The Invincible made landfall at the fortified port of Traigor on the largest of the Quothan Isles. Smoke still wafted from scorch marks along the hull where Nidhoggr's fury had lashed them, a visceral reminder of how close they'd come to oblivion.
As soon as the gangplank lowered, Eleanor was greeted by a delegation of the island council - wizened figures swathed in embroidered robes of state. They bowed low, but their eyes widened at the sight of the massive trans-spatial cannon Shane had rigged onto the foredeck.
"Your Majesty," the eldest greeted, sweeping an arm toward the winding street beyond the docks. "The Lady Amethyst has already preceded you. She awaits your arrival at Salomon's Guesthouse just beyond the zocalo."
Eleanor nodded tightly, impatience simmering already. "Well enough. See that my effects are transferred there directly."
Without awaiting a response, she turned and swept past them, her personal guard falling into step. Let the doters and functionaries deal with minutiae. Her focus remained utterly fixed on the next phase.
Shane fell into step just behind her, tucking a battered journal into his coat. "I must say, the look on those old walruses' faces was priceless. You'd think they'd never seen a focused lithilomagnetic disruptor matrix before."
Eleanor shot him a sidelong glance. "Keep that insane monstrosity under strict lock and guard, Corverati. I want no risk of your infernal devices running riot through the streets when our situation is precarious enough as-is."
The engineer clutched his coat in an exaggerated pantomime of reproach. "Running riot? Why, I'm wounded at the very implication of such unfounded aspersions against my consummate professionalism!"
He puffed out his chest with a wheezing exhale, waistcoat straining against the rotund bulge of his midsection. "You wound me, dear lady. This peerless intellect knows nothing but discretion and restraint!"
Eleanor rolled her eyes without breaking stride. "Yes, and I'm a daffodil of pure innocence, sprouting untarnished by worldly impurities."
As if to punctuate her derision, a muffled boom rolled out from the direction of the docked Insaziabile, audible even over the clamor of the market crowds. Eleanor didn't even turn as Shane's exaggerated look of pious bafflement fled his expression.
"Oh honestly, not again. Simmons must've botched the lithilitine doggle-connectors when I had him rerouting the coolant intakes. Useless pillock..."
He turned and scampered off back the way they'd come, indistinct shouting already echoing across the harbor. Eleanor shook her head, fighting a weary smile of resignation.
For as much headache as that maniacal mechanic caused, she thanked all rationality his brilliance - however chaotic - was squarely on her side. Left to her own martial resources, Eleanor had no delusions they'd have survived Nidhoggr's incursion.
A world-extinguishing armageddon averted by Shane's timely, unorthodox intervention. If the path ahead held more such cataclysms in store...she shuddered to think what manner of madcap wonders might become necessities.
Soon, the whitewashed villas and pagoda rooftops of the heart of Traigor resolved into view. Amethyst awaited on the shaded veranda of the Salomon Guesthouse, a decadently-appointed hacienda hewn from bleached sandstone.
"Majesty," the sorceress inclined her head as Eleanor approached, iron-gray tresses swept back over her shoulders. "We have much to discuss regarding our next moves. And strategies to weigh most carefully..."
A servant materialized beside them, bowing obsequiously toward a yawning archway. "The most luxurious suite has been prepared per your instructions, Honored One. If you would follow me?"
Eleanor flicked a glance at Amethyst, then nodded brusquely in acquiescence. Let the commoners tend to niceties while greater affairs played out behind proverbial curta
As they strode within, Eleanor couldn't shake a nagging sense of trepidation. For all their proactive strikes against Vincent's vile pact, his true endgame remained maddeningly nebulous.
Which meant, in turn, the true depths of the horrors potentially yet to be unleashed were anyone's guess...
Eleanor settled into the suite's plush sitting room, sinking into an overstuffed divan with a weary exhalation. Amethyst opted for a high-backed chair, her piercing eyes missing nothing as servants laid out a modest spread of fruits and chilled wines.
Once they had withdrawn, leaving the two women alone, Eleanor arched an eyebrow. "Well? I can only assume you've been pursuing avenues of lore to better grasp the full extent of what we're facing."
Amethyst's expression took on a grim cast as she steeled her fingers.
"Indeed. Though the paths I've trod have only compounded the profundities we're dealing with." She paused, seemingly marshaling her words with care.
"Suffice it to say, Vincent has not merely dipped his toe into eldritch waters that should never be disturbed. He has thrown himself into their abyssal depths with no intention of ever resurfacing into the light."
She rose in a single lithe movement, crossing to the bay windows overlooking the villa's lush courtyard. "His obsession has carried him far beyond the realms of mortal comprehension. I've delved into forbidden grimoires myself, plumbed metaphysical strata where malefic entities gnash and gibber in eternal hunger..."
With a shudder, Amethyst shook her head as if to dislodge some haunting vision. "Compared to the cosmic profanities he has courted to attain his ambitions, even those horrors pale into insignificance."
Eleanor felt a chill run down her spine at the sorceress's words. If the mere echos of Vincent's dealings could unsettle even Amethyst so viscerally...
"So you've no clearer idea what unholy pact he's truly enacted?" she asked, keeping her tone carefully neutral. "No insight into this 'unmaking of reality' you described?"
Amethyst turned, mouth a flat line as she regarded Eleanor for a long moment. "Oh, I caught glimpses, to be sure. Fragmented visions, hallowed runes, whispers of entities that have persisted since the blind idiot god first dreamed existence into semi-being."
One hand idly toyed with an amulet at her throat - a tarnished disc etched with flowing markings that seemed to shift and wriggle at the corner of Eleanor's vision. "Pacts, rituals, incantations that predate recorded time, all bent toward a singular, mad purpose."
When next Amethyst spoke, her voice held a cadence more suited to warding rites against the most profane of adversaries. "To unravel the anchoring firmaments that gird and shield our realm from...elsewhere. To punch a cosmogonic fissure, an infinity gate between our world and that undying kingdom beyond all grace and mercy."
A pit of dread formed in Eleanor's stomach, a visceral response to those grim portents that transcended rational thought. If even half of what Amethyst described was accurate...
The sorceress seemed to pluck Eleanor's revulsion from her mind, offering a thin smile utterly devoid of warmth. "Yes, Your Majesty. You perceive the stakes at hazard now, do you not? No mere clash of mortal armies or worldly forces."
One hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist, as if grasping at some phantasmal cohesion. "If Vincent's insanities bear their ultimate, blasphemous fruit...then an eternity of shrieking chaos and endless unmaking will be the least of existence's new paradigms."
A leaden silence fell, broken only by the distant cries of gulls wheeling beyond the courtyard. Eleanor found her palm straying to rest on top of the ceremonial dagger at her hip - a talisman of old against evil's banes. Its razor edge glinted in the perpetual twilight suffusing the suite.
At length, she cleared her throat, startling herself with how dry and papery her voice emerged. "So the stakes have never been more existentially dire. Between Vincent's open path to oblivion...and your evident concerns about whatever unholy influences are diverging on our reality as a result..."
Eleanor felt a bead of sweat trickle down her spine despite the suite's airy coolness. She rose abruptly from the divan, needing to move, to physically expend the roiling unease gripping her.
"So we are committed then," she stated, pacing in measured strides across the tiled floor. "To stand and ponder the way of a profane dissolution too immense for our frail minds to fully conceive. Barriers between worlds made tenuous, if not outright shattered, by Vincent's reckless invocations."
Amethyst watched her with that same unreadable intensity as a serpent fixating on its prey. "You have uttered it plain, Your Majesty, for all that the notion defies rational analysis. We face nothing less than the unraveling of reality itself should he succeed in punching that cosmogonic fissure."
Eleanor whirled on her with a ferocity that made the sorceress's eyebrows lift in surprise. "Then we cannot hold back any potential recourse, no matter how unorthodox or disruptive. If archaic mystical forces are marshaled against us, we must seek cutting-edge material countermeasures."
From somewhere outside, a muffled bang and cheers reached them, as of raucous revelry spilling from a tavern's open windows. Eleanor didn't even break stride.
"Which is where your...specialized skillset comes into consideration, Shane," she asked inwardly.
She turned as the doors opened, admitting a slightly singed but otherwise unruffled Shane Corverati. He sketched an ironic bow, grinning around his pipe stem.
"Ah, so sorry to have missed the starting salvo in whatever bout of ritualistic doom-brokering kicked off without me."
Eleanor leveled a look at him that could have bored through basalt. "This is no time for levity. We have been apprised of the..." She searched for succinct phrasing. "...cosmological magnitude of what Vincent has set into motion."
Shane took this in with an considering look, puffing out a stream of aromatic smoke to waft across the room in defiance of the open windows' cross-breeze. "Hmm. As I suspected then - he's gone and cocked it up in a rather terminal sort of way, has he?"
Without waiting for a response, the eccentric engineer was off again, gesticulating with his pipe as he meandered between sitting nooks. "Well, that simply shan't do at all! Here I've invested far too much genius into expanding the industrial frontiers of human ingenuity. Be a dashed shame to let it all unravel to first principles before I've even finalized the schematics on my Reciprocating Differential Biomancer!"
Eleanor opened her mouth, then closed it slowly as Shane continued his meandering monologue, apparently thinking aloud. "No, dash it all, we'll simply have to accelerate our timetables for giving these extradimensional upstarts a jolly good existential routing, won't we?"
He punctuated this pronouncement with a decisive nod, seemingly satisfied he'd grasped the situation's metaphysical stakes. "Yes indeed. We must undertake the implementation of an all-encompassing universal paradigm disestablishmentarianism post-haste!"
He ended with a self-satisfied puff of smoke, smiling serenely at the two dumbfounded women as if everything was settled. Eleanor felt her eye developing an insistent tic.
"...what in the nine hells are you prattling about now, Corverati?"
Shane blinked at her as if she were quite simple. "Why, the finer points of negating literal ontological discrimination against our home cosmos, naturally. You don't think I've dedicated the last two decades delving into fringe arcanatech purely for metallurgical titillation, do you?"
With a brooding look, Amethyst placed herself directly in his path, fixing him with a simmering look. "You dare suggest that your mortal tinkering might counterbalance the unshackling of principalities and realities that predate your kind's primordial genesis?"
For a long moment, a silent battle of wills seemed to play out between them. Then, shockingly, Shane threw back his head and brayed a laugh of utter delight.
"Oh, this dream-gulper really does have the pride of the ancients encoded into her DNA matrices, doesn't she?" He grinned at Eleanor, who could only gape.
"Don't fret, Majesty. I'll have you covered when the esoteric inevitably fumbles the eschatological ball, as is their perpetual tendency." His eyes danced with tireless, manic energy.
"After all, at the end of every universal epoch, there must always be an encore!"
Eleanor pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting a mounting headache as Shane and Amethyst's metaphysical power-measuring contest showed no signs of abating.
"Enough, both of you!" Her commanding tone cut through their escalating stare-down like a blade. "Shane, I understand your...unbridled enthusiasm for upending all conventional understanding. Truly, I do."
She leveled a reproachful look at the unrepentant engineer. "But must you always take it to such willfully incomprehensible extremes? Especially at a time when cosmic intelligence is somewhat pressing?"
Shane had the grace to affect a moment's contemplation, puffing on his pipe. "Well, when you put it that way, I can certainly make an effort to rein in the more...avant-garde aspects of my mechanical wit." He aimed a roguish wink at Amethyst, who regarded him with steady disdain.
"Though I maintain that a little bit of an extreme measure of defense now and again is the very spice of life, wouldn't you agree, my dear?"
The sorceress's full lip curled in a wordless sneer.
"Children, please," Eleanor interjected before they could retort. "I've quite enough concerns without indulging your competition for mystical supremacy."
With a sigh, she raked back her windswept hair from her face. "The long and short of it is that Vincent's transgressions appear to be accelerating toward an unthinkable cosmogonic finality - one which may very well imperil reality itself unless we can strike without warning."
Amethyst inclined her head slightly at that, flickering acknowledgment. "You have the right of it, Majesty. For all his delirious bravado, the science lord is ultimately correct - our resources must be marshaled in totality if we are to avert this encroaching unraveling."
She directed a look at Shane that could have frozen stellar furnaces. "Assuming, that is, that his mortal machinations and theories even warrant consideration alongside the higher disciplines..."
Shane made a rude noise, waving his pipe dismissively. "Oh, here we go again, spouting that 'higher disciplines' dribble. As if the maths and material sciences that make the world go 'round aren't more elevated than all your fortune cookie mysticism!"
He shot a conspiratorial look at Eleanor. "Don't think I haven't reverse-engineered funiculi like her amulet, by the way. 90% of the 'esoterica' is just quantum reziprocity harmonics jiggered into ceremonial codswallop."
With a deft flick, he produced a battered brass amulet of his own, etched with intricate fractal whorls glowing with the same eldritch light as Amethyst's talisman. The sorceress went utterly still, eyes blazing with outrage as Shane twirled the pilfered relic idly between his fingers.
"Y-you...profane tinkerer!" She took a dangerous step forward, fists clenched in fury. "Return what is not yours to grasp at, you demented gnatsss--"
"That. Is. ENOUGH!" Eleanor's bellow shook the very foundations of the suite. Both Shane and Amethyst froze in place, their squabble cut off like candle flames snuffed by a smothering blanket.
Eleanor stood trembling slightly from the force of her outburst, chest heaving. She fixed them both with a look that would have cowed rabid wolves.
"I have indulged your childish bickering and dick-waving long enough. In case you have both forgotten amidst your self-indulgent bullshit, we stand upon the brink of an EXISTENTIAL CATACLYSM!"
She jabbed a finger at Shane, then Amethyst in turn. "Your petty squabbling over mystical supremacies and who can negate cosmic negation hardest is precisely why beings like Vincent are capable of dragging reality asunder in the first place!"
The temperature in the chamber seemed to plummet as her blazing tirade struck home. Shane at least had the decency to avert his gaze, mumbling something incoherent around his pipe stem. Amethyst stood utterly motionless, eyes downcast beneath the weight of Eleanor's searing admonishment.
When she finally spoke again, Eleanor's voice was little more than a strained rasp, a desperate plea buried beneath the iron command.
"We are all that stands against the total unraveling. Divided amongst our insular obsessions and competitive ego-stroking...we are already defeated before the battle has even been fully joined."
She shook her head slowly, the reality of their plight settling like an anvil weight upon her shoulders.
"So I will ask this once, and only once more: Can you set aside your resentments long enough to dedicate your fullest wits and efforts to halting this threat? Or would you both prefer to fiddle amongst your theorems while universes burn?"
In the heavy silence that ensued, the air fairly crackled with tension. Finally, almost imperceptibly, Shane and Amethyst exchanged the briefest of glances, a flicker of understanding passing between them.
The engineer was the first to nod, sweeping his cap off in a surprisingly courtly gesture of acquiescence. "Very well, Your Majesty. You have my floccinaucinihilipilification, as ever."
Amethyst's chin dipped in a shallower, more grudging inclination. But her assent was clear.
Drawing a breath that trembled only slightly, Eleanor nodded once in acknowledgment.
"Then we had best marshal our strategies quickly. For the sake of all realities...the Endgame must soon be confronted."