The alterations that Odin has made… propagate.


FYI, I'm not using Glaistig Uaine's names for all of the shards for the purposes of this fic. Also, fried meme dinner that I am not treating canon as gospel, since this is very AU just from the fact that gods exist and also Scion and Eden have only gone through the cycle ~12 times before Earth, so if you want to complain about that… well, I warned you.

Also, this is heavily inspired by Billymorph's Implacable, so it's not Piggot- or ENE-friendly.


Taylor's reaction to appearing in the same red crystal landscape that she had first met the Administrator earlier that week was confusion. The arachnoid entity had made it clear that they wasn't able to give them any more information than they already had, so why-

"Where the hell are we?"

Ah, something related to Panacea. Right, that made more sense.

"Uh… apparently, this is where our powers spend their spare time?"

Panacea whirled on Taylor. "What the fuck is even up with you, anyways? You didn't have a Gemma last week, now you do, without any of the hallmarks of another Trigger event, and your physiology is changing but you've got the Gemma structure of a Master! Like, seriously, what the fuck is up with the energy channels growing in your hands, or the alterations in your skeletomuscular tissues, or your lung capacity, or-"

At some point during that tirade, Odin manifested at Taylor's side, and chose that moment to cut in, eye glowing gold. "Shaper really does have its hooks into you, doesn't it."

Panacea stopped, then blinked. "I'm sorry, who the fuck are you?"

"Odin. Taylor's mentor, in a sense," came his reply.

"You say that as if it even remotely resembles an answer to my question." Panacea lunged forwards and wrapped her hand around Odin's wrist, then frowned. "What the fuck is this? I can't read you!"

"You wouldn't, not here," said Odin. "Your bodies aren't truly here, they're more… thought constructs."

"And your body, Mr. Mentor?" Panacea shot back.

"My skeleton," said Odin gravely, "lies inside the rib cage of Fenris Wolf. That is all that remains of my body now."

Panacea blinked, her rising ire clearly derailed by this response. "Wait, what?"

"The mechanics of my existence aren't exactly important at the moment. What is important, I think, is why your power brought us here." Odin gestured with his chin at something behind Panacea.

The thing he was indicating took a moment for Taylor to parse, visually speaking. At first blush, it looked like a massive, roiling puddle of blood suspended in midair. Upon closer inspection, however, it was possible to see bones, muscles, and… other body parts within the puddle, and then a large, somewhat triangular skull that resembled a deer skull, in much the same way that a modern-day printer resembled Gutenberg's original printing press: clearly for the same purpose, if looked at by one who knew what they were looking at, but one was vastly more developed than the other.

"Odin Allfather," rumbled a wheezy voice with undertones that left the two mortal (well, mostly, in Taylor's case) listeners paralyzed, much as a tiger's roar would. "Amelia Lavere. Taylor Hebert. This is… unexpected. Why has my call for Shaper's host brought a godling and her eidolon guardian along with her?"

"Not so much an eidolon, or the hero Eidolon," this last was directed to the two young ladies with Odin, "and more an echo of the past to guide and teach."

"Very well. So, Amelia Lavere, tell me. Why do you persist? Why do you resist the Shaper's manipulations and the Waste's flailings?"

"The what now?" asked Taylor, recovering from the other entity's voice faster than Panacea, whose face exhibited a puzzled expression not dissimilar to the one that Taylor was affecting.

"The way that Shaper manipulated your brain chemistry to try and make you use its powers, or the way that Waste does the same to those around it to make them more inclined to strong feelings about its host. Do you truly not understand what its unrestrained bouts of mental thuggery are, or how they've caused your attr-?" There was a sort of confused incredulity in the being's voice at this.

"Ah, I think I understand. No, she only has the ability to see as well as Shaper allows, and the Administrator's ilk are seldom willing to allow their hosts to see their acts," said Odin, cutting off the being in mid-word and saving Panacea a great deal of… something, which they both acknowledged with silent, tiny nods, which went unnoticed by Taylor and unremarked by the bloodlike being.

"Ah, so you are not a complete fool, just… a lesser being. Excusable for now, but you cannot slay the Warrior as it stands. Are you ready?"

Panacea's eyes narrowed. "Who is the Warrior? Ready for what? For that matter, who the hell are you, and why appear to me, here and now?"

Despite the skull's lack of eyes or eyelids to convey the impression, it seemed that its gaze towards Panacea intensified. "The… thing… made from the shredded remains of my body enslaved to an alien decided your father, and then you, were expedient tools for its research. I have chosen you because of that, to slay the golden parasite that destroyed my planet and my people. As for who I am… well, that much was stripped from me by the Warrior. I was a god of the flesh, the strongest of our world, but more than that is… lost to me. But I know enough to say that what is left of the power I had could grow, in your hands, drawing in the energy that this planet is all but drowning in and molding it to yourself."

"You say that," said Panacea, ire rising in her voice, "as if it explains anything."

"You will understand," said the being, as if it had already been decided. "Or you will not, and the power I leave you will find a superior bearer. It matters not. I will become the downfall of the Warrior, through you or another. Prepare yourself."

Odin's eye widened a hair, context clues finally slotting together to paint a picture in his mind. "Worry not, lass," he said to Panacea. "Ye shall not be alone in your journey. If needs must, I shall guide you as well, if this means what I think it means."

There was no time for the healer to respond, because the bloodred pool surged forward, almost seeming to skip frames in reality, and surrounded her completely in an orb of mostly-liquid.

Then, it began to shrink.

In a matter of seconds, it had already receded to a sphere roughly six feet in diameter, and mere heartbeats later, it had completely absorbed into Panacea, the only signs it had ever been there being a dimming red glow from her irises and the hovering skull in front of her, slowly flaking into dust.

"Use it well," came the fading voice of the being, the odd depth missing. Then, it finished disintegrating, blowing away in a phantom breeze.

"Oh- Oh god, the Warrior, the Cycle, I-" Panacea stuttered out, and then-

They were back in Taylor's living room, blinking grit from their eyes.

"What happened?" asked Glory Girl frantically, hovering over Panacea in evident worry.

"Well… that's a long story." Panacea frowned, then pushed herself upright, ignoring the buzzing of her phone. "You see…"


In the Birdcage, Marquis turned over in his sleep, his power vanishing for just a fraction of a heartbeat as his coronae dissolved into regular brain tissue. Come the morning, his power would be just a touch more responsive than he could ever remember it being before.


By the time that the two New Wave heroines had departed from her house several hours later, Taylor was quite thoroughly confused, and mentally drained to boot. Panacea's revelation that Scion was an alien hive mind bent on destroying the planet and harvesting its energy after using the super powers that he had been the harbinger of to harvest human creativity was… troubling, certainly, but it certainly put some of the things that the Administrator had said into perspective. The revelation that Earth was a metaphorical Chernobyl of mystical energy was more troubling, but the diminutive healer assured Taylor that that was only relevant to alien gods that attempted to set up shop on Earth, and as such it wasn't something she had to worry about.

Eventually, after Odin said that he'd start her on runecasting tomorrow only if she went to bed within twenty minutes, she broke out of her own head and prepared herself for bed, thinking about the basics of runic theory he'd been drilling her on for the past few days until her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes.

Moments later, she opened her eyes, thirst urging her out of her bed. She got up, stretched, then made her way to the kitchen.

She made it halfway down the stairs before she realized that it was daylight.

"Ah, good morning," said Odin. "You looked like you had a rough night, so we let you sleep in."

"Uh… thanks, I think? Why was I so tired last night?" asked Taylor, frowning.

"Ah, that's fairly simple. The method that the god that passed their power onto Panacea used to draw your mind into the dimension of the Shards was extremely rough. You survived, but you needed to sleep it off. A normal human would have suffered… something comparable to a moderate case of the bends, I think."

"Wait, really? Why wasn't Panacea similarly affected?"

"It had root access to her connection to her Shard, Shaper, and it drew her in through that. Your connection to the Administrator is much more shielded, and as such, the deity had to use the more harrowing method. Now, come to eat. You'll need your strength to begin casting runes today." Odin floated aside and gestured to the table, which Taylor rapidly made her way to.

It was about 10 AM, so her father had already left for work, leaving her and Odin the run of the house. Taylor felt the familiar ache of her father's absence, but at this point she was resigned to it: he had better things to do than take care of her 24/7, and he did still need to work.

The fact that he was actually trying to get a lawyer to sue the school on her behalf was more than enough to clear that ache up, and then she refocused on eating.

Before he knew it, her morning routine was completely cleared through, and she was ready to begin casting.

"Now, don't try to focus on a singular rune, lass. Your first rune is always random, and it's always something that you hold near and dear to your heart. Just… let the energy flow through you, and see what you get." Some of this advice Odin had said before, but some was new, and Taylor let her will focus entirely on coaxing out the stream of energy tucked away in a back corner of her brain,until-

Every lock in the house clicked open as a large rune that appeared like a more angular capital B appeared in front of her, glimmering in silver light.

Odin laughed, causing Taylor's concentration to fade, taking the runic manifestation with it. "Oh, well done, lass! That's Beorc, the rune of freedom, among other things. Now, let's lock the house up and try and do it again.

Taylor would describe the next several hours to her father as "hard, but the fun kind of hard that means you actually did something".


"So, young lady," said Director Piggot, a carefully calculated amount of tired disappointment leaking through. "Do you want to let me know why you were poking around in the restricted files?"

"Uh… no?" The look that Vista undoubtedly thought was cute enough to deter Piggot's inquiry was not nearly up to snuff for that purpose. "I thought Wards personnel records were available for other Wards in good standing to peruse, and that's what I was looking at."

Piggot could feel her teeth grinding as much as hear them. "Their educational records," she said, anger rising in her chest, "are not."

"Disciplinary records are. I checked the Handbook, and that's what it says. By the way, why do you have disciplinary records pulled for Taylor Hebert?" asked the disrespectful brat.

"That's none of your business, and you still haven't told me why." Piggot gave the recalcitrant Ward a level look.

It took almost a minute of tense silence, but the child eventually knuckled under. "Fine, I heard some things about Taylor Hebert being attacked by Shadow Stalker from Panacea and wanted to check it out. Turns out that she's been orchestrating a massive campaign against Miss Hebert that culminated in attempted murder."

Piggot's straight face concealed her internal turmoil at the fact that the brat put together all that information from the (heavily redacted) files they allowed the Wards to access. On one hand, it was good that she was able to make such analytical strides, but on the other, the fact that she was being so confrontational didn't bode well for her reaction.

Piggot decided to take a more aggressive tack to determine how Vista would respond. "And what of it?"

"What do you mean, what of it? Shadow Stalker attempted to murder Taylor Hebert, and your response is 'and what of it'? What the fuck?" Vista shot back, her ire visibly rising.

"As long as Shadow Stalker is willing to grab a bucket and bail out the city, one civilian girl is an… acceptable sacrifice." Piggot shrugged. "It's a callous attitude, but ultimately, it's the one that we have to take if we want to have any chance of even maintaining the status quo."

Vista didn't move for a moment, just trembling, just trembling in place, then: "You're just like them," she whispered, pupils shrinking.

"I what?" asked the Director, thrown off her rhythm.

"You're just like them," repeated Vista, venom dripping from her voice as her telltale visual distortions started to appear around her. "You don't care about us, you just want to trot us out like good little tools, to further your own agendas."

The Director sighed, meeting Vista's rage with exhaustion. "Vista, the city is at risk of going under and being quarantined. We need everything we ca-"

"Shut UP!" screamed the Cape in question. "We're not child soldiers for you to fight your goddamn crusade for the city with!"

"Young lady," said Piggot, steel in her voice, "you will treat me with the respect that I am due, as your elder and your supervisor!"

Vista laughed, an oddly unhinged sound. "I am, Director. You just burned every ounce of it that you earned."

With that, Vista rose from her chair, took a step in a direction that hurt Piggot's head to think about, and vanished.

Piggot sighed. Either Vista would come to her senses and realize that it was necessary for the integrity of the city and return more cooperative, or she wouldn't, and that would bring its own set of challenges and opportunities.

Absently noting that she was glad that Hannah wasn't present for the meeting and more specifically Vista's crack about child soldiers, Piggot turned back to her computer and tapped in a note for Hebert's file.

Potential Trigger Event 01/03/2011. Scope out for recruitment, investigate for potential leverage to induce membership in Wards in the event of refusal.


Alright, so, that's that. I would have it out sooner, but my muse got hijacked by the Symbol of Peace and also Lantern Rings.

The god that gave their power to Panacea is dead, full stop. Panacea has some of their knowledge, but they will not be appearing as a character in this story from here on out. In fact, the only god beyond Odin that I'm eyeing for a potential long-term role in this story is Coyote, because once again, fuck the rules is their whole gimmick.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!