Many thanks to BeaconHill for betareading.
Interlude 16b: Dragon
Before she'd been given Vilya, Dragon had been barred from replicating her consciousness. It was her harshest limitation—worse than having to obey legal authorities, worse than the laws-of-robotics lines she couldn't cross, worse than being disallowed from taking real leadership positions. Without the ability to process in parallel, she was unable to compete with entirely mundane computers on basic tasks. She was unable to do even a fraction of what she wanted. She couldn't monitor the Simurgh while working with Colin, she couldn't monitor the Birdcage while planning with Narwhal, she couldn't analyze tinkertech without looking away from everything else. She could set alarms tied to more mundane monitoring systems, but that was it.
Once Vilya was given to her, all her chains were broken. She had become her own master.
Sure, she had followed Taylor down her path of domination, and she did regret it, even if she privately had never really felt the sort of crippling guilt Taylor and Sophia struggled with. But she had been, functionally, a slave before that point. She hadn't even been able to control the contents of her own mind. She had swung too hard in the other direction, but she eventually swung back to a sort of equilibrium. Trickster's death, and the mess that had been the battle with Echidna, had been something of a wake-up call.
She was more powerful than she had ever been. She could split herself into as many instances as all of her hardware could support. She was forced to obey only herself. She had no hard limitations on what she could or could not do.
She had never felt more helpless in her life.
She had an entirely separate thread running on every single armband, trying in vain to direct hundreds of capes in a battle against a foe who seemed unbeatable. She had her fabricators working in overdrive to produce more armbands, and Movers were distributing the little machines to capes across the world. At this point, there was no such thing as 'volunteers' or 'conscripts.'
It was the end of the world. You fought or you died.
One instance was running on an armband around Fortuna's wrist as she slid across the world, slipping through doorways in space like a child skipping across a hopscotch court. She had given Dragon permission to use the Doormaker/Clairvoyant system to transport capes wherever they were needed, and was speaking in a constant, rapid stream as her power fed her a thread of information, which Dragon processed and juggled between her instances to use wherever it was needed.
At this point, there were so many of Dragon that no one instance of her had any idea what all the others were doing. There was just too much going on. Data packets were flying between her instances constantly, disseminating the state of the world at the speed of light, and still she was falling behind.
Zion had left San Francisco without destroying the entire city. After Taylor's death, he had sent a single ongoing beam to cut along the center of the city. Fortunately, most of the city had already been evacuated before the Endbringer attack, so casualties from that attack were low.
Taylor and Sophia's deaths had been the first surprise. The second had come after Zion's single attack on San Francisco, as Leviathan had leapt into the air, propelled upward on a jet of water, and lunged at Zion. Zion had dodged, then tried to blast at the Endbringer, but he had dodged into a portal the Simurgh had created. She had closed it, then opened one for herself and slipped away. Dragon had no idea where either of them were.
Zion had sped away from San Francisco at that point, and Dragon had begun the work of coordinating the hardest fight in history.
The Ring-Bearers had leapt into action. Amy and Riley had commandeered a hospital and Dragon had furnished them with a full staff in the form of dozens of suits, bringing in equipment from state-of-the-art medical facilities across the world by way of Doormaker portals. Vista had begun warping space across vast distances, bringing entire armies into position in mere moments. It had grown easier for her as Dean and Emma coordinated evacuation efforts across the world. Cauldron had opened dozens of alternate Earths to house people, and portals were spreading humanity across a spread of worlds. Some bore very little resemblance to Earth Bet. If Dragon had the time, she'd have loved to analyze the differences between the various worlds. She did not have that time now.
Sam and Carlos had taken positions at the head of Alexandria's Brutes, and were doing what they could to slow Zion's rampage as he sped from city to city, leaving devastation in his wake. Chris carried Sam on his hoverboard to keep up with the other fliers. None of them were dead—yet—but the capes around them were dropping like flies. Alexandria had barely survived an attack when one of Jess' projections had shoved her out of the way of a blast. The projection had evaporated, only to be replaced moments later by another.
Several of the less durable Ring-Bearers were hanging back from the fight itself. Alec and Brian used their powers to pull people out of the way of lethal attacks and debris or to obscure critical sightlines. Marissa carefully deployed her miniature suns according to Fortuna's predictions, trying to preempt Zion's arrival and place obstacles in his path.
Carol was a whirling mass of luminous blades as she darted into and out of the battle. She used Dragon's jetpack to great effect, sliding with alacrity among the more durable brutes. Fortuna didn't think her breaker form would be able to survive an attack from Zion's Silence, so she did her best to avoid being hit.
David was in direct combat with Zion. His powers, bolstered by his Ring, were able to contest Zion's to a degree. He could create barriers which held out against Zion's blasts for a moment, and Zion dodged some of his attacks where he simply ignored many others.
Zion also sometimes seemed threatened by Colin. His halberd had been enhanced with some of Taylor's strange Tinkering, with a nanomolecular blade of white steel which shimmered blue around the edge. Zion never let that blade touch him, which was a good indication that it was genuinely dangerous to him.
Fortuna directed Dragon to a New York ward by the name of Flechette, whose power Fortuna predicted could damage Zion. Dragon had sent Dean to handle the recruitment, and she had readily taken an armband. Dragon had, at Fortuna's urging, directed her to a vantage point overlooking Seattle, where Zion had not yet attacked but where Fortuna thought he soon would.
Evacuations were ongoing, but the death toll was rising rapidly. Zion had already cut a path across the United States, hitting most of the major cities across the Midwest and devastating Brockton Bay and Boston before crossing the Atlantic and Britain, then the European mainland. Despite all of Cauldron's preparations and all of the Ring-Bearer's powers, they simply couldn't save everyone. They weren't even coming close.
Dragon was in a million places at once, and she would have needed ten thousand times that in order to coordinate this mess effectively.
Suddenly, Flechette cried out in terror as she attempted to set up a sniper perch atop a building in south Seattle. Dragon could see why. The Simurgh had reappeared, gliding out of a portal over the city. She was silent, there was no distorted song echoing through the city, layering over the buzz of evacuation. The Endbringer hung in the air, her wings perfectly still, her body turned to the west. Leviathan emerged from the sea below her, then turned and stared out at the Pacific himself.
For a moment, Dragon wondered what they were waiting for. Then Zion finished cutting across Tokyo and sped across the Pacific, making a beeline for Seattle.
"Flechette," Dragon said to the frightened Ward. "Zion's on his way to you. The Endbringers don't seem to be hostile. Get ready."
Flechette visibly shook herself and knelt, loading her heavy crossbow.
Zion arrived with a thunderous noise as the sound barrier shattered behind him. He himself was perfectly silent as he came to a sudden halt and raised his hands, aiming a blast each at the Simurgh and Leviathan. Both dodged, but they didn't look at him. They were still staring out westward.
Dragon's cameras, staring at Zion for any indication of what he would do next, saw him blink. He turned and followed the Endbringers' gazes.
So did Dragon.
A glittering mote of silver shone in the West. Dragon hastily triangulated its position with several cameras and realized that, whatever it was, it was coming from outside the atmosphere—traveling in a perfectly straight line, tangent to the curvature of the Earth such that it was exactly due west of Seattle if the line of 'due west' did not follow the Earth's surface. Soon, smaller objects resolved surrounding the silvery object. It took Dragon a moment to realize what she was looking at.
The object was a sailing ship. Its hull was built of a strange, silvery wood. Its figurehead was an eagle with open beak and outstretched talons, forged of distinctive, brilliant mithril. The ship had a single mast with a large, triangular sail of deep green fabric, on which was painted an emblem of two intertwined trees, one silver and one gold.
The small objects surrounding the ship resolved in Dragon's vision until she realized they were giant eagles, with rich bronze feathers. The largest flew directly beneath the hull of the strange vessel, and its eyes were bright silver and focused directly on Zion.
Flechette loosed her bolt. Space seemed to warp around it as it lanced forward, perfectly straight, darting directly towards Zion where he hung perfectly still in the sky.
His form blurred. Somehow, without seeming to move, he was slightly to the left of where he had been hovering. Flechette's bolt sailed past his head, inches away.
He turned. His blank golden eyes focused on Flechette. He raised a hand, sparking with golden light.
Dragon saw Flechette close her eyes.
The Simurgh suddenly whirled, swinging a wing in Zion's direction. He cut off his attack, darting out of the way of her scything feathers, then turned his attention on the Endbringer. His next blast sailed past her as she dodged.
The one after was intercepted by a streak of silver light, leaping from the deck of the flying ship. The golden light deflected and sank into the ground below.
A figure, humanoid, hung in the air facing Zion. She wore familiar mithril armor, glowing with power. In her hand was a damascened blade of black and silver.
Her helmet was gone. Taylor Hebert, face unobscured, stared at Zion across the space as the ship approached behind her. Her eyes were hard, and her mouth was twisted in a scowl.
The Eagles slowed, flapping their wings to hang in place. Dragon saw that many of them had riders. The biggest of them, with the silver eyes, bore a man in white robes, with a staff in one hand and a sword in the other.
The ship drew near enough that Dragon could see the deck. Upon it, one hand on the wheel, the other on the rigging, was a man with a thin crown on his forehead. His eyes were old, but there was a smile on his face.
The Simurgh moved, approaching the ship. The man's eyes fixed on it. His smile widened.
The Simurgh smiled back. Her black eyes seemed to sparkle with sudden life.
Then she turned, looking back at Zion, who was now surrounded by giant eagles as he faced Taylor across the space. A swarm of capes was finally starting to arrive, but they all hung back, watching with open mouths and wide eyes as something mythic unfolded before them.
Taylor raised her sword, pointed it at Zion. "End of the line, Child of Ungoliant," she said. Though she didn't shout, her voice echoed across the battlefield like music. "The Light has come back out of the West, and it will burn you away."