Tall walls of white tiles surrounded us on all sides, dividing the room into various booths with various symbols. In the center was a round table. Small, symbolic more than anything.
The light above us was not strong enough to brighten the wide room. Shadows extended from the corners. There was no door exiting the room, it was a single structure. Meant for what likely would be the last chance for humanity to willingly stand together.
I waited in the next room. Watching. Thinking. Listening.
From the heroes, Arsenal, Chevalier and Legend were there to represent the PRT. Chevalier had not been happy to find out about Cauldron, but Contessa had managed to calm him down enough to get him to work together with us against the End of the World. The same she'd done to us, I suppose.
The Thanda and the Yàngbǎn had sent along a representative each - Phir Sē and 'Three'. Julius had come in Europe's stead, while the other nations had declined or decided to send lesser known capes.
The Elite had sent Bastard Son, and Tattletale was there to represent the east coast, together with Faultline and Regent. Weaver stood by their side.
The only warlord worthy of being invited had been Moord Nag. She stood alone in her booth, a large shadow seemingly looming behind. Her power.
Lastly, the Birdcage. Only three criminals had been allowed to walk into the meeting. Teacher, Marquis and the Faerie Queen, Glaistig Uaine.
In just an hour this room had been filled with the most powerful players in the world. Each with their own agenda. Each with their own wants and needs.
But I had decided to abstain, instead allowing myself only to listen. Contessa sat next to me, keeping a careful eye on the situation. Doctor Mother was inside and led the meeting, steering conversation in the right direction. Sometimes Contessa whispered something to the air, communicating with Doctor Mother or Arsenal. Keeping clear of dangerous topics. Making the right threats at the right time.
"Glaistig Uaine. We've never discussed her." I mentioned offhandedly to Contessa.
"She's another blind spot to me. But not a significant one, given that she keeps to herself in the Birdcage. We've already steered her to do as we wanted."
"Gray Boy."
"Yes," she nodded, "but not only. Even within the Birdcage, we've often manipulated things to make sure that promising powers were claimed by her instead of being lost. Like Bakuda's."
As we calmly talked among ourselves, the discussion within the meeting room continued to heat up. Moord Nag refused to speak in English, even as one of the parahumans provided the ability for all of them to understand it, and Tattletale couldn't help but contribute to the frustration through her snide comments.
"You should've been inside. All of my models say that your presence would have convinced them all. Despite their grievances."
"No." I refused, shaking my head. "I am not human."
This, today, was meant to be the last chance humanity had to truly stand for itself.
I watched as Bastard Son chuckled at the idea of the world ending, even when multiple different groups corroborated the prediction. 'Three', from the Yàngbǎn, stayed quiet, only speaking up to make the CUI unwillingness to sacrifice anything known. If anything, it became quite clear that he was here solely to take stock of promising parahumans to kidnap, to force into the Yàngbǎn.
The swarm of bugs close to me and Contessa continued to move erratically, showcasing Weaver's frustration.
Until finally she spoke up.
"So this is how the world ends. Not in a last desperate attempt to survive, but silently drowning amidst our greed and hatred. Come the fuck on!" She violently slammed her hand on the table at the center.
Doctor Mother almost stopped her, but Contessa allowed Weaver to continue.
"I don't know how many more assurances you need that the world really is going to end if we don't do anything. But even ignoring that? The Endbringers are really out there. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Ash Beast. Sleeper. Nilbog. And god only knows what other terrible things will come out of random triggers in the next months. All of us here have lost something to one of these threats."
Bastard Son chuckled at her outburst:
"You've not been in the game for even a year, Skitter. Let the adults talk."
"She's been present during the last five S-Class emergencies. While you shat your pants when Leviathan came to San Francisco." Tattletale sharply remarked, earning a chuckle from Regent and some other capes among those present.
Moord Nag joined the conversation, still refusing to speak in English: "[Fighting against the wind is foolish. Useless.]"
"We would have once counted the Blasphemies among that category." Phir Sē shot back, fully understanding Moord Nag even in her language. "And yet."
"And yet…" Julius whispered to himself. The slightest tinge of hope in his voice.
"As much as I disagree with our dear unruly friends over there-" Teacher shot a side glance towards Bastard Son as he spoke, "-they tell the truth. We're facing problems that are on the scale of natural phenomena. You're asking us to solve a problem that may very well not be solvable."
Doctor Mother quickly answered, "We are reasonably sure that the Endbringers can be killed."
"Then what happens if more appear?" Teacher opened his arms, seemingly trying to drag more people onto his side. He was persuasive, in a 'within reason' kind of way, rather than in a 'Thinker' kind of way. "Skitter already mentioned that any random trigger could prove devastating. Maybe we should learn to live with it, rather than try to stop the inevitable."
"Get to your point." Arsenal hurried him along, losing his patience. Teacher was a sore spot for him, given his past connections to the Dragonslayers.
"Alright. If you see the Endbringers and future triggers as an existential threat, why not let us truly help you? I'm not asking you to empty the Birdcage. Freeing some key members would be enough."
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"For the first time in years I find myself agreeing with Teacher," Marquis chuckled, "With just a few of us out there we could change the game. Kick out the amateurs-" another side glance towards Bastard Son, who angrily tapped his knuckles along the table, "- get things in order. What do you say, Faerie Queen?"
An ephemeral voice answered the question, distracted: "Freedom matters little to me. The end draws near, Shaper. Wherever I am, I shall collect the fallen faeries, keeping them company until the stars die out or the end comes for me too."
As she spoke her eyes glanced in my direction. Fixed on me. Through the walls and multiple layers of defenses meant to stop exactly that.
"I believe you're free to leave whenever you wish, dear Queen. Correct?" Bastard Son looked to Doctor Mother, a wide grin on his face. "I don't much like talking to someone that isn't paying attention."
Tattletale almost cackled, "Holy shit you're dumb."
"Don't." Weaver tugged her by the arm.
But even as Bastard Son openly provoked Glaistig Uaine, the famously unstable parahuman, she continued to ignore him. Focusing solely on me.
"Are you human, or Faerie?" I asked, whispering.
Glaistig Uaine heard me. She smiled, and took a step in my direction. Contessa immediately stood up and walked off, asking for Doormaker to get her away. She reappeared by Doctor Mother's side, in the other room, just as the Faerie Queen decided that she'd heard enough of the meeting.
A shadowy silhouette appeared next to Glaistig Uaine. A woman wearing a long cape, covering her whole body. She extended the cloak, enveloping the Faerie Queen. They both disappeared.
And reappeared right in front of me.
The cape-wearing shadow disappeared, and in her place three more ghosts rose from behind her. A tall, muscular man who wore armor with tower-like pauldrons and helmet. An athletic woman with a ribbonlike cape, divided into strips that ended in sharp knives. A younger boy, wearing a school uniform and the only one with a clear smile stamped on his otherwise featureless face.
The last one I recognized as Gray Boy.
She didn't react as I stood up and let out a deep sigh. The other room had been briefly plunged into chaos by the Faerie Queen's disappearance, but Doctor Mother quickly got it under control thanks to Contessa's assistance. I focused back onto the parahuman in front of me.
"I asked you a question."
She raised an eyebrow, seemingly not expecting me to be so openly aggressive.
A gray, monochrome sphere appeared around me. Locking me in time. My black knife was already out. I slashed at the boundary, 'popping' the bubble that had surrounded me, not unlike how I had dispelled the Siberian. And like then, cracks appeared along the glass in the center of the knife. But that didn't matter for now.
The Faerie Queen could not react in time as my hand shot forward, wrapping around her neck. A thin forcefield appeared just between her skin and my fingers, stopping me from crushing her windpipe.
The female shade gestured at my arm: where she pointed the crystal split into a dozen thin, even cross-sections, each one sliding apart. The pieces fell to the ground and turned to dust as they separated from my body.
Taking a step backwards, I glared again at the Faerie Queen, and for the last time I asked her a question:
"Are you our enemy, Ciara?"
"That is a more apt question…" Her words were ethereal, multiple voices overlapping over each other even as the 'main' one was loudest, "I don't wish to be, interloper."
Her distaste dripped from the word as she spoke.
My arm reformed as I sat down once again, briefly turning my attention back to the meeting in the other room.
Bastard Son had made the Elite's stance on the situation very clear: they were not going to help. The same went for the Yàngbǎn. While when it came to Moord Nag and the Birdcage prisoners, they had simply asked for too outrageous a price. The former had asked for five thousand lives, while the latter asked for their freedom.
It spoke to the monstrosity of the Birdcage prisoners that Moord Nag's request hadn't been the one to be refused on the spot.
Glaistig Uaine sat down by my side, head turned to me. She was fully uninterested in the meeting.
"Do not use that name again," she said, referring to her 'given' name. 'Ciara'.
"Do not threaten me or mine again," I shot back.
"...I'll grant you that, if only to show manners. Three of the noble faeries see you as valuable, and I now can see why."
"Three?"
"The Eye. The High Priest. The Queen Administrator."
Contessa. Eidolon. And…
"Who is the third?"
She pointed her finger towards the room. Towards Tattletale's booth. Only one person among them fit the name.
"Weaver."
"I am the gravekeeper, the undertaker. The Keeper of the Dead. She who collects at the End. While she, the Queen Administrator, was who granted the faerie to us in the first place."
I realized something important.
"You're not talking in metaphors… You're talking about your power's role in the Entity's cycle." The Blasphemies had left me plenty of information regarding the topic.
Glaistig Uaine was so connected to her Shard that she had, willingly or not, understood the true nature of powers. Before even Cauldron… How had Dragon not picked up on this through the years? The Faerie Queen had never been subtle about her obsession with 'faeries', and if such a short exchange had revealed so much…
I focused away from the conversation, from the meeting. My mind raced along the data collected by the Birdcage over the years. Until it met an obstacle. A patch of nothingness. No… An impenetrable wall. Brittle, if you knew your way around it, but impossible to penetrate if you didn't.
This wall had been built to work specifically against AIs. Against Dragon in particular.
'Not yet.' A voice echoed in my head. My voice. Coming from a nearby island separated from my main Shardself.
Something shifted in my mind.
I needed to focus on the moment. Whatever was happening to the Birdcage wasn't important.
"You've gone quiet."
"It is hard to process. You know about the cycle. For how long?"
"Years. The first glimpse of it was when I welcomed the unnatural time-looper among my care. Then, I learnt more by gathering more like he. Those that had taken the faerie's gift by artifice, rather than nature."
"Cauldron's Capes."
"Yes. The sleeping one's faeries were not made mute as the awake one's are. Not to the same degree."
"So you truly know about the End of the World. Why not help?"
"I already explained myself. I am the Keeper of the Dead. I shall collect the fallen at the end of everything, and usher them along the path to their new life, before I too will fall away. It is not my role to stand against the cycle that began before us."
"How stupid."
The Faerie Queen raised an eyebrow at my comment. "Excuse me?"
"The 'Keeper of the Dead', the 'Faerie Queen'. Those titles do not describe you. No. You're a compromised human who has been influenced too much by the Shard that you hold with you. You assign magical qualities to what is in truth only an alien, a true invader to your world. And instead of rebelling against the monster who has fucked with your mind, you decided to give in to the delusions."
"..." She was lost for words. Anger was building up inside her, but she had made a promise not to make threats.
The meeting in the other room concluded as expected. Most of the villains had decided not to help, spearheaded by Bastard Son and Teacher. But at least the Thanda and Marquis had decided to give up their greed for the chance to save the world.
I stood up, glancing down towards the child that the Faerie Queen was. Both physically and mentally.
"I don't know if you sought kinship in me, or if you saw me as a threat. In either case, it has become clear that you're not going to help. At least not now. I cannot afford to try and kill you here and now, not with so much at stake, but don't mistake my mercy for permission. I'll tell you what I've told another parahuman, one who like you lost sight of her humanity in the past:
"Be better. Look at what we're trying to desperately accomplish with the tools we have. I know you can leave the Birdcage, so do so and glance upon the wonders of the world and humanity. Try to understand what the 'faeries' you so love took from you, and what you yourself took from others.
"Or don't. Continue to stay locked in your prison, in your delusion. Prove to me that you're not human, and that you're beyond saving. So that when I come to take your head, I will feel no remorse in doing so."
The Faerie Queen continued to look up at me silently, her expression now hidden by a looming darkness.
"Door me, Birdcage," I spoke to the air. The gateway appeared.
Glaistig Uaine stood up, and quietly walked beyond the dimensional door. She looked back for a moment before the door fully closed. As though she wanted to say something.
But didn't.
She left me to the silence of the room.