When she was done, the weapon disappeared.  Sarah hugged her, and she hugged her sister back.

Aww. They’ve just been through hell together and came out the other side with light in their hands.

But yeah, you should probably try to get out of whatever hellhole this is ASAP.

When she cried, it wasn’t the crying of a thirteen year old girl.  It was more basic, more raw: the uncontrolled, unrestrained wail one might expect of a baby.

Poor thing. 😦

When she struck him in the leg, the weapon sheared through without resistance.  That’s good, her thoughts were strangely disconnected from everything else, because I can’t hit very hard right now.

Woah. Did she just cut off his leg with a magic baseball bat?

Also I didn’t want to reference the Wheel of Time a second time in the previous post, but I can’t just ignore it anymore: Carol’s state of mind here is very reminiscent of the Void, a state of mind that puts emotions to the side, making them barely noticeable. In the Wheel of Time, it’s a crucial step to access magic, and also really good for archery and swordfighting.

He screamed as he fell to the ground, his leg severed.

She hit him again, then again, much like Sarah had with the other man.  Except this wasn’t simply beating him to a pulp.  It was more final than that.

Yeah, that “bat” seems to be a lot like Armsmaster’s nanobot blade, just going straight through whatever she hits but still doing a ton of damage. I suppose that’s because it’s made of “light and energy and electricity”, rather than something more… material.

In other words it acts a lot more like a really sharp sword. A lightsaber, even.

Though I suppose the downside would be an inability to parry incoming melee attacks. Not that melee attacks are a good idea. She may not be able to stop your weapon’s overall movement, but it could still get cut in half where she tries. As could your wrist.

Others were hatching from the same egg, spreading out like sparks from the shell of a firework.

Are you sure they’re others, and not just other parts of the same one?

Each unfolding into something vast and incomprehensible within seconds of its birth.

But her attention was on the first.  She felt it reach out and connect with another that shared a similar trajectory.  Still more were doing the same, pairing off.  Forming into trios, in some cases, but most chose to form pairs.

Interesting. This reminds me of the meeting we saw in Infestation. Which I suppose may have been some sort of mating dance, but this seems to indicate that the dance partners are siblings, in whatever way and to whatever extent that term may or may not apply to these beings. Maybe that doesn’t matter to their kind. Or maybe there’s just one egg per generation and multiple separate gene matchups.

But that assumes way more than I actually know about their reproduction and biology. Genes, for one thing, and the notion that they reproduce sexually. Hell, we’ve been calling them Dandelions because of how they look when they die, but what if that applies here too? What if the egg is somehow a part of one Dandelion’s life cycle – i.e. the egg is, in a sense, a Dandelion in itself, or at least made by only one – and the baby Dandelions are like the seeds blowing from a dandelion… am I making any sense at this point?

In any case, my point is, I have no guarantee that this works anything like we humans are prone to assuming.

A mate?  A partner?

Each settled into a position around the ruined egg, embracing their chosen companions, rubbing against, into and through one another as they continued to grow.

Wait, was I onto something when it came to it being a mass-egg of multiple matchups? Are they fixing up the egg and refertilizing it?

Ooh, or maybe the dandelion metaphor was on point and the seeds just haven’t let go of the plant’s core yet?

The egg vibrated. Or did it?  No, it was an illusion.  There were multiple copies of the egg, multiple versions, and they each stirred, deviating from one another until subtle double images appeared.

Multiple eggs from multiple realities?

Then, one by one, they crumpled into a single point.  The egg at the center of the formation of these creatures was the last, and for the briefest of moments, it roiled with the pressure and energy of all of the others.

Then it detonated, and the creatures came alive, soaring out into the vastness of the void, trails of dust following in their wake, each with a partner, a companion, traveling in a different direction.

Holy shit I think I was right.

Hmm. Maybe the ultimate apocalyptic threat also exists across realities, and that’s why its arrival is a certainty in all timelines? Except then why would Jack Slash make a difference to when it arrives?

A crack split the ground.  Once the dust had settled, nothing happened for a long time.

More cracks.

Are the Dandelions coming up this time?

Not literally but kind of literally?

It’s an egg, she realized, just in time to see it hatch.

So this flat plain is… a surface of an enormous, probably 4+ dimensional egg? We saw the apparent death of a Dandelion with Karahindiba, are we now seeing one’s birth?

Hey, does the sky look different in any way?

The egg’s occupant tore free from the crack, unfolding from a condensed point to grow larger with every moment and movement.

That sounds like a Dandelion, alright.

How adorable are they as babies?

Are they babies? Or do they just come out fully grown? Can you even tell when you can’t see one or more of their dimensions and they seem to exist across realities?