Fortuna Verto

79-Harmonious Resolution

Both girls made their way back into the citadel, resuming their progress from where they had originally left off. They still had that one room to find, and hopefully they would manage to discover Mheridz in the process.

"So, about that spell stuff you were talking about, could you show me it now?" "Yeah, that's what I was wondering about before you arrived. It seems whatever had fallen into place there to allow me such an opportunity was gone, all of my work there has been lost. I'm back to simply having access to only the normal two options again, sorry." "Oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Still, you'll have to tell me all about it later then, I want to hear what sort of designs you came up with. Seriously, it's creativity like that which would have made the mythos itself, maybe some of your ideas could bring us something in existing principles. Actually, who knows, maybe the stuff you came up with.. maybe it does already exist in a parallel neither of us know about, like a brand new mythos. That's sort of the same thing that spawned the terran mythos in the first place, so who knows, really." Axln couldn't believe what angle she was going with there, rendering concepts of imagination as potential reality. Then again, that too was her life, walking in the realm of something that should have been little more than a fairytale.. but in reality couldn't be any more real. It really led her to wonder if there really was any theory she could accept as being invalid, as almost anything could be true.. if the place held the right principles. Such might not work for this side or the other.. but was that really the end of opportunity, or might there be so much more?

Lyun in the meanwhile was noticing that much of the previous impressions she had in the halls were also gone, something quite significant had changed here. The red glow of the halls had vanished, the regular lights flickering instead. The halls did nothing to bar their progress either, being as open and inviting as while they had traversed it with Luna. Actually, the place somehow seemed even more inviting than even that, just with a lot of obvious damage scattered all over the place, bespelling scenes of what conflict it had just endured. Axln was thus very thankful for her foresight in asking for the others to keep working on the siege-mantle, the citadel wouldn't be going anywhere for a long time. That however might be disappointing, Luna was practically designed to the place's loyalty, the ersatz would probably be remaining then to continue the repairs, even if that took beyond Axln's lifetime. Such would imply that Axln would be heading back without the citadel, either traversing by the siege-mantle or by riding on the Epsilon. Very obviously, she would need to use her new connections in the foundry to make more future visits to the moon at this rate. Well, not that anyone could stop her, she could always catch an aerospace shuttle too. Halls like this proved that there was very little that could possibly stop either of them, so long as they were determined to succeed.

As Axln looked upon the carnage of the halls, she got to see just how much this was no exception for Lyun either, not at all. Of course, most of this damage had probably been by her own hand, but even that only furthered the general idea. Such a vicious rampage, and Lyun had walked away the victor. Apparently, Lyun had achieved this with some rather unprecedented speed, a realization that was doing wonders at convincing her not to begin a race with Lyun suddenly. Not only would getting separated only lead to a swath of new troubles, but Axln wasn't even certain of her rifts being faster than Lyun. Short of disconnecting her link with Lyun and resorting to time stopping.. actually, would even that be fast enough to beat Lyun, that was exactly the sort of measures her future self had tried to use to be faster.. it hadn't been enough then either. Nope, Axln's only hope would be to create yet another paradox to take advantage of.. which probably wouldn't be beyond her own abilities either. Still, at that point, it wouldn't even be worth it. The two ladies of true chaos simply had no reason to compete like that, not when doing so would leave behind stuff like the wreckage she walked through. Trying to do better than each other at this point would have very obvious consequences to anything else around them without even a fragment of the potential to keep up to the changes their actions would bring.