Eventually the day approaches. Parahumans are arrayed to fight if there's a fight, String Theory has n-tuple checked her work and verified that it'll blow up the correct planet, and Promise is in position to make a gate from the empty world to Scion's and get out of the blast radius.

It would be unutterably hilarious if after all this it turns out that Scion's real body isn't a gateable location at all.

And yet:

Gate.

The device is several scaled-up F-drivers, pointed in different downward directions. Each of them more powerful than the weapon that would knock the moon out of orbit, they aren't trying to destroy Scion's planet's orbit. It'll do that too, but spiraling into the sun would take time. Instead, it's aimed to provide its astronomical amounts of force to a variety of points in the planet. One is directed straight down, to shatter the continent it's landing on and slam through the interior of the planet. Others to pass harmlessly through the rock for most of the distance to the opposite surface, then erupt outward. With enough angles, everywhere on the planet has an earth-shattering weapon pointed at it. And to make there not be a planet at all any more, that just takes supplying enough energy to overcome the whole thing's gravity. This was built by String Theory, and it was designed to make the planet go Alderaan.

The weapon fires. With everyone watching him, Scion disappears.

The entity feels it. Something hit it, on the world where its real body is. The host species can't have done this; the entity observed their capabilities before selecting them and interdimensional travel is far beyond it. The shards can't have done this; they had safeguards added in many cycles ago making them incapable of seeing or reaching worlds like that one. Some could not be prevented, powers that could reach that target through this avatar, but few of them. And precognition automatically moves the entity out of the way of such attacks. Nothing happened here.

The entity's avatar vanishes, returning to its world. It sees the planet broken, seas evaporated, and severe damage to many of its shards. It clasps its avatar's hands in front of it, a sphere spreading out and stilling everything in its path. Earthquakes stop, rocks settle back into their assigned places, and many of the shard clusters are undamaged. The entity looks at the device that caused this destruction. It is familiar, technology copied from a host species cycles ago. A shard did do this. The entity recalibrates its precognitive ability. Not only protecting against those powers that can strike at it through its golden avatar, it will provide a method of eliminating anything that enters his earth. The next such attack will be over before it can begin. The entity manifests its avatar again, taking care to look exactly as before. It quickly finds the world the device came from. No recognition; that world is empty. It returns to the primary destination, where most of its shards' hosts are, to look for who caused this attack.

To the eyes of the world, Scion reappears. And he's angry.

Well, fuck.

This is really the wrong time to try talking, but all Promise's sorcerous tasks can be handled by others, she wrote down Moord Nag's name with all the others for emergencies, and she knows where she'll respawn and has stuff prepped there if necessary, and other sorcerers are manning the artillery gates, and the Kept and fairies all have their orders stable for now -

"Door to Scion -"

It's that organism again. The one that managed to talk to him, and gave him a directive that didn't help anything. And, apparently, that injured him. Not that he looks it.

Recognition.
Role.
Ineffective.

He raises a hand to threaten her. He wants her dead, exactly, killing her is just the obvious thing to do after someone manages to hurt him.

The entity remembers. A gray planet, covered in silt and water, every available space in all versions of that planet filled with the ancestors of its kind. Competing and fighting each other, eventually sacrificing the planet and most of the population in order to move beyond it to stars and planets that aren't so crowded with entities that they need to fight each other.

Tangle. The entity speaks, describing what fighting each other means to its kind, but how much the strange organism's ability can translate is a different question.

Cooperation.
Cycle.

She gets... some of that.

"You could change roles. The mortals used to think of you as a defender, a hero -"

Goal.
Cycle.
Endpoint.

The feared endpoint is the same as the tangle they came from, but in every space in all accessible universes, with no other way to expand except against one another.

The concept that comes across as "endpoint" is in no way related to the fact that a golden beam lanced from his hand to eradicate both Promise and the United Kingdom.

Promise wakes up in her tree stark naked with Yellow shaking her, which is really unpleasant for about four seconds until she remembers what's going on. She lets him prattle through her standard safety order renewal/rescindment and puts in a backup self-destruct and pulls on a replacement dress.

Time to do something else.

How is the fight going?

To the extent that there's a fight, not very well. There are few capes that can take a blow from Scion and get back up, and fewer that can meaningfully hurt him. He frequently doesn't bother to dodge or block, even regenerating his entire body from almost nothing without seeming concerned. But each attack is less effective than it was the previous time. Some of Scion's attacks target particular capes, some are labeled 'to whom it may concern,' and others are about applying an eraser to the map.

The good news, if it counts as good, is that he's not always doing this on Bet. He switches between realities, usually opening with larger scale destruction and then fighting the capes that follow him. He hasn't gone to any worlds Cauldron's portal network can't follow yet, and capes are still willing to join the fight. Of course this does mean that if they lose there are more worlds than Bet on the line.

The good news is, it's not all dependent on that fight. The Fairyland contingent is launching powers or weaponry into the world where Scion keeps his real body as quickly as the sorcerers can make gates. There's no way to tell if it's doing any meaningful damage, but every time such an attack is launched Scion disappears from the current battlefield to block the attack and retaliate through the gate or simply destroy it. He has yet to come fully through a gate, but the Fairyland side of the fight suspects that he would make it in time long before they manage to finish him.

From the entity's point of view, each such attack forces the use of precognition, one of the most expensive abilities. It burns time off the entity's life span, of which only approximately three thousand years remain without completing the cycle. It can only do this millions of times, but the attackers don't need to know there even is a limit.

Promise pops over to Moord Nag to order her to use the already-dead and get in the fight. If Moord Nag survives the experience she'll apologize later.

"Door to Panacea," she says next.

Moord Nag joins the fight. She's a powerful cape, but isn't singlehandedly affecting the outcome. Still, nonsapient minions are among the best resources available.

Promise will find Panacea near one of the battlefields Scion is cycling between, enabling capes who can't take a hit from Scion and get back up to get back up.