Final Battles

April

When we exited the pocket dimension, April was waiting for us. I immediately released one hyperbreaker at her shoulder.

I didn't really expect it to work, which is why I only fired one. But I figured if we could cleave off her medium, we could win the battle and gain an ally right away.

It connected.

Sadly, her shoulder wasn't a weak point. It counted as two wounds against the five wounds medium could take. And damaging the medium unleashed a massive wave of mons all over the tower.

Speaking of the tower, it had changed. Instead of a peaked roof, the ceiling held some sort of portal to the floor. We were standing on a large sheet of glass, which stretched across the entire width, but if it broke we would fall forever. There was no longer a door out. There were assorted soldiers in some of the alcoves. And with the new wave of mons, there were skullapedes, muscly gorilla things, giant floating spiders... the least of which had 40 hitpoints. There were also a pair of spikes driven into the wall, one made of meat and one of smoke (How? I don't know), which seemed to be bestowing some sort of blessing on April. And most of these (including April – she'd teleported when hit) were out of our range.

Any one of these mons would have been a big deal. This army was too much. But we had little choice.

Oh, and we had 18 seconds before the collapsing pocket dimension exploded and killed us all.

With 15 seconds before detonation, Clarence got The Medium with an X-bolt. This produced even more mons, but didn't cause another teleportation.

With 14 seconds before detonation, The Muscly Gorrilla jumped down, putting cracks in the glass at our feet and ending Clarence's Panasonico form.

With 13 seconds before detonation, something (I didn't even see what) burned Citrine to death.

With 12 seconds before detonation, I got within range and hit The Medium with my other fully charged hyperbreaker, cutting it off entirely. Blood spewed everywhere. The volume of blood exceeded the volume of April's body. Some of it was red, but most of it was strange and irridescent.

With 11 seconds before detonation, the mons all started fading. The soldiers looked confused, but probably still inclined to kill us.

With 10 seconds before detonation, Clarence started opening his kettlebell.

With 9 seconds before detonation, Jacqueline decided to lick up some of this strange blood. She shuddered. And then she spoke.

Of course. Two of us. How proper. One for the Wheel and one for the Star.

As she spoke, a giant spider mech formed around her.

With 8 seconds before detonation, Jacqueline used her nightmare powers to shatter the floor, setting us all falling.

With 7 seconds before detonation, Clarence touched an Emerald. His terror was amplified, and he wished for us all not to be here. And, so, we weren't.

An Interlude with Lou

It seemed Clarence's desire for a safe, boring place was “Where Lou lives”, meaning the town of Gotita. Since he didn't specify a place within the town, we landed on Lou's dining room table. He was seated at the table, drinking tea.

He did not do a spit-take. He deliberately spat his tea at us.

We took inventory. Clarence, Sarah and I were present and intact. April was unconscious and disarmed. Citrine was dead. We had four emeralds. Presumably Jacqueline had two (one she'd been carrying, and the one from April) and one was in Nosgoth and one in Vidriot.

Citrine's human parts looked pretty intact, so we tried using a mon-targetting revivify spell on her. This worked shockingly well, bringing her back to life as we'd known her with no harmful side effects.

We searched April, removing a rather frightening exploding rivet gun. Then we healed her. She was sane.

Her memories of the past 250 years were blurry at best. She remembered some tricks for using Emeralds safely. She also remembered that she never stopped thinking of Sarah and Clarence as her friends. In fact, she spent the final battle holding back in the hopes that we would surrender and live. We -- well, I – had repaid that restraint by attacking full force. At her arm. Thereby setting her free. Justice?

Then we got a call from Jacqueline on the radio. She had gathered four Emeralds (locator spells confirmed this) and invited us to meet her at the doors of Nosgoth. It wasn't quite a proper castle like April had made, but it was adequately spooky.

She refused to explain what she was up to, and even claimed not to know. But she was very impressed by the complexity of the puzzles in the unfree regions, and had decided she didn't like freedom after all.

We restored our health and energy, and I reforked all the technological weapons. We gave April a transformation breastplate and Aaron's dragon morph (he'd basically stopped using it now that the old city was mostly clear of lizard mons).

And then we teleported to Jacqueline.

Jacqueline

It was clear Jacqueline was fully insane. We tried to talk it out for a while, but this went nowhere. We fought.

We were at the gates of Nosgoth, a small outcropping in the side of a very tall cliff. To the east, the cliff stretched upwards for thousands of feet. To the west, downwards for uncounted miles.

It has been said: Do not have an awesome climactic battle at the top of a cliff.

But it would be more wisely said: Only have an awesome battle at the top of a cliff if you are more skilled at shoving people off of it.

Which we were. We had lots of moves with knockback, and Jacqueline's strike force had rather few. Also, two members of our party could fly. And Panasonico's Shock simultaneous with Leviazyzmuth's Wave meant Jacqueline could go over the cliff and lose the ability to arrest her fall for the next six seconds simultaneously. And we had long-range technological weapons that let us shoot enemies which were far down the cliff. In short: advantage: us.

The Spider Throne was tough, having 200 hit points and an assortment of nasty offensive options. And Jacqueline was too. But there were four of us, and we'd gotten used to fighting tough enemies.

We found no way to free Jacqueline. We simply killed her.

We did learn one interesting thing in the fight: if you smash an Emerald, it reforms six seconds later. And if anything is in between the pieces of the Emerald, it gets punctured, melted, or generally obliviated. Even if that “anything” is several hundred tonnes of solid stone. When we finished, there was some rock left to stand on, but not much.

Kaine came out, proclaimed that he “ALWAYS KNEW JACQUELINE WAS UP TO NO GOOD” (an obvious lie) and that he “MUST FIND ARCHITECT TO REPAIR PORCH” (which was fair enough, except that this entire timeline was about to end).

Saurin

Kaine didn't try to interfere in our gathering all the Emeralds. Perhaps we were just that scary. Or perhaps he was too concerned with rebuilding his porch.

We teleported to the power plant and raided it again. This time, we just stomped our way through all opposition and took our fill of batteries.

Finally, we gathered in some remote mountaintop and invoked Time. We placed the mote of time at the center of our circle, and the emeralds around us, and all focused on wanting to go to Saurin right after he teleported away from the Floating Isle. The emeralds circled around us at ever-increasing speed. There was darkness. There was light.

And there we were.

The emeralds were still with us. But, since there can only ever be exactly eight of them, they were no longer wherever they had been.

Including the one Saurin had just stolen was gone, and he stared at his hand in confusion.

I didn't give him time to act. I tackled him.

Apparently we were in some sort of fast time, because I struck him as if I were moving at many times my actual velocity. He exploded in a fine mist.

History

That did it. Didn't it?

History was derailed. Reality was saved.

We could have used the second Mote of Time to return to our native time... to a world even less familiar than this one. There was no point.

We gave the Mote of Time to a lab to study, and buried the Emeralds – still encased in kettlebells – each in a separate glacier. We drove there in Saurin's entirely nonmagical flying car.

We realized the original lab that woke Steve was probably still poised over his sleeping form studying it. Clarence and Sarah called their past selves and warned them properly. They quietly shut down the lab. There were more interesting things to study.

Medium-based spells still work, though no one can understand them. Citrine has scientists similarly confused, but she's doing fine and no longer causes people to freak out. And it seems those of us who have travelled by Emerald now have a lasting affinity for Warp Magic – one I won't be using.

Perhaps the most useful thing we brought back – apart from warnings – was the portal pack generator. It seems Sig-Mar spoke true about the multitude of Chrystal Spheres, and soon we can all go exploring, if we wish.

I tracked down a high priest of Khorne to ask about absolution for my use of magic. Then I explained everything to him. It took three days. And I think I left him feeling even more confused than I am.

But my god smiles on me. I can feel it.

I defeated two gods in battle. Granted, they're bound, not dead. And I'm not sure if they actually have skulls to be added to the Skull Throne. Nevertheless...