Path of the Immeasurable Swarm
is a crossover between Worm and the Cradle Series by derivativeoflife on Sufficient Velocity.
After defeating Zion and being shot in the head by Contessa, Taylor wakes up in the city of Moongrave, in the iteration of Cradle, as the guest of the Sage of the Silver Heart. For lack of anything better to do she ends up studying the Sacred Arts, and soon is in a position to vastly alter the Fate of Cradle.
This fanfic contains examples of the following:
- Adopted into Royalty: After seeing how fast Taylor is advancing and her developing friendship with Mercy, Malice adopts Taylor into the Akura clan.
- Casting a Shadow: As befits an adopted Akura, Taylor walks a shadow-madra Path. And in the battle outside the Sacred Valley, she ends up manifesting the Shadow Icon.
- Mind Rape: Taylor's primary offensive technique is the Dream Parasites, volleys of living-madra constructs which induce delirium and panic in their targets in addition to spiritual damage.
- Off the Rails: Taylor befriends Akura Mercy early on and helps her to accept her Underlord revelation instead of running away from home. This significantly derails Cradle canon: without spending months as a sealed Lowgold Mercy is able to advance to Overlord on the first day of the Uncrowned King tournament, which in turn lets her beat Sophara in her fights. Mercy then uses the threat of Penance to extort an oath from the Dragon Monarch not to attack Akura lands, before actually using it to destroy the Wandering Titan. This in turn means that there is time to safely evacuate the Sacred Valley. Meanwhile, Mercy's victory and the lack of stress means that Lindon has yet to become a Sage and Ruby has yet to attain an independent personality, let alone merge with Yerin to become a Herald.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Mercy tells Taylor that this is why she was so reluctant to accept "I practice the sacred arts to make my mother proud" as her Underlord revelation.Mercy: No, you don't get it. I'm not… I'm not totally naive. I love my mother, but… I know she's done bad things. Killed people. Lots of them. For now, just advancing as fast as I can is enough to make her proud of me. But what about later? I'll probably reach Archlord before I'm thirty. What happens when she expects me to start actually using my skills? Fighting the Clan's enemies? How… How can I trust myself if I care more about making her proud than doing the right thing?Taylor: Isn't the fact that you're even worried about it a point in your favor?Mercy': Maybe. But it's not like I'm just gonna wake up evil one day. It's more like… She'll ask me to do something I don't really want to do, but it won't be that bad, so I'll do it cause I want to make her happy. And then next time it'll be something a little bit worse, and a little bit worse after that, and one day I'll realize I don't even care anymore.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Due to Taylor's interference, Prince Kiro doesn't end up dying in the Nightwheel Valley, and Meira is taken to Moongrave and gets some counselling from Taylor. By the beginning of Arc 4 Kiro and Meira are engaged and Meira is established as the head of a new sect in territory recently liberated from the Bleeding Phoenix.
- Sparing Them the Dirty Work: This is Taylor's self-assigned role towards Mercy: to be the bared fangs so that Mercy can be the sunny smile. She even takes "I get my hands dirty so that others can keep them clean'' as her Overlord revelation.
- Winged Humanoid: Taylor's Goldsign is a set of dragonfly-like wings that she uses to fly. This was deliberately arranged, as she sought out an insectoid sacred beast called a soul shrike in order to kill it and use its Remnant to ascend to Gold.
- Unique Protagonist Asset: Presumably due to her former status as a parahuman, Taylor possess naturally living madra. This ends up being a foundational part of her Path.
