back of her bow is missing, and her knives no longer weigh her sleeves down.
Fiona puts both hands to her head in startled realization that the familiar presence of her illusions - that slept in her head while she wasn't using them - is gone. Her staff has vanished from its place on her back, and some of her minor, constant illusions vanish.
"Beorn! Gwahir! Shelob!" Tiffany is calling frantically, but none of her loyal pets answer her calls. She can't even sense their stealthed forms nearby.
Fiona desperately tries to conjure an image of herself. It doesn't work. The familar weight of a small, silver ring that fuels her energy and regenerates her wounds is gone. So are several of her other signets that she had grown used to over the years.
"We heal as one," Tiffany whimpers, hoping to fix something - her broken mental connection, her pets that are broken, anything.
The place where, previously, the character creation menu had been the last time this had happened, now contains another map - this one of Tyria, and backwards. Kryta is on the right-hand side, with Ascalon and the Brand on the right.
For the first few minutes, it seems far away from them, but now it is growing in size. At the last moment, Tiffany realizes they are rushing through nothingness towards the map.
As the map and the two girls collide, they don't. They go through it, and a swirl of colors implode on the girls vision. The map - or them, whoever it was that was moving - has stopped, and it is no longer backwards, because they are on the right side of it.
Fiona gasps for breath as if she had just been underwater for a touch longer than felt comfortable. She blinks and looks around. It's the living room at home, only slightly different from the last time they had seen it.
"They're gone," Tiffany whimpers, referring to her pets. She hasn't seen the room.
"Tiff, we're home." Fiona whispers in awe.
"We're - " Tiffany looks up. "We are." she breathes. "We're home. Fiona..."
"We're home," Fiona repeats, it just starting to sink in. "We're home!" she shouts.
Both girls grab each other's hands and dance around the room. "We're home, home, home!" they shout in glee.
Tiffany hears a thump down the hallway, and spins into a ready position, before remembering she's home.
Doors slam open all down the hall, and it seems like a stampede. Six people stop by the hallway, staring.
"MOM!" Falcon shrieks, tearing outside to look for her. "MOM! TIFFANY AND FIONA ARE HOME!"
Joslyn comes barreling inside. "You're home!" she says joyfully.
"How did it happen?" Phillipe says from his chair by the desk.
"The map we drew," Tiffany said happily. "It activated."
"Maps = universe travel, then, I suppose," Laura says.
Tiffany spins around. "Laura! You're... all grown up!"
"Yes, I am." Laura says. "I have been visiting you like everyone else, you know."
"It's different, seeing you in real life, you know," Fiona says flatly.
"How can I have missed my little Lori growing up!" Tiffany says in despair. "She was essentially my little baby before I left."
Tangwen, having heard Falcon's screech for Joslyn outside, zips in through the door.
"Tiffany! Fiona! You're back!" she cries, stopping short.
"Yes, we are! It's so... different. Please tell me you got the burn pile done, Dad?" she says.
"Well of course! I wouldn't leave that gigantic pile of wood there in our front yard for fifteen years!"
"I know, just making sure," Tiffany warns.
"That's what you're making sure of?" Tangwen asks incredulously.
"Well, I know it's going to look weird, I was just preparing myself. And are you absolutely sure you didn't mess with my coin, Dad?"
"Of course not," Phillipe says. "I would never. It's 2033, BTC has so boomed. It's worth millions."
"Millions, wow. And - wait, it's 2033? That's just weird. I'm used to it being the thirteen-hundreds, it's like we jumped forward seven hundred years."
"Techonology-wise, we have," Fiona tells her."Computers and cellphones and stuff."
"Computers and... oh. We haven't used those in ages, tech has advanced quite a bit."
Oh, that is so cool, and - whoa!" Tiffany jumps out of her skin. "It's a baby! You had another one!" Tiffany says happily, scooping up the little girl. "What's her name, Dad?"
"Haven." Joslyn says.
"Aww, it's a widdle widdle girl-lay-lel!" Tiffany says, tickling the baby. "It's widdle widdle girlie! Oh my Haven!"
"That doesn't sound nearly as good as 'Oh my Lori!'" Fiona tells her.
"Yeah, that's because it doesn't rhyme," Tiffany tells her. "Still a cutie cutie baby, a cutie cutie baby,"
"I thought you said you weren't having anymore?"
"Well, we debated for thirteen years, but then we decided we needed some little ones. Because God wanted us to have more," Joslyn tells her. "So we had more."
"Well, that's good. Will you have any more?"
"Probably. We've got a good eight children now to help take care of them."
Tiffany beams at her mother. "Of course."
THE END OF: TYRIA'S REAL!?
Author's Notes:
I know, I know, a big surprise... but hey! The story continues in the next chapter. Do not disappoint me by leaving no reviews on this one, and don't disappoint me even further by not reading the next chapter. Got it?
Oh, and here's the translations:
"Ayla, careful. Don't want to shoot yourself," Tiffany cautions.
"Tiffany... like Star Wars? Blasters?" Fiona mutters to Tiffany.
"Star... that's cool." Tiffany mumbles back.
"So, it shoots ley-line energy?" Fiona asks. "What would it do to a person?"
"Well, if you could hold the bolt of energy, you could probably slice someone's arm off with it. And it would cauterize the wound."
"Lightsabers, Fiona." Tiffany whispers. "She has..."
"I know, now be quiet," Fiona growls under her breath.
"Want to go and thaw out the Shiverpeaks?" Tiffany jokes.