Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gyro 1.1

M

Losses are as follows:

…

…

Gallant…

…

…

There were other names in there, no doubt.

Missy didn’t hear them. Or… anything. Save for dull ringing.

The wash of rain; felt, not heard, seeping into the parts of the costume you never think about.

Wave, said the bracelet, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe she just saw the onrush of water, and filled the noise in mentally.

It was just a loss, Missy thought to herself. A casualty. She knew it from other Endbringer stories. When there were too many to track who lived and who died, all you needed to know was who was still in the fight.

The thoughts didn’t help. She knew Dean was…

Her heart twisted like the space she warped so well.

Her first crush. Oh, she knew it wouldn’t work, but the feelings were on a lower level than that knowledge. He was nice. Pretty. Rich. And he cooed over big V… sure, that meant he was taken, but it was just…

Was. That’s what it was. It was was.

The titanic curl of water pushed ever closer to Vista, covering a fraction of an inch in the instant that felt like eons.

Vista reached out, with both hands and her power, and grabbed ahold of space in a way that felt more real than ever. Her fingers, somehow both metaphorically and not, sunk deeper into the hold they found, wedging in, levering a crack open for her.

She pulled. Not on space, but on herself. Not expanding or contracting, but moving. Herself, from here, to somewhere else, shimmying along the very fibers of existence like they were some… some rope to be climbed. Complex folds of reality turned into a doorway by force.

With the sound of a whip, Vista vanished from Brockton Bay.

A little later,

And a lot further away.

The last few moments had been a rush of… no, not wind. Not-wind, Vista considered adding a capital to the term. It felt a little like wind, but only to her power; to her senses, it wasn’t there at all, and she got a serious sense of foreboding each time she tried to open her eyes through it.

Not now, for it was gone.

Vista peeled open her eyes, and beheld… the bright sun in the sky. She flinched away, for eye damage was real even through a polarized visor. After initial hesitance, though, the sight bore considerable further investigation.

For one. There was a sun. Brockton Bay was doing this thing called ‘a Leviathan attack,’ and that usually precluded such a thing.

Next, she looked down. Bushes, shrubs, open plains. The grass, short, largely yellow and dry; even sheer dust in places. The sun beat down heavily, though there were a few clusters of the tall trees, wide at the top, that so commonly dotted the savannah. All of that, and much more.

A heady heat bore down on her, threatening to dry her costume utterly within the hour, and then burn her to the bones without shade. A smell… not foul, but far worse than she expected from untouched land. It was the final touch that made it real, and not a dream.

She would have rather it was a dream, for the horizon. The horizon is what ate most of her attention. It simply just curved the wrong way.

The Earth is a sphere. Thus, when you stand and look straight, the Earth rolls downwards, and falls from sight.

Wherever she was had failed that very simple physics lesson, and curved upwards. The only block to her vision was the haze of the atmosphere, and that was far further than standard curvature.

Vista hazarded that she could see thirty, forty, or maybe even fifty miles in each direction, even past some mountains to one side. That raised many questions, and chief among them: If there’s air everywhere, what the hell is the sun?

Was she on the inside of a sphere, with that flaming ball as the core? Was this a bowl shape?

A lot of physical laws that she only vaguely understood were being violated right now.

“...Fuck,” she said.

Missy recalled wilderness survival training she’d gotten once or twice, then threw it all in the trash. Where in the actual hell was North?

Instead, she chose a direction at random, though keeping near to the mountains as a landmark.

Her power’s range stretched for miles and miles, disturbed only by wildlife and plants. Without a hint of a thinking individual, she felt she could cross seven leagues–twenty one miles–in a single stride. She hesitated to push it that far, for the attention she might catch, or that she might even miss civilization.

After an unknowable distance was covered, Vista gathered herself, found a conveniently sized rock, and sat down. She wasn’t quite tired, physically, aside from the stresses of the time before… being… here.

Instead, she was spent . Mentally.

There was no fire pit, nor were there s’mores to roast, but she made do with her thoughts and memories of campfire stories. The only spooky stories she had to share were such things as, ‘what if I was alone here’ or ‘what if this is the afterlife?’ and the only one she had to share them with…

Well, you know.

Aside from herself, she could share it with the two-horse carriage, the three men riding upon it, nor the fourth one; a nice lady about Vista’s height, trapped in a cage of wooden-plank bars.

The whole contraption is made from weathered planks, although they are not colored in quite so usual a way. Weathered, but silver. Not white, silver, shiny, reflecting light like someone had planted a metal tree.

Oh, she’d seen it coming, sensing the ripples in space from far far away with the help of her power. It’s not the sort of thing one has a ready made response to, except standing vaguely in front of it–not quite in front, those horses probably have a mean kick to them–and waving it down.

With calls of “Hey! Whoa, now!” from the driver to the horses, the slow trot turns to nothing but an ambling walk, transitions to nothing as they finish closing the gap.

A closer look at the four causes Vista to reconsider. Two of the men are mean, muscled, near-balding and wearing the kind of leather that she thought only video game characters donned. One had a short spear in his lap, the other had a short sword and a length of rope about his belt. The third, no weapons in sight, and neatly cared for blonde hair covered by cloth cap–though that was the only neat or cared for part of him.

All three were marred with flakes of dirt and mud, and not in the way of Hollywood where it was only their cheeks or jaws that made them perfectly grungy. Everywhere. Under the fingernails, Vista noted, and on the elbows and knees.

Then, she looked behind them. The nice young lady, who she would scarcely describe as young, also didn’t appear particularly nice.

Oh, she was clean, practically spotless compared to the three. The compliments ended there, and the strangeness began.

Her skin was a dark blue, all where Vista could see, save the neck; the wrists, hands, head and feet, the rest covered in a loose-draped brown… robe, utterly clean yet threadbare. The neck, though. Vista saw the front of it, and it was purple, and it wasn’t skin. It was stringy muscle that somehow reminded her of the guts of insects. Eyes that were tiny black dots amidst yellow, staring into Vista’s visor.

A tail, long, thin, ending in a tuft of hair the same fine black as her hair.

Two horns, straight up. No, not horns. Ossicones, Vista remembered from a trip to the zoo, for they were covered in skin. And teeth, little sharp V-shapes that she flashed Vista in a tiny little smirk.

The Ward dragged her eyes away, kept them away from the lady, and met eyes with the cart driver. “Why… why is she locked up?”

There’s a completely inexplicable reaction from the men, of tension and relief both at once. Vista carefully didn’t pay attention to her response, however.

They… just… ignore it. The sworded man, nearest to Vista, clambers up and hops down from the seat, groaning lightly as he does.

“Well…” He said. “What ‘ave we got here?” His head turned to his companions.

“A little noble lassie, if my eyes are workin’ still.”

The driver groans and leans back and shifts the reins to the side. “Don’t get ahead of yerselves. I know what yer thinkin’, and let me tell you, there are better ways to make money. Helpin’ out a wee tot, see, is much better than your plan. If’n ya’ can call it a plan.”

Vista stared. They really were talking like this, right in front of her. And she’d thought the fantasy shows and movies had been so silly!

“What?” Asks one, the one who stretched out the coil of rope in his two hands. “How are we gon’ get paid more by giving her directions than a ransom?”

She froze, and slowly let her eyes return to the incredibly amused lady in the cage.

“Cause the parents, see–” the driver started, but then stopped.

He’d stopped, because Vista had picked up a rather hefty rock, and cocked it back with both arms.

“Settle down now, miss. You’ll get–”

“Let her go,” Vista cut him off.

They all stared at her, confused. Even, as she noted out of the corner of her view, the one locked up.

“No?” tried the man with the sword.

“What’s she done wrong, huh?”

The driver was facepalming.

“Done wrong? Kid– look at her!”

Vista did. Then, she threw the rock as hard as she could.

It wouldn’t have done anything, save for the nasty twist in space-time that she gave it. Rather than falling forward and splatting on the ground, it twirled forth and upwards, and came crashing down on the man’s shoulder with an ugly, almost wet impact.

He cried out, and fell. The other man, with the spear, lept forth and drew the weapon. He, too, fell, as Vista compressed the space between her and him, and jabbed him right in the neck with a taser that she had stretched out by two or three feet.

The driver made to stand, but sat back when she menaced him with the still-crackling stun gun. He raised his hands and uttered, to himself more than anyone, “Mage. ‘Course.”

She looked up at him, catching the empty resignation in his eyes. “Let her go.”

“Can’t. No keys.”

Two fingers together, pointing at the cage. Spread them apart in a V-shape–her namesake, she thought to herself–and the gap between bars raised from a half foot to three feet and change.

The prisoner hummed, stepped forward, fell down, and was a prisoner no more.

“Really,” she said, and the two men–the armed ones, fighting back to standing–looked her way. “You seek to take an imp prisoner, and bring only a silverwood cage?”

Silverwood? Vista questioned. Tinkertech, or…

Imp. Demon. Silverwood. Swords and horses. Mages…

She wasn’t grinning. It was hot and unpleasant enough that she couldn’t, and there were still the circumstances of her arrival here.

Actual magic? She thought.

“Little mage,” the imp said, and Vista snapped back to attention.

Little? We’re the same–!

“We shall make our leave,” she finished. With superhuman–though Vista could only tell because she had training, it was that close of a thing–speed, the imp climbed to the front of the cart. Black claws shine reflectively for a moment as she pulls her hand back, and then forward.

The horse whined and took off, the same cut that broke its harness also stinging its flank.

She clutched the reins from the driver in one hand, stole the hat with her other, and again jumped. This time, she landed on the still-bound horse, settling into it by clutching its barrel ribs with her legs.

Her ankles dug in. The horse spurred forward, freed by a second slash, and turned around by a tug on the reins. With the hat tucked under the crook of her neck, she had a free hand to reach out to Vista. “With haste!”

She took the hand and jumped–the imp’s tug had Vista nearly overshooting the horse, so she had to catch herself by wrapping her arms tight around the rescuee’s waist. Their mount took off on a gallop.

Behind them, growing smaller inverse the distance, the yelling forms of the three men.

The sun continued, merciless.

“Little–” she said, the first word of a statement Vista didn’t want to bear out, and the first word between them in minutes.

“My name is Vista,” Missy interrupted.

“It is not,” the imp said, after an annoyed delay. “However. If I shall know you as Vista… knoweth me as Lady.”

She really did just say knoweth, didn’t she, Vista thought. And she meant it. “Where are we?” She asked, rather than making her snark known.

Their ride turned from a fast run to a trot, and then barely a stroll as far as horses went. Still faster than either’s walking pace… without powers. Vista appreciated this, as the ride was far rougher than the ponies she’d known twice in her life.

Lady leaned forward, and Vista found herself leaning into the curled back almost like a pillow.

“I might say the Stolit Plains,” Lady said, hesitating. “Yet your question remains.”

Vista agreed. “It does...”

“I see you as a mage,” she continued. “Child of mages, raised and meditated under a cave, never truly learned of the rest of the world.”

“That’s…”

“--Inaccurate to the fullest. Yet in effect? To what thou must still learn? ‘Tis the same.”

This world, Vista almost wanted to correct. She bit it back. “You’re really a demon? But you’re…”

“Yes, a demon. Imp, the lowest of demons, and Deceiver, for my magics. It is my nature, my origin.”

“Doesn’t that make you… evil?” Vista questioned, hoping to whoever above that she wouldn’t regret freeing Lady.

“Nay. Demons are tempted just the same as mortals, The tempting voices are merely louder. I resist.”

That was… disconcerting. But, she was trying, and Vista could allow that. Also, she didn’t mind being used as a quasi-pillow. “Stolit Plains… where are we going? Why?”

“Thunderbirds,” Lady said, as if that answered anything at first. “Their land is near. They shall take thee, provide food and drink.”

Vista’s mental counter of old-timey words incremented. “But what about you?”

Lady only hummed, in just such a way to end the conversation for a time.

A time, twenty-seven minutes (Vista still had her phone, though no service) of relaxing though hot trotting, until a question bubbled up to her. “When’s night… time?”

She looked back at Vista, and then to the side. A savannah tree, lonesome, was the nearest shade within a mile or two. Her black-dot eyes turned to the sky, taking in the sun for longer than Vista would to with her visor on. “Long from now. We shall make camp in an hour’s time.”

Vista frowned. “How far are the Thunderbirds?”

The same thought that occurred to the hero, occurred to Lady, spurned by the question. “Two day’s ride, or three. Have you any drink?”

She almost said nay. Instead, she shook her head, as little as the motion was within her partner’s field of view. She had water on her, but she’d used it up washing herself during the Leviathan fight.

“Ah. I–”

Vista cut her off. “I can use my pow–er, my magic. We can move…” she hesitated, checking how far space furled around her power. Once again, almost exclusively the pitiable lives of plants and trees around her. This would be easy. “...two, three miles in a step.”

“What,” Lady said, her voice flat. “Your magic–that range? Are you–”

Vista looked to the strange horizon. She could see what seemed like the edges of the biome shifting, growing more fertile, though no water in sight. Accounting for the upwards curve of this Earth would be easy. She relaxed and then released her grip on Lady, and spread her arms apart forward. “Take it slow. The horse’ll…” a grunt, of exertion. “...the horse’ll get dizzy.”

Then, the world shifted. Feet became fractions of an inch, but only to the horse’s front. Fractions of an inch became no distance at all, and the color of the light around them seemed to shift just slightly.

Lady pushed their mount forward slowly, extremely hesitant steps from the spooked creature.

In time, the compression ratio that Vista managed–the density of the ripple before them–increased, even beyond what she said she could. The horse took its first proper stride forward. They crossed nearly eight miles, and the horse just about took off sprinting in the other direction as a reaction.

By being quite careful with her warping, and with Lady being quite stern with the horse, they managed to eke out a consistent pace of five miles in a handful of seconds. With the protestations of the reality that Vista bent over her knee, it was hard to see the surroundings. She sensed it, instead, and the plant life was a blur on the senses that she couldn’t accurately parse.

When they stopped, both travelers were surprised by the change in climate. The silt… it wasn’t there yet, but it was on the transition towards loam, wet and healthy. Trees were ever more solid oaks that would no doubt become a proper forest as they continued, and the brush was overbearing.

Lady blinked. She looked around, and worked her jaw. It took her quite some time, but she settled on what to say. “...Archmage.”

If demons are real, then magic is, too, and it’s… not powers. Vista settled for, “...My magic is, uhm, special.”

“Special,” Lady parroted.

“Are–” Vista snrked, “--Are we there yet?”

Lady gaped. “ There? Vista, we have overshot the border by a league, ” she said, and went back to scanning the area. Murmuring, Vista overheard. “...days of riding in minutes, even on foot…”

Then, Lady cleared her throat. “We camp for now. A moment of shade shalt not go amiss, shall it?”

It would not, to Vista. Already the air was cooler here, more humid, and the shade granted by the tree more solid. Dense. Real.

That’s all a bare fragment of the real reason.

“We need not the mount, do we…” Lady again says to herself, dismounting, and aiding Vista in doing the same.

The real reason.

Riding bareback, Vista decided, was not her style of things.

“Ponies?” Lady asked.

Vista nodded, clenching her jaw, effort poured into stoicism... Ow, ow, ow ow ow… She swallowed, and grit her teeth. “D- Do you know how to find them?” I could sense their buildings with my power…

While Vista paced, Lady drew abstract shapes in the dirt with a finger, sat against the roots of a tree. “Their patrols are easy to spot. Should we find them, we need only to trace their tracks to their town. Lest your magic…”

C

Lady Caballa watched the strange, young, yet supremely powerful mage halt her pacing.

Buildings, she saw this ‘Vista’ enunciate, and then she answered.

“A town? I can find it with my… magic.”

To warp the firmament on such a range, she must surely sense it as well. Her magic is special, though. A hyperfixation? That electricity had been an enchanted weapon, not a separate spell…

…yet, the girl reeked of spinwards, the magic direction. A contradiction. So interesting, then, that she hesitated to call it magic. In truth, her lips curled towards a ‘p’, before changing their mind.

Power, perchance?

A fitting term. A blessing, perhaps, from someone–some thing else? Obscene magical potential, unrealized, and a separate ability. Archmage indeed.

Caballa considered all that, and nodded. “How fortunate! You should proceed. A good drink shall do us both wonders.”

Not that Caballa intended to stay with the Thunderbirds. They took poorly to any demons without the Mark of Servitude, let alone a Deceiver.

She blinked, blue eyelids flitting over and away from yellow eyes.

The Vista had started to concentrate, clenching and unclenching her fists with her eyes closed.

A crack. Noise. Movement.

Her eyes hurried about, catching glimpses of fur–brown–and eyes, a familiar yellow.

“Vista!” She shouted, disrupting the spell and alerting the girl. “There’s trouble!”

To her credit, Vista jumped into action with that, scouting the area. She caught side of them as well, taking only barely longer than the imp.

She’s combat trained…? Caballa wondered, and then dismissed the notion. More important things.

“What are those? ” Vista asked, in a tone that the imp more than empathized with.

Cat-men, brown-furred, wearing scraps of clothes and wielding sharpened sticks. Slender, and short, which combined with the wild look in their eyes, gave Caballa a measure of relief.

“Kiscun thralls,” she began to explain. “They do not think like we do. Animals, that obey their lords and ladies. See their eyes? Feral. No lord, no lady.”

“A- And?” She had her lightning wand out again, crackling with–

It wasn’t magic. What…?!

–Caballa swallowed. Not. Important . “Frighten them. Large movements. Loud noises, like that wand.”

The demon stood with her hands–claws–raised, an almost martial fighting stance.

“My magic?” The Vista said, questioning, eerily calm in this situation for someone so young.

“They may panic. Steel yourself, they will leave.” Even as she said it, it felt wrong to Caballa, like something wasn’t quite right.

The kiscuns spread out, the eight among their number encircling the two entirely. Wood and rocks, not a hint of iron, let alone silver, and so Caballa was far from worried for her own health. She kept the Vista close to her, back to back, in range to guard.

It was going wrong. The kiscun were getting aggressive. Feral ones were never territorial, not like this…

“Vista, be ready–”

A ninth kiscun came. Another thrall–or, perhaps, a lord, emaciated and driven mad–and it was wild. Insane, in only the way that thinking creatures could be, a kiscun warlord without doubt.

He was also wielding a broadsword, gem-encrusted. A silver broadsword. He charged, snarling, and the blade made its way towards Caballa’s stomach. She stepped to the side, the metal cutting into merely the skin of her hip, and lunged for a counterattack.

Against the thin, weakened man, demonic strength would be vastly more than enough. His jaw broke, and his neck, and much of his skull if anything to judge. He fell to the ground in a discomforting heap.

In that same instant, the thralls all froze, their geases broken. They slunk away, to die in solitude.

Caballa breathed a sigh of relief, and turned–

…she’d been back to back.

The Vista staggered forward, clutching at the point of the blade that thrust out of her stomach. She gurgled wetly, and her legs failed her.

Caballa scrambled to catch the wounded girl, with her eyes unfocused. “No,” she said.

“No,” again. “No, no, no…”