Chapter 303: The Foretelling

“It’s almost time.”

Elara heard the sound come from over her shoulder, where Valera stood in her shining armor. Even further beyond that, the other members of her party waited, surrounded by those determined members of the Little Guardian’s followers that had reforged their flesh in baptisms of null-water. It felt strange not to be surrounded by wind, though; the magical snake had kept the vast majority of them under the effects of his time-hastening power for multiple days now, stretching those days out into multiple weeks.

They’d had to be careful not to let the wind stretch too close to the White Towers, where the warriors of Virtun would fall under its hastening effect as well, but the Little Guardian just seemed to know exactly how large he could make it. As if he’d seen it all before. Valera was confident that the tiny snake experienced possible futures in a vision, and nobody bothered to refute her.

Elara remembered her own rescue; the way that the Little Guardian had defeated unimaginable terrors, the spore-mist and the great tree and the shapeshifting creature of hardened clay and stone. It was obvious that the Little Guardian, in his own mysterious ways, could see the future. He’d likely done it then, just as he’d done it when Elara and the others had encountered the Death Core in the tunnels beneath Verdant Grove shortly afterwards. Just like that time, the Little Guardian’s ability to weave light into shape had meant he could also paint a picture of a future that could be for others to see.

The people of Erandur already believed in the Little Guardian, so it wasn’t hard for them to trust that - after everything else the tiny snake had proven himself capable of, he could do something like that too. Especially when the light-weavings that the Little Guardian created quickly begin to come to pass.

There had been talk of intervening, but further images of what might happen if they did so hastily had stopped that sort of talk.

It hadn’t been a particularly happy future.

Even knowing that, it was difficult to allow things to pass as they’d been foretold. Ewan, in particular, had a difficult time. His own father was foretold to be among the first of the delegation’s victims, left crippled and fused to the floor in a display of vicious cruelty.

Kynan hadn’t been happy when he’d learned that his son knew that would happen and still allowed it, but the man was nothing if not practical. He’d, in fact, been rather ecstatic at the idea of obtaining knowledge of possible futures; it seemed that a - likely temporarily - mangled foot was a small price to pay in return for that kind of advantage.

It had been difficult to get him to stop raving about economic leverage and something he called futures that he claimed wasn’t referring to the future, future. Elara had stopped listening at some point.

Regardless, the man had eventually calmed down and become rather useful in preparing for the future the Little Guardian had foretold. He had a bent towards logistics that none of the more martially-minded seemed to possess.

“I know,” Elara finally replied to the woman behind her.

“Are you ready?” Valera asked her, not for the first time. “If it's too much, you don’t have to go alone,” she said. “We can still change the plan, try to move some people around.”

If there was one thing about her, it was that she was surprisingly caring for a woman who’d dedicated her life and body to combat. It was the same caring that had helped Elara come out of her shell after she’d first been rescued by the Little Guardian, and it was the same caring that had made so many of the people of Erandur adore her.

Elara breathed in a few more times, going over the details of the plan in her mind again; the Little Guardian had been surprisingly exacting about the task he had for her, and Elara needed to make sure that she was prepared to accomplish it. There was only one, but it was of utmost importance.

It might have been one of the most important.

If the Little Guardian’s foretelling was to be stopped, then Elara would need to succeed. Even worse, there was nobody that could really help her. Her role was almost entirely reliant on the armor she’d stolen from the ruins of her home, and on its ability to allow her to both phase through solid matter and disguise herself as one of the enemy.

In an instant, her mind flickered to visions of Verdant Grove, and Elara steeled herself. She breathed in deep once more, pulling at all the right parts of her body to banish the anxiety she should have felt.

The anger, though, she allowed to stay - not at Valera, but at Virtun. It belonged there; it had lived within her ever since she’d been freed from her nightmare, bottled up and contained. Now, Elara couldn’t bear to contain it anymore.

It deserved to run free.

It deserved to act.

“I am,” Elara confirmed to the woman behind her.

I’m ready, she repeated in the privacy of her mind.

Valera looked at her one more time; Elara ignored the brief flash of pity in the caring woman’s eyes, and Valera let the moment pass. She brought a gauntleted hand to clap against Elara’s shoulder, visibly slowing herself to move at the same pace as a normal human would.

“The Little Guardian be with you, then,” Valera said, borrowing a phrase that many of those the Little Guardian had saved had recently adopted. The woman smiled as she said it, finding more amusement in the phrase than most that chose to use it.

“The Little Guardian be with you,” Elara nodded back, wishing her well in turn. While Elara’s task would be difficult, it wasn’t as if Valera’s - or anybody’s, for that matter - would be easy or safe.

Then, with well-wishes finally taken care of, Elara allowed her anger to run free in truth.

Elara ran with it, moving past colorful vines and bushes that swayed aside with every step. Unbidden, adrenaline flooded her body; she kept that, too. No, she stoked it. It rushed through her limbs, welled around her heart, and widened her lungs - and then it pushed even further as Elara forced it to a new peak, one that the mundane body that she’d once had could have never attained.

For the Elara that existed now, the one that had been reborn in the ruins of her home, it was hardly even worth mentioning. It peaked again - and again, and again, until only the [Little Guardian’s Totem] pressed against her chest held death at bay.

It peaked again, and even that miracle threatened to fail. Elara’s heartbeat quickened, reaching the point of no retur—

It held, wrapped tight in strings of pure willpower and mana.

The heart wasn’t the only piece that attempted to rebel; muscles twisted and tendons tore, birthing cries of pain that were killed in the cradle. Like the heart before it, they were held at that precipice. At a place where any other human would have collapsed.

But Elara was meat wrapped in steel, puppeted by magic and iron will - and it wasn’t in the meat’s power to disobey the strings that pulled it.

She carried on, moving faster than anyone but Valera could have managed. She brought the muscles that twisted to heel, forcing them into function. She forced pulled tendons to stay functional, even as the healing of the [Little Guardian’s Totem] brought them back to normal again.

She ran free - until, finally, she reached her target and stopped.

Elara stared, crouching behind fronds and leaves that shifted to keep her form well-hidden.

Though she’d already seen what it looked like in the Little Guardian’s illusion, the sheer size of it surprised her. That was something that was difficult for the tiny snake to get across. It was massive.

Daunting.

The metallic centipede rested easily on its many legs, segments undulating slightly with each release of billowing steam, even as it curled around the shores of the White Towers like an animated wall of steel. It was no wonder that the Little Guardian hadn’t made much of an attempt to simply bring it to a halt within the Groveways; it would have simply crashed through the collective overgrowth that attempted to stop it, even as vines did their best to bind its many legs and roots wrapped around its segments.

There was a reason Elara was necessary. For all of the Little Guardian’s strength, some things were still beyond him.

Elara waited for the signal, stoking her anger all the while; her heart continued to beat dangerously, flooding muscles with blood and adrenaline and more. As much as she wanted to rush in, she knew that timing was everything. Elara could control herself.

Her meat tried to rebel, rushing forward before its time had come, and Elara brought it to heel.

It took what felt like hours, but eventually that time did come. In a single moment, the world erupted in a cacophony of furious plantlife - both inside of the towers and out. Inside, however, wasn’t something that Elara was meant to deal with. That was for others.

Her task was out here, dealing with one of the few things that the Little Guardian had foretold could bring them all to ruin.

The metallic centipede whirred to life, steam escaping it even faster as plantlife thrust itself in the powerful artifact’s direction. It desiccated the unthinking attackers, but not as instantly as it might have done in the face of less numerous targets.

Plantlife surrounded it, smashing against metallic walls - and though it was doomed to failure, it was enough. Hidden behind the colorful animated thicket, Elara sprinted for all she was worth. In moments, she had phased through its metal flesh, returning to solidity when she appeared in a hollowed-out space within. Elara looked around quickly, breathing a sigh of relief when she didn’t find anyone staring directly at her. In fact, she didn’t find anyone at all.

There was a reason Elara had aimed for one of the back segments. If the Virtun delegation had come to pick up a tribute of xenlite, painstakingly mined over an entire year, then they would need space for storage.

The compartment was nearly empty, the only things that filled it being crates that were bolted into place against the walls, each padded with a soft leather to prevent whatever rested inside from shifting and breaking in the midst of the construct’s odd locomotion.

On both ends of the compartment, where one segment met with another, there was a door that led into the next. Elara walked towards the one that led frontwards, feeling a faint vibration shuddering through the floor beneath her boots as the construct whirred to life and began to crush the attacking plantlife rather than simply tearing away its fluids through whatever Core’s magic had been slaved to its metal.

Elara ignored it. The Little Guardian had never expected a wave of plantlife to prove the artifact’s undoing. That was her task. One that she needed to complete before the thing became a problem for everyone else. Elara wasn’t the only one with a difficult task to complete, and any interference could easily lead to someone’s death.

It was oddly humid inside; a mix of warm and wet at once that didn’t feel natural, though not so intense as to be unbearable or unhealthy.

Just…sticky.

Elara erased the discomfort in the same way that she did everything else, and phased through the door and into the next segment. It was much the same as the one that came before it, with crates bolted to the walls and little else. She moved on, feeling a churning attempt to start in her gut as every step led her closer to the front of the transportation artifact.

It wasn’t until a few segments later that Elara finally made contact with one of the warriors of Virtun.

She froze after phasing through the door, spotting a man - clad in armor but with his helmet and a large axe placed beside his boots - leaning against a nearby wall. He looked…normal, if surprisingly unbothered by the way the ground was vibrating underneath him.

Elara wasn’t sure why she thought he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen warriors from Virtun before. Still, at some point her imagination had started to rebuild them in the shape of demons, replete with horns and hooves and snarling faces.

This man wasn’t a demon.

He had no horns, at least.

Elara dismissed her initial reaction and sauntered forward, trusting in her armor to keep her safe. Unlike the man, she was wearing her helmet. With it on, all he should be able to see was another warrior wearing the armor of Virtun.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t see anything else until it was too late.

Elara tried one more time to get her crippled hand to function. It moved a little more than it once had, maybe, but she couldn’t be sure; the material superposition inside of it from the ill-thought phasing that had caused the crippling in the first place was still causing problems that she didn’t know how to fix. One working hand would have to be enough.

Just as she was about to loosen her blade and attack, someone else pushed through the door on the far end of the segment. Elara tried to relax, doing her best to look normal and unbothered.

It was just a bit harder when she was apparently the only one wearing her helmet.

The woman who’d stepped into the segment was beautiful at first glance; hair that glistened against the dark-hued light that her armor released, with a face that was almost cherubic in its proportions. The button nose and dimples didn’t help, making her look even more innocent than she already did. It was just her eyes that betrayed her, wide and almost manic with excitement.

Elara recognized that look. Once, before her home had fallen, she’d mistaken it for a wide-eyed love for life. It had seemed like excitement and vigor. Now, she saw it for what it really was.

Instability. Insanity.

“Marcus, Marcus, there’s finally something intere—”

The woman paused, seeming to forget what she was planning to say as she spotted Elara’s armored form at the end of the compartment. “Is that you, Penelope? I didn’t think you were assigned to the crawler today.

Elara shrugged and strolled closer, moving as casually as she could.

“Whatever,” the woman shrugged in return, the manic light in her eyes returning. “The more the merrier, I guess. Come with me, you two,” she said, turning around and heading back the way she’d come. The man shrugged and followed, picking up his helmet and carrying it at his side, while Elara trailed behind.

“You won’t believe what’s—”

Elara tuned the woman out as they continued to walk, focused instead on observing all that she could about the…crawler’s interior. Her task was to make sure it ceased functioning before it managed to ruin everything with its ridiculous strength. Surely, somewhere in here, there was some kind of way to power or control it.

In some ways, Elara envied the others for their tasks. At least they were allowed to throw themselves straight into their chosen fights. Elara was forced to wait until she found the right moment - and her anger, so recently allowed time to run free, hated it.

Yet, she would endure.

To avoid the potential future that the Little Guardian had foretold, Elara’s anger would wait. Elara felt an odd pulse at her chest, where the [Little Guardian’s Totem] rested against her skin, and knew that she was on the right path.

The Little Guardian would make sure of it.