Fortuna Verto

64-Restraining Chains

Axln may have found herself with the situation growing more and more desperate at every passing turn, but things were surprisingly becoming less and less complicated instead. It was becoming glaringly obvious that she had to invest her entire attention into discovering a way to undo the chains of their own misfortune.

Not that such made anything any easier though. Trying to sustain a defense in these circumstances was taking so much out of Axln, having to mount any sort of complicated offense just didn't even seem plausible. Worse remained the exact nature of the offense she would have to mount. All of this misfortune had some sort of origin, some aspect of chaos chosen to generate this sort of performance, with possibly a network of support to make sure that such influence spread. This would imply that there was a source to all of this, a target she could remove which would interrupt this chaotic manipulation of chance. A target.. somewhere across the entire moon. So even if she was free to do her own scouting, she would have to have a scouting area that could potentially expand around the entire moon. This wasn't even the smaller moon either, they weren't quite that lucky. No, that would be the other problem, it would take a miracle to normally deal with the odds of finding this needle in a haystack.. but that was exactly the weapon those fiends had on their side too. This was the immeasurable defense in place to secure their control over luck itself, an all too perfect plan.

"You know, in my time, they were a lot dumber than this." "Please don't use that phrasing to refer to the future, you'll make me feel old." "Well, I'm sorry for being older than my mother. Even so, mom never had problems like this." "You mean, until Lyun died? What sort of strategy did they even kill her off with?" "Strategy? I heard she just had a time when she was caught on another separated battlefield, and mom had to do all the heavy lifting. Lyun didn't take that so well, pressured herself to do better.. pushed herself too far. You can still see that in this Lyun, though she's a lot more.. reserved here. She's still unconscious after a massive display of force, but.. she put a lot of effort into not going overboard, that's not like the Lyun I knew." "But they held attacks that weren't nearly so complicated..." "Oh, the voidspawn? Yeah, a massive hivemind of a stupid swarm, they think as one but they never put so much into it. Now they just seem to be pushing too hard.. like Lyun used to." Mheridz wasn't about to cover just how much Axln had changed too, such wasn't a subject she wanted to broach. Mheridz instead felt like her thoughts were a giant cluster of a mess, with absolutely nothing adding up. With a feeling of logic having escaped her, she was more channeling her father's side.

"Wait, they are panicking! Not only do they fear true chaos, they are also panicking. An ordered response is nothing like their kind, that's exactly against their nature. If they needed to do anything dramatic, it wouldn't be with deliberation or care, it would be with reckless abandon." "Grab the biggest thing handy, over-do it. The moon though was smart.. but it might have also been the handiest place to hide. Instinctually." "That idea probably helps you about as much as it helps me. I doubt either of us have been especially good at instinctual responses." "Maybe, but I would guess we're both familiar with dealing with them. You've probably had a lot more Lyun than I have, even though I've known her for longer.. it wasn't as if I had to predict her responses for most of my life.. that had been something far more apt to this timeline. Instead however, having a cross-world friend that I hardly know, that I've had to work with so constantly.. trying to predict what that girl was up to was even a child's game of mine, because we both had the same circumstances. Insert then this timeline, the whole game became an even bigger deal. Both those two share that one trait, such is all too obvious. So the game is to just predict instinctual responses." This was probably the first time Axln had ever held a true brainstorming session with Mheridz, it was quite the experience too. Predicting instincts.. but where and with what? Chaos was supposed to be pretty simple.

"So, instinctually, they're evasionary. They don't like this thing you keep calling true chaos, so it's like a primal need to avoid it. That's probably why things only really started to go wrong when you went over to the other world, better to spring a trap while you weren't there to see it. If they were smart, they would have invested into a diversionary tactic while you were there.. but they aren't. Probably was more fumbling with whatever ambitions they might have for that world too." "Oh great, so now I have to hurry because the other side could be in danger while I'm stuck here." "Uh, possibly? That world is weird." "Well, the same trick wouldn't work there, so they would need something else. Then again, when you consider their biggest goal, they aren't so much setting out right now to take care of both sides so much as they are trying to deal with Lyun and I. If this becomes enough to deal with us, they would be fine with panning out the rest of this timeline much like how you had seen it." Mheridz knew where Axln's idea led, that having been her life. However, in this case, such a path would lead to an outcome where she wouldn't have even been born.. due to her parent's death. That was a dark path she would far rather avoid.. at almost any cost.