Chapter 103: Divine Intervention

Subject: Metis Location: ??? Metis hung on every moment, clinging close to her surveillance tools. One of her inspection targets, Caim, had just attempted to save another man. That other man, Gire, was another of her targets. Unfortunately, Caim's efforts were futile. Even were he to survive the falling debris of the oncoming attack. Gire had ingested some sort performance enhancement. Metis's tools didn't have a name for the toxin, but they told her that he'd taken more than his body could handle. She didn't doubt that he was cognizant of his fate. In the name of staying alive in the moment, he'd resigned himself to death. "Is it unfortunate? I am a neutral observer," she corrected thoughts. Now, Caim was about to die as well. "Why?" She whispered in disbelief. "They were so close to being rescued... He was going to live. He was." Deep down, she knew. He was never going to live. She'd foreseen his death from the moment he entered this "festerfont". Perhaps Gire had known his fate the moment he say the giant creature, but the two survivors had clung to life so desperately, that she felt the effort should have paid off. Don't, she warned herself. A shaking hand hovered, out of view, over the smooth surface of a device that she should never use. When she'd been assigned to this post, she'd been given the instructions to only use this device to go back home, back to the others. It had other uses. Not that she'd been informed of this, but the knowledge was implicit. "Don't..." She whispered, viewing the sweeping tail attack from numerous scattered angles through her surveillance tools. From her vantage, she could see the Blightbane Guild warriors charging the coiled form of the monstrous creature, drawn blades glinting in the evening sunlight. Within, Caim had stopped moving, awaiting the approaching death blow of the creature's heavy tail. "It's wrong!" She shouted, and pressed her palm to the device. She gripped the handle and pulled it down with all her might. A melodic *Twang* resounded through he air, followed by the sound of rushing air rapidly surging to fill up a vacuum. Before her mind even registered the action, Metis, found herself again viewing the battle. This time, her real body was hovering in the air, high above Gire and Caim. From this vantage, the festerfont was small. This perspective made Gire and Caim's desperate fight all the more frustrating. Metis's body struggled to reconcile with her flailing thoughts. To creatures like this, existence was different. Their lives were finite, but they were so full She tried to stop herself. Their lives were full of pain, joy, triumphs, loss, and so many things Metis and her kin couldn't have. She couldn't stop herself. A deafening *CRASH* of the tail smacking down on the surface of the battlefield, rapidly approaching Caim, seized her thoughts and drove her to action. "What is that!?" A voice down below cried out. One of the many soldiers on the border of the battlefield had seen Metis's large form hovering in the air, suspended by her body's integrated sourcetech. The sound barely registered. The red smoke signals fired by the encircling soldiers partially obscured her vision. She flexed one arm, activating her "sourcetech glove", accumulating a charge in a race against the sweep of the worm's tail. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This is completely wrong! Metis's transporter was a one-way piece of sourcetech. It did not travel with her, and she was now stranded, with no way to return. But none of that mattered, because the target who'd she'd been watching so closely these past weeks, was about to die. Though she couldn't see it, his companion's shallow breaths were among his last. They're supposed to die. You're supposed to let them. She'd felt nothing as the first few targets vanished from her regular reports. They were inferior creatures, inconsequential in the grand scheme of the strandscape. The strandscape was a grand expanse of places, worlds, cultures, and concepts. They were different and the same, grand and mundane, but each was the manifestation of repeating patterns. Instead of individuals, Metis's kin viewed these creatures as a collection of mere numbers. As did she. That was how she used to see them, at least. When had that changed? Humans, faron, cartemi, and all the others on this planet. These creatures would sometimes keep their lessors in their homes, feeding them and caring for their every need. Some of her targets had this "pet keeping" predilection. It had puzzled Metis, but now she thought there was something to it. If Caim had been her pet, she would have never let him die like this. The deaths of the first few targets had barely registered, but the later ones chipped away at her view of the strandscape, carrying with them the gift of insight. Metis was not so high and mighty as to be immune to compassion for primitives like Gire, Caim, and all the others. "Enough!" her voice pierced the air. Thumbing a depression on the sourcetech gauntlet worn on her left hand, she expelled the built up energy. A trio of coiling brilliant green beams of light erupted from the palm of the gauntlet. She wielded the coil like a whip, cleaving the monstrous worm in two. Angling her arm in a different direction, Metis brought the coil back around to slice the remaining pieces of the worm's tail into smaller pieces. The creature would not recover from this injury. Caim was spared. "Up there," a voice cut through the clamor around the border of the battlefield. "Nosk and Arbe have taken mercy on us! This is divine intervention!" The light exuding from Metis's gauntlet faded away, and she brought her right hand to her chest to calm the flutter in her avatar's chest. In that moment, she realized that another entity entered the space around Metis. The resounding rush of air upon the other's entry whipped her straight white hair into a frenzy. The figure had a humanoid form, long blue wavy hair, and purple-tinted skin. The new entrant looked around from her position beside Metis. She swallowed hard as her eyes centered on Caim's immobile form. He was one of the only creatures on the ground not staring in disbelief at the pair of godlike beings, likely because he was just barely conscious. Metis's inexplicable companion pressed three fingers to the side of her head in a thinking gesture, squinted, and finally relaxed with a weary satisfaction. "Pulse... You're Metis, aren't you? One of the Watchers?" Metis heard a tone that was both authoritative and gentle tone. She saw the stranger's features, and her color pallet, and she hit with a pounding realization. "Vera? What are you doing here"