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Yesterday, this was an ordinary twenty-first century city. Today it's a war zone, tomorrow it'll be walled off and abandoned.
A few collapsed buildings, shattered streets, and assorted craters. The place is mostly empty, with scattered groups of mostly humanoid monsters roaming and trying to escape the guarded fence around the city. The most instantly noticeable change is an ongoing wordless singing in the back of the mind of anyone present. By itself it's just a sound. An unpleasant sound, and almost but not quite predictable as if someone were trying to attack the listener's sanity without saying anything, but possible to ignore. But along with it, any time a listener closes their eyes they get flashes of memories. Not their worst memories, but whatever negative ones can stick with them unforgettably. It builds up associations between the feelings in those images and almost anything else. Sometimes there's a recognizable common thread and other times there isn't.
An angel fights off teams of opponents. She's fifteen feet tall, extremely winged, with more wings than is strictly necessary for an angel. Even some of her wings have wings. All of them are asymmetric and varyingly sized. A spherical halo of weaponry surrounds her, firing at her more distant enemies from across the battlefield. Her opponents cycle in and out: a golden man, a man surrounded by a bubble, a woman in a dark costume, all flying. Others make certain to stay away after taking their turn, on rare occasions spending too long hearing the angel's music. Those ones voluntarily self-destruct.
A small group of ordinary humans takes refuge in a house as far from the battle as they can reach. The song is quieter here, and, they hope, less potent. Some of them run away from and back to the house, occasionally calling for help. They haven't found any.
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ertia
"The dropoff is faster than the rampup, so it can get very bad if I sleep in. Besides, what else am I gonna do with myself?"
wormcan
"Well, if it's what you'd be doing anyway. And I'm definitely not about to try to convince you otherwise."
ertia
"I guess I could read more. But I get some reading in when I'm doing things that don't require a lot of attention."
wormcan
"How much does healing take?"
Panacea has more or less stopped healing here entirely; as soon as they walk into a room there is suddenly no one who needs to be cured.
Panacea has more or less stopped healing here entirely; as soon as they walk into a room there is suddenly no one who needs to be cured.
ertia
"Not that much, but I do have to look at what I'm doing often enough to make looking at a book annoying. Flying doesn't take much."
ertia
"If I can get down to no sleep and most cities are as full of things to do as this one I'm planning to resurrect the dead."
ertia
"I don't know exactly. It depends very much on how much I have to do and whether I have to sleep."
wormcan
"I mean more." She looks around, between healings, and confirms that no one's listening. "I can do brains. I don't, but I can."
wormcan
"Easy. I see everything about people's bodies whenever I touch them, brain included. I know what a tired brain does and doesn't look like and how to change it.
What would be complicated would be to change it so you don't need sleep."
What would be complicated would be to change it so you don't need sleep."
wormcan
"I was thinking it'd be easier to fake. If you stop sleeping ever, then you got powerful enough to do it to yourself. If you're constantly coming here, or wherever I happen to be, people might suspect something."
wormcan
"Definitely not. No one knows there's a normal progression for your power at all, unless you've told anyone else of course."
wormcan
"I could try it. I think I could do it, but I never do anything without permission, especially this."
wormcan
"I haven't gotten anything wrong at all recently, but that's always on regular sicknesses and injuries. Normally if I mess up I can just put things back and try again, but with brains... who knows. There's a reason I tell people I can't do brains."
ertia
"I don't know how much I can keep you on track with magic, either. Can you try it on animals or something? Animals sleep."