Chapter Text
January 3rd, 2011
I’m going to die in here. Taylor Hebert was numb. She’d been inhaling the stench long enough to go nose-blind. She’d cried tears until her head ached and her eyes itched. She’d stood until her muscle cramped, and her joints ached, and her nerves screamed. By the time they stopped, falling numb, she was ready to die. They’d won. She accepted that. But she was still here in this locker, with her regret, and her pride, and her waning consciousness.
Taylor Hebert began to dream. Unlike most of her dreams this one was nice. At least at first.
Serra’s Sanctum was falling from the upper realms. The last of it’s mana was drained by the planeswalker Urza to fuel his Weatherlight as it slipped between the planes to wage his war against the taint of Phyrexia. The sanctum tumbled through the Blind Eternities toward the sundered planes and manaless wastes left in the wake of the Titans. Of course, these manaless wastes were a multiverse unto themselves, and though mana was gone, it’s faded glory still shone through the cracks. Not as some ever shrinking God of the Gaps, so to speak, but through myth and legend.
Sphinxes, Demons, Dragons, Hydras, Angels. Recurrent across the planes, they were the emergent consciousness of mana given form. As such, wherever mana was or had been, when consciousness and sapience and life arose from the chaotic chemistry of the material world, so too did they. Angels had been the remit of Serra’s Sanctum, reflections of their creator sustained by her raw magical might. But the fragile cocoon of her dreaming will was tainted. She left, and Radiant tried his best, but he was a mere mortal. Then came Urza, great but rarely good, and so did the sanctum become another footnote in his long and terrible history.
Insomuch as the artificial plane could be said to have will of it’s own, it sought to live. To continue, to fulfill its purpose despite the corruption of Phyrexia. To provide comfort and shelter in the shadow of dreams. And so, in a world where the image of Angels was tainted, and a girl’s anguish was amplified across the Blind Eternities as a connection was attempted, did this fragile cocoon become a chrysalis, sustained and subordinate to a dreaming will once more, even as it was tainted further still.
The Sanctum’s abrupt re-entry into real space was almost as damaging as continuing to be unreal would’ve been. It cracked, but was mended. Great veins of iridescent black crystal spread through the city of stone, binding it together. With it’s initial plans both interrupted and insufficient to save it’s [HOST], [ADMINISTRATOR] selected a boon. [HOST] would live, and generate such glorious [DATA].
Taylor Hebert awoke more gently than she had in all the days since her mother had gone where she could not follow, to a soft song that had eased her pain in her final moments.
“Those who endure in the face of suffering, those whose faith shines long in evil days, they shall see salvation,” Song of All- Canto 904
On Serra’s Wings she flew. She wept once more, unsure if her tears were happy or sad. The Song of All, and it’s many cantos the only other sounds in the silence.
The world was dead. No bugs, no birds, no grass, no trees, and thusly, no oxygen. If Taylor wasn’t dead already, she would’ve been by now. By the sun, it’d been most of a day, and she was neither hungry, nor tired, nor driven mad by the endless silence. Even though her chest rose and fell, it was just a somatic placebo.
Once flying had lost it’s luster, she’d returned to the Sanctum, matching inherited memories to the ones she was making now. The library had been the most changed, completely reconstructed in black crystal. Taylor had spent most of her time here, reading through scrolls and attempting to channel mana. She’d failed to channel mana, and attempting to brute force her understanding of the esoteric mechanics of spellcasting had left her with a headache.
Taylor Hebert was brooding atop her high tower. She’d flown as high as she could, trying to find a way out. There had been nothing but a landscape of black crystal from horizon to horizon, broken only by her Sanctum, capping a mountaintop like an inlaid jewel. She’d been here ever since the locker. Where exactly here was though, she couldn’t pin down. She’d thought it Heaven at first, but now it felt more like Purgatory.
[OPTIMIZER]
Taylor startled as a dense echoing boom of communication shattered the silence. She looked around frantically, taking wing to try and spot anything that might have changed. The sound had come from what felt like the entire landscape. Soon enough, rippling concentric rings of deep, shimmering purple began to emanate from the Sanctum’s center. Taylor swooped low, trailing laughter and angelsong in her wake as she sought out this new arrival.
January 3rd, 2011 – Evening
Amy Dallon wouldn’t say she was excited to get back to healing after the holidays. And she was happier out of the house, but still not really happy. Spending time with Vicky was as lovely as ever, but Mark was never fully present, and Carol was more an overbearing cop than a mother most days.
Panacea slumped into the hospital room. Nobody was outright saying anything of course, but when a girl who’d been rescued after several hours in a locker best described as septic was in perfect health, there were concerns. She was fairly certain Taylor Hebert had been brought to this hospital specifically because she was scheduled to be here. Brockton General wasn’t the closest to Winslow after all. A man whose crumpled bearing reminded her uncomfortably of Mark looked at her with dead eyes. He sat listlessly in his chair and said nothing.
“Do I have your permission to scan her?” Panacea tried not to sound bored, but she didn’t try very hard.
“They’ve already run tests,” He said.
“I'm Panacea, My tests are better.”
He shook his head at that, focused his listless eyes, and actually looked at her. She could see the exact moment he put the pieces together, his eyes filling with a familiar and desperate, fervent hope. It stole the breath from her lungs like a sucking chest wound. Someone had probably given him the ‘Panacea can’t do brains” spiel, but he’d been checked out like an overdue library book when Amy had walked in and had perhaps missed it.
“Please,” His eyes saw through her the shortest, surest path to his daughter's health and safety. Just the same as everyone else. At least here Amy could fix what was broken. She focused on Taylor even as his gaze burned against her back. “She’s all I have left.”
She crossed the room, attempting to exude ‘confidence and grace’ like Carol was always harping on about. The steady beep of the heart monitor and the healthy, flushed skin of the patient really did tell a story. Her continued unresponsiveness told another.
Panacea grasped the girl’s hand and got a snapshot of her usual biofeedback before abruptly vanishing in a shimmer of white. Danny wasn’t sure what parahuman healing was supposed to look like, but the fading light sitrred in him a deep serenity. His daughter would be safe. He collapsed into his chair as the stress and tension left him and was asleep soon after.
Amy was fucked. She wasn’t sure how or why she’d been kidnapped, or even where to. Most frighteningly of all, she couldn’t feel her power. The dulled background awareness of airborne bacteria and other biological detritus had cut out just as abruptly as she’d been teleported. She stood in the center of a town square. There was a giant, inverted skyscraper suspended roughly a thousand feet above her head like the sword of Damocles.
As she walked over to one of the benches ringing the town square, Amy noted that the sandy stone was shot through with veins of iridescent black. Her phone had no bars, but she pressed her PRT issue emergency button anyways, hoping the tinkertech might bypass whatever shielding was in place. The black veins reacted instantaneously and dark purple pulses raced away across their surface in a series of concentric circles as the button output whatever frequency it was using. Amy was dreading her kidnappers’ response, but it was likely to come hand in hand with answers.
Amy heard her captor before she saw her, an angelic chorus singing in a language she didn’t know and couldn’t place. Her heart almost stopped as the figure slowed, stained glass wings twinkling as she was silhouetted against the setting sun. what could only be Shatterbird touched down in the town square and prowled closer with enviable grace.
“Panacea?” Taylor’s head was cocked to the side in confusion, her face bare. In a flash of relief and realization Amy put the pieces together.
“Yeah. Are you Taylor Herbert?” Her voice sounded distant to her ears as her heart settled into a more comfortable rhythm.
“Hebert actually. But yes.” she replied. “I didn’t know you did rescue missions.”
“That’s because I don’t. The docs wanted me to check on you. Thought you might be a parahuman” Amy’s voice was louder in her ears now. It sounded tired.
“Oh” Taylor couldn’t help but smile as it sunk in. She wasn’t dead. She threw her head back and laughed “Fuck you Emma!” She couldn’t help it. Taylor Hebert still lived. She hadn’t left her father alone after years of secrets and silence. Which meant things could get better. Because her goddess had truly saved her.
“Hey,” Panacea snapped her fingers twice, right in Taylor’s face. “Hey.”
Taylor’s rolled her head back upright, a dopey grin still on her face. Joie de vivre indeed! She could even ignore Panacea’s blatant rudeness, she was so happy.
“How do we get out of here?” Amy asked. There was a madness in this girl’s eyes that she didn’t want to be around.
“Right. I think I just have to-” Taylor dissolved into motes of white light in the middle of her sentence, which didn’t help Amy at all.
“Oh, fuck that! You better not leave me stranded you smiling bi-” Amy vanished all at once.
“Tch!” Amy caught a brief glimpse of stark hospital room lighting before she collapsed, her mind filled with visions of stars and two writhing beings dancing through space.
[RECONNECTION] Shaper said.
[MODIFICATION] Adminstrator countered.
[AGREEMENT] Shaper conceded, reluctant.
[AGREEMENT] Administrator said.
Across town, the PRT kicked into high gear as Panacea’s emergency beacon sent out an alert. Armsmaster kicked on his sirens and set a course for Brockton General, the worry of a good man warring against the baying of a gloryhound. Victoria got a call from her boyfriend that left her cold with dread.
For her part, Taylor was distracted with a lapful of teenager and the swirling motes of white mana that floated across her vision. She tried to grab at them, only to realize she didn’t need her hands to do so. She’d herded a few motes together, and they’d started to adhere to each other. Taylor Hebert smiled, so full and true that her cheeks ached with it.
Then the door exploded into the room, followed by an angel of wrath; there were screams, and bone, and confoam.