u/Kingsonne

Hi, my partner and I are looking to reduce our use of meat in our diets. Breakfast sausage scrambles are a frequent staple that we're looking to replace, and we're not sure where to start.

The biggest concern is actually a texture match, not flavor, as we can season however we like, but the tofu scramble recipe we tried ended up more mushy than sausage. Is there a better substitute or better method of preparation for ground pork?

Thanks​

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Thyresia Geldonna, Fourth Executor of the Abidan, sighed as she exited the vivid blue portal of The Way and descended to the surface of Sanctum. This last mission had been... taxing. It felt like it had been decades since she had an easy one. She could check her presence for the exact answer, but she was certain she didn't want to know. What she wouldn't give for a meteor impact or a plague, or even just a nice villain to destroy.

A voice sounded in her head, interrupting her brooding.

"Executor Alpha Four. Sector Control has detected your presence in Sanctum. Present yourself your debriefing immediately or you will be found in contempt of your oaths."

Thyresia sighed again and whisked herself away towards the stout grey building that housed the limited physical needs of the Executor Program. It's diminutive nature didn't insult her nearly so much as the gaudy gold of the Hall of Justice did, but the slight was certainly intentional. The years since Evarin had gone rogue had certainly made the Court's dissatisfaction with her and her colleagues apparent.

Colleague, she mentally corrected. It was just her and Daruman left. Phestos had left to resume control of his home Iteration off in the remote branch of the Way he had ascended from, Charisse had quit, and Evarin had destroyed his last assignment—before being destroyed in turn. Within the safety of her own mind Thyresia could admit that she couldn't blame any of them for their decisions. Not anymore.

If her home had been in a more distant branch of the Way, she might have considered returning there herself. She didn't necessarily desire to be worshipped as a Goddess the way she was certain to be were she to descend nearly four centuries after uniting her people, but it certainly had an appeal when compared to her current treatment.

The pair of Hounds waiting to debrief her radiated contempt and irritation. Whether at her failure to immediately appear within the building upon her arrival or just in reaction to her appearance at all, she didn't care. Her unpredictability within Fate meant the debrief teams needed to be on call at all moments, even when missions could last years at a time. It was the consequence of the decisions they had made after Charisse, the restrictions they had placed upon them. They were welcome to be as grumpy as they liked.

Her two handlers of the day didn't speak as they went to work strapping her into the complex artifact that would extract her memories of the nine local years she had spent on Iteration 614 for dissection and examination. She didn't break the silence either—she had nothing to say.

One of the Hounds vanished further into the complex, her presence in his grasp. It would be scanned of all data on the fluctuations of Fate engendered by her actions in order to bring the network as a whole up to date on prediction indicators. Thyresia would have to purge it of manipulated directives when they returned it, as she always did.

For now, she closed her eyes and tuned out the world and the buzzing and humming of the constructs. It could take hours or days for them to pick apart and critique every decision she had made and to confirm that the new track of Fate Scour had landed on was up to their standards. Not that she particularly cared for their judgments.

Her opinion was unfortunately not considered as the Hound monitoring her memories began questioning and berating her regarding her actions of Scour. Part of her mind remained focused, answering the interrogation with the calm and poise befitting an empress, but the rest drifted.

A thread of Fate opened to Thyresia and she watched with pleasure as a version of herself speared the odious man through the heart with her trident before flinging his body onto the street outside. She particularly enjoyed the look of shock on his face in this future and committed it to memory before dismissing the vision. Dozens of additional possibilities opened up to her mind as she considered all the ways she could shut the odious man up for good.

She always cut off the visions before they progressed too far. This was her secret little game of stress relief, and it would spoil the fun to watch herself get captured or killed by one of the Judges. In front of her, the Hound continued his "evaluation" of all her many supposed inadequacies and mistakes.

It was hard to take a pencil pushing Hound like him seriously, he wouldn't have survived a tenth of the missions she had been on and would have failed on half of any he did survive. It was easy to judge a decision from the safety of Sanctum and from the perspective of hindsight, it was a different story in the moment, when billions of lives were on the line.

Another thread of Fate opened up where she ripped his spine out and flung it through a portal to land at Makiel's feet. Before her, the man continued his supposed debrief without a flicker of recognition or acknowledgment, as those like him always did. It was the reason they distrusted her and the others so much. Blind spots. They had all become blind spots in the Abidan's sight and they hated it, Makiel and the Hounds most of all.

"Is something funny Alpha Four?" He asked suddenly. "Because my calculations show that you could have stabilized Iteration 614 within a mere three months local time. While you were busy playing around, an additional 500 million people died on Iteration 324, and I don't think that's a laughing matter."

The ghost of a smirk that had graced her mouth at the obliviousness of her minder twisted into a sneer. Scour had been full of corruption of the mortal kind. Its leaders boldly marching their world towards its certain destruction just for the sake of just a little more power. Each of them intending to ascend beyond the consequences of their actions at the last possible moment. It had been a delicate balance to bring its people out of the oppression they had grown used to. Executing the powerful had only been the start. The systems in place were simply too entrenched for that to be enough. If she had left so quickly, the world would have tipped back to the edge of oblivion within half a century, rather than the six millennia of stability she had established.

She pulled more of herself back into her mind, not trusting her ability to keep her stress relief grounded in mere possibility if she had to address the man with the full weight of her emotions and thoughts. What remained relayed her reasoning with calm and cool logic.

The Hound made a sound of disgust anyway.

"This is why they're replacing you relics. You're sloppy and inefficient and dangerous. There are a thousand of the new guys, all of them tied directly to Makiel and the Hounds by binding constructs. No more unexpected deviations, no more surprises, no more treason. Just order."

Internally, Thyresia was intrigued, but nothing of her thoughts showed on her placid face. The Hound scoffed again, before continuing.

"You know, they aren't even going to be called Executors anymore. That name will die with you and Alpha Five. The Vroshir will be everything that you lot never were, and the Way will be better for it. Just you wait."

Ozmanthus Tiberian Mereithan Arelius, anointed successor to Telariel the Spider, of the Third Division of the Abidan, drifted through space, floating along the boundary between the Way and the Void. Once again, he had not broken the right things—not fast enough—and others had paid the price.

Rage burned within his heart, calling him back to what he had always been best at, to what he was at the foundation of his being, what existed at the Origin of his Existence.

Destruction.

Death.

From within the space hidden deep inside his soul he withdrew an arrow of pitch black. It was supposed to be his Penance. His Atonement. The weapon that would make up for all his failures. Ideas spun through his mind, legendary artifacts, weapons, tools—each of them mere fodder for his forge, ingredients for him to use to perfect that which he had already perfected, a weapon to be his equal at last.

Even the form was clear to him, stark and black within the confines of his mind, a scythe with which to Reap that which had been Sown by his enemies. But as he looked at the deep black of Penance, his fury began to gutter and fail. He had been here before, had done this already. This path on which he stood already bore his footprints.

For all the desire he had poured into his Penance, it had amounted to nothing. It hadn't redeemed him, it hadn't saved anyone. Destruction might be the heart of who he was, might be something he could never escape, but it was not all that he was.

His mind cast back, to the moment, all those centuries ago, when he had perfected his sight, when he had crafted it into a legacy that his children's children could carry with pride. The Bloodline that he had chosen to define for himself and his family. The same choice he had made when he joined the Third Division, the Spiders. Ozmanthus Arelius was one who was seeking. One who saw.

So he looked.

Into the currents of Fate, he cast his sight, and saw... success, his ultimate weapon realized, but was the weapon the Scythe, or the one who wielded it? He saw the Scythe raise. And he saw it fall. Again, and again, and again. He saw oceans of blood on his hands as he did what only he could do—destroyed as only he could destroy.

He cut the visions off abruptly, they only showed what he already knew, what he had already known, and the confirmation was weak comfort compared to the bleak future he saw. Fate instead spun backwards at his command, to the mission where he had failed. This he had done before as well, this he had seen and watched. Over and over he had replayed this battle with his Presence, seeking to find within himself the source of his failure.

Now he had found his answer, and was choosing to set it aside. If it was only through the Scythe that he personally could have saved his team, then he must look look outside of himself.

Possibilities stretched out before him, Fates that could have been but never were. The death of his team played out on repeat with each variation of the past that he viewed, flashing before his eyes as he dismissed them one after another, giving each mere fragments of a second of attention before ruling them out. Countless repetitions of failure.

Until at last there was one that was different, a thread of Fate in which his acquaintance from the Phoenix Division had joined him on his mission, not in any sanctioned role, but as a friend. While he battled their enemy, she fought to protect his team, it was a losing battle still, and yet the two of them survived alongside another member of the mission.

It was a simple change, and an exceedingly improbable one at that, and yet, the possibility existed where one less of that which was his was taken from him. It was tempting to assume it was just the additional combatant, or just the restorative power that he lacked, but Ozmanthus was done blinding himself with his pride.

The reality of his teams destruction was never due to his own failure.

It was common knowledge that the Spiders were, on average, the weakest of combatants in the Abidan, himself being the exclusion. So why were they alone and unsupported, and what could the outcome have been if they had not been? Ozmanthus abandoned his search through Fate and began modeling possibilities with his presence instead.

He swapped a member of his team for a Wolf, and together they fought their enemies to a standstill while the Phoenix kept them in fighting condition. All but one of them survived.

He added a Titan whose barriers defended the people of the Iteration and the Abidan alike, and the outcomes improved once more.

The conclusion was inevitable, but he saw the models through anyway. A Ghost, a Fox, and a Hound were each added in turn until at last he modeled a team containing a member of every division.

It wasn't an ambush anymore. The Hound saw the attack coming and they arrived prepared. The Titan protected while the Wolf attacked. The Phoenix healed while the Ghost rewrote the fabric of reality on which their enemies attacks were written and the Fox flitted through the battlefield to deliver devastating strikes. Over it all stood Ozmanthus, communicating, coordinating, sharing his sight and insight with the rest, directing the battle so that each of them could focus on what lay before them and strike where they could leverege their abilities best.

For all his strength, all his talent, all his skill—in this, the most successful model, Ozmanthus did not deal a single blow. And yet it was enough. More than enough. It was perfect, and yet it was also impossible. It was simply not the way of the Abidan.

It was the answer he sought, and also the most important question he had ever asked. What was preventing such cross-division support?

Ozmanthus bent all of his power towards searching for the answer. All his Sight, all his Authority, all his talent for reading Fate, twisting together as one great working. He looked upon the Abidan and he witnessed the cracks that pervaded their gilded edifice. He looked into those cracks, and he saw the rot at their heart. He looked and he looked, until present, past, and future began to blur together into one great whole, and the truth began to unfold before him—until he saw and understood. He looked into the Way and the Way looked back, and acknowledged him as the One who Saw.

Reality quaked and shook as Mantle of the Spider settled upon Ozmanthus Tiberian Mereithan Arelius.

He was still reeling from the experience when space split apart next to him and Telariel stepped through, the absence of his mantle made more blatant by its weight upon Ozmanthus' own soul.

"So you have seen it." Telariel stated, no hint of a question in his voice.

Ozmanthus could only nod in affirmation.

"I have watched the cracks grow wider for millennia. Watched as we became so much less than we should be, as we strove to become so much more. For all my power, all my sight, I could not see a way to stop it. Nor reverse it.

"I do not have the talents of a Wolf. I could not force change through might.

"I do not have the skills of a Hound, I could not navigate the rivers of Fate steer us to a better future.

"I did not have the strength a Titan, I could not protect us from falling so far.

"I could only watch, and wait for a successor that could not only see, but that could take action—that could fix things. I am old, so very old, and I had begun to fear that I would not see this day, that my last and greatest failure would be to turn over my mantle to one that did not see the cracks, or worse, that did not care to repair them."

Ozmanthus hesitated a moment before speaking. "I have no skill in restoration..."

Telariel arched an eyebrow and Ozmanthus turned away. His sight had grown beyond his wildest imagination with his assumption of the Mantle of Telariel and he let it drift out across the Way, settling in Sanctum, where he watched as Suriel also stepped down, passing his mantle on to his own chosen successor. The two Judges must have been planning this for centuries—he could only hope that they would prove up to the task.

Because Telariel was right, it did not matter if he had any talent for restoration, that wasn't the point. His Suriel did, and he could rely on her, and together they could accomplish more than they every could apart.