The Grimoire's Chosen Ch. 89 (Worm AU/Celestial Grimoire) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Taylor has opinions, ofc.

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It hadn’t even been a month. That’s what really got to her and what Taylor suspected most people didn’t know or understand. It hadn’t even been a month.

Less than two months ago, Taylor had triggered with the power to control bugs. At first, she’d been crestfallen. It felt like everything Emma had ever said about her was vindicated. A power like that… how could she feel like anything less than a bug herself?

It was Jason who had made her feel better, even if he didn’t know what was going on with her at the time. It was knowing that he would be there at the coffee shop where they both worked for way too little money and way too much bullshit that had kept her getting up in the morning and putting one foot in front of the other.

Admittedly, Taylor had known her obsession with the slightly older college student wasn’t exactly healthy at that time. And yet… it had all worked out for the best in the end.

Still, less than two months since she triggered… and less than a month since Jason triggered, Taylor was pretty sure. She’d been keeping tabs on him with her swarm from the moment she thought to do it after all, and unless he’d gone weeks without using his powers, she could pinpoint the exact moment he’d gone from a normal human being… to the start of absolute bullshit that he’d wound up becoming.

They’d gone from her and Jason fucking in the back of that coffee shop to him tutoring Victoria Dallon, to beating Hookwolf, exposing Brockton Bay’s PRT Director as a supervillain, and announcing Covenant, to ending the Endbringer Threat once and for all by neutering the Simurgh… and then stopping a genocidal Scion literally the very next day.

Fuck, they hadn’t even made it to the end of the month in regard to Vicky’s tutoring sessions!

This was all to say… as things happened very, very quickly in the days following Scion’s ‘demise’, Taylor could tell that those who didn’t understand were experiencing serious whiplash. She was different though. In large part because her power allowed her not only to offset the mental load into her swarm, but also her Behemoth. Between those two things, Taylor was able to keep up… just barely.

After the fight was over, after Scion was ‘defeated’, Jason started off by taking all of Covenant aside and explaining things to them. Well no, not quite that. The very first thing he’d done actually… had been stripping Eidolon of his powers.

Taylor admittedly hadn’t understood at the time why or what was happening, but after learning later what had made Jason so angry, she got it. He’d been literal minutes away from starting on a long but hopefully deathless process to dealing with the Scion problem… when Eidolon had decided to pick a fight with the alien entity all by himself.

There was an argument to be made that Eidolon had suffered some kind of psychotic break and that was probably why Jason hadn’t outright killed him for his actions, but Taylor fully stood behind his decision to take the man’s powers away from him and put him in a coma until his fate could be decided by others.

Frankly, after Jason told her and the rest of Covenant the full story, Taylor was of the opinion that Alexandria and maybe Legend deserved similar treatment. And all of the other members of Cauldron certainly didn’t deserve to continue wielding the powers they’d so absurdly abused as far as she was concerned.

Still… they were cooperating and Jason had a plan, so for the moment, Taylor had held her tongue and let things go. She had full faith that Jason would make the right calls at the end of the day, and so did the rest of Covenant. He’d proven it time and time again, after all.

After he’d finally sat them all down and explained everything he’d discovered regarding Cauldron and them basically playing games with society and people’s lives for as long as parahumans had been around, Jason had then explained how he’d handled Scion.

Finding out that Dragon was an AI was startling enough… finding out that Jason believed she was the best possible choice to give nearly unlimited power and avert total catastrophe was… well, Taylor trusted Jason. She really, really did.

And to be fair, so far as the days had gone on, he’d been proven right time and time again. Dragon’s control over Scion’s Network might have given the AI truly unfathomable power, but she’d put that power to good use, starting with all of Cauldron’s prisoners.

Scion, it turned out… had been an idiot. At the very least, Dragon was many times smarter than the alien entity, and therefore able to leverage the power now at her fingertips in ways Scion either hadn’t been able to think of, or simply never would have chosen to do.

She’d started by assimilating the remains of what Cauldron called ‘Eden’, the other alien entity that they’d murdered over thirty years prior and then harvested for powers to sell in their shitty little vials. Once Dragon was in charge of Eden’s dead network, she was able to start fixing all of Cauldron’s prisoners, with Jason’s help of course.

Together, the two of them had managed to turn a problem affecting thousands upon thousands of poor innocent souls into something that was solved in less than a day, rather than weeks or months. From there, they’d been sending people back to their original worlds when possible and looking into other options for them when not.

The rest of Covenant wasn’t idle during this time either. They were sort of outed now as extremely powerful capes on the same level as the Triumvirate after all, with everyone believing that the transformed Endbringers Taylor and the others were controlling were new members as well.

Seeing as Scion had pretty much wiped Houston and Los Angeles off the map in his rampage, nobody was questioning Covenant fighting him… instead it was universal praise from the Americas at the very least. There were some pundits on the other side of the world questioning if Scion was ‘right’ to start trying to wipe out cities in the United States and if he ‘knew something they didn’t’, but nobody was willing to outright accuse Covenant of anything truly nefarious given the power they’d displayed.

So while Jason and Dragon handled Eden’s remains and Cauldron’s prisoners, Taylor and the other members of Covenant had begun reaching out to Case 53s all over Earth Bet with the help of the Protectorate and the PRT. Legend and Alexandria were at least good enough for that much, Taylor supposed.

Explaining to Case 53s that they would all be healed soon, and to prepare themselves for a return to human form, had been both a singularly satisfying experience AND a singularly trying one. The distrust was understandable of course, but the hope from those willing to believe made it all worth it.

And indeed, a day after they’d contacted as many Case 53s as they could, Dragon and Jason had gone ahead and repeated the fix they’d performed on Cauldron’s patients. With understanding that the Case 53s could approach the government for assistance as not just their bodies but also their memories were returned to them… well, Taylor was just glad that Covenant was performing oversight on the matter rather than having to deal with that clusterfuck directly.

Finally, that brought them to today. It had been mere days since Scion’s rampage. As far as the public was concerned, he’d just gone mad and flipped on them all of the sudden. Because Eidolon had attacked him over the sea, very few people actually knew that Scion had been provoked like he was.

Still, the damage done by Scion’s thankfully short attack was still… immense. Two entire cities of people nearly wiped out to the last. Millions dead.

Which is why Taylor very much hopes this works as she stands next to Jason, both of them in costume just like the rest of Covenant. As Portent, Jason holds his staff high while at the same time drawing upon not only his own energy reserves, but also the energy of all twenty Endbringers… and the energy of Dragon and the combined networks she now presides over.

All of Covenant, their Endbringers, the excess Endbringers, and Dragon are lending Jason power at this moment as he points his staff directly at the ruins of Houston in front of them.

He doesn’t say anything. There’s no magical incantation or anything like that. But Taylor knows in her heart by this point that Jason is no ordinary parahuman. She’s seen the demons. She’s seen the blood magic. She’s seen it all… or so she thought until now.

Before all of their eyes, time almost seems to flow backwards in front of them. The Texan City comes back into being inch by inch, yard by yard, mile by mile. Buildings and cars and roads and people are all reconstituted in their final moments before Scion wiped them off of the map without even batting an eye.

Taylor and the other members of Covenant are not idle as this reconstitution is completed. Using their combined abilities as well as Dragon, they’re able to see the amount of death and injury that would occur from the shock of being brought back like this… and mitigate it entirely. The emotional impact of dying and being brought back to life is something else entirely, of course. Mentally, the population of Houston is going to have to work on some things. But physically… physically, every last person that Scion killed is saved. Not a single one of them stays dead.

It takes less than a minute for Jason to reconstitute the city and everyone living in it. It takes about fifteen for Covenant and Dragon to ensure that everyone brought back doesn’t die or suffer grievous injury again from being brought back in the first place.

Then, with that settled and FEMA and the PRT as well as half a dozen other government agencies start moving in around them to begin helping the city get back on its feet properly, Jason twists his staff and teleports all of them to another state entirely.

Landing outside of California, Taylor finds her footing instantly and sees that her teammates all do the same. More people from the government are already there waiting for them and pleasantries are exchanged along with a handshake for a moment.

Then, Jason turns towards the remains of Los Angeles and they do the exact same thing they did in Houston. He casts and guides the magic while they all provide him with as much power as they can. Then, once the city and all of its inhabitants have been reconstituted, they reach out as a team to make sure everyone stays in one piece.

By the time it’s over, even Taylor is feeling a bit of a mental toll and that’s through her offloading. Every other member of Covenant, meanwhile, is sweating bullets and pale faced, having exerted themselves in the extreme. Jason stands tall though, head held high, shoulders squared… and Taylor can’t help but move to his side in that moment.

Others might have only come to understand Jason’s importance in recent days or weeks, but for Taylor… for Taylor, nothing had ever changed. From the very first moment that they’d met, Jason had been a lifeline in an ocean of misery, depression, and despair for her. He was the light of every day for her, the main reason she found to keep going. He always had a smile for her, always had a kind word, and always had her back no matter what.

Now, as he turns at her approach and offers a big, wide, satisfied smile to her, Taylor can’t help but smile back, giving him a nod in response.

Whatever happened next would happen. But with Jason at the helm, Taylor knew that things were going to get better from here on out. Earth Bet was going to get better… because it finally had someone with real power truly looking after it.

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A/N: Much like with Endless Legacy, if the majority votes for the ‘FINALE’ option, then I will take it to mean you want to skip the other options and go right to the final chapter of the fic. The ‘FINALE’ option will remain until we have gone through every other option that people want to see in the coming weeks!

Remember to Vote, leave a Like, and let me know what you think!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rsEo6PcBULxubGUdsKVejuFsazxSz7wzldBsb_JD8I/edit?tab=t.0

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A/N: Will try to keep this up to date at the end of every chapter, get on me if I forget please. Though if it gets too out of hand, I might have to change it at some point.

Jason's current banked points:

700 Celestial Points

Jason's current banked power:

Darkin Weapon (400 Points)

Jason's current powers:

= Flash Air (Gained in Chapter 1

= Transformation Pendant (Gained in Chapter 4)

= Keen Eye (Gained in Chapter 4)

= Blood, Death, and Demons (Gained in Chapter 6)

= Alchemical Prodigy (Gained in Chapter 8)

= Staff of Magnus (Gained in Chapter 13)

= Bind and Seal (Gained in Chapter 17)

= Hero of a Hundred Faces: Everyone's Leader (Gained in Chapter 20)

= Minor Regeneration via Blood Empowerment Ritual (Gained in Chapter 23)
(Taylor got Major Agility, Vicky got Major Intelligence)

= Restraining Order (Gained in Chapter 25)

= Focus (Gained in Chapter 28)

= Scarborough Fair (Gained in Chapter 30)

= Chaos Magic (Gained in Chapter 36)

= Major Regeneration via Blood Empowerment Ritual (Gained in Chapter 40)
(Taylor, Vicky, and Amy all got Minor Regeneration)

= A Collection of Magic Rings (x6 Cursed Rings, x12 Drawback Rings, x6 Buff Rings) (Gained Chapter 44)

= Jason: T3 Armor Ring + Blue Ring, Taylor: T3 Armor Ring + Expert’s Ring, Vicky: Red Ring + T2 Heart Ring, Amelia: T3 Armor Ring + T2 Heart Ring (Handed out Chapter 46)

= Lucky Charm (Gained in Chapter 51)

(Currently worn by Jason as of Ch. 51)

= Presidential Suit (Gained in Chapter 52)

(Currently reshaped to be Jason’s new costume while still looking like the old costume Parian made for him as of Chapter 56)

= Taylor, Vicky, and Amy all get Major Regeneration via Blood Empowerment Ritual (Gained in Chapter 57)

= Jason gains Major Intelligence via Blood Empowerment Ritual (Gained in Chapter 58)

(Crystal and Lisa both get Minor Regeneration)

= Second Skin (Gained in Chapter 58)

= Iron Fist (Gained in Chapter 63)

= Exceptional and Lucky (Gained in Chapter 69)

= Safety Minded (Gained in Chapter 72)

= Oathsworn – Deathless Knight (Boosted by Major Regeneration) (Gained in Chapter 81)

= Covenant Connected to Endbringers – Taylor/Behemoth, Vicky/Leviathan, Amelia/Simurgh, Crystal/Unnamed Endbringer, Lisa/Unnamed Endbringer, Sherrel/Unnamed Endbringer (Gained in Chapter 82)