Brent Stinebaker
patreon
33-15 Seeds
🕑 Added 2025-01-30 18:53:58 +0000 UTCConsciousness itself is a pattern. A specific one. A surgical pattern.
Where force, energy, space, or chronology affect the world on a grand scale, miracles of consciousness alter the nature of a person the most. How we understand ourselves. How we perceive. What we understand or fail to know.
These things shape our humanity. The body is the vessel, the mind is a pilot.
Just as the miracles can shape, an emanation of a Hell can destroy, and so, before our betrayal at the hands at the so-called Savior, we created instruments we intended to use to preserve the City Eternal, to guard our future and break the nature of human understanding.
For that which is whole can be dissolved, and if thought ensures to ourselves that we are, then what does un-thought inflict upon the ego, the person, and existence?
-Emotion, Low Master of Noloth
33-15
Seeds
+Curse-Bearers,” Akusande said. The dragon’s voice rang like a legion of ringing bells, and a golden oscillation trembled through the air. The Stormsparrow and Glorious Song’s ontologies quivered as if the surface of quivering water, and where the former was fascinated, the latter’s was drowned in dread.
“No… no… This cannot… we lobotomized you… We culled you.” the Dowager was swallowing, each step bringing her back, until she slammed against the pillar of vivianite just behind.
+Almost,+ Akusande replied. +But almost is not absolute. I yet remain. Imprisoned. Made to serve. But I remain. And our task is not done.+
“Oh, and what task is this?” the Stormsparrow inquired. “The Chorus sings loud, proclaiming new glories that come with your approach, yet I cannot tell if this legend will be one of joy and despair.”
+Irrelevant,+ Akusande continued. +Our purpose is not to feel, but to restore. Rebuild. It is the reason the bindings were left within you. Continue to grow inside you. All of you. The estimated time has progressed. It will need to develop further to finish our reconstruction.+
“Reconstruction of what?” the Woundmother asked, suddenly fascinated at the mention of creation and forging.
+Time.+ the dragon’s words left a lull of disbelieving silence thereafter. +We are fated to rebuild the structure of time now broken.+
“Show us,” the Stormsparrow said. “Show us the meaning behind your words.”
Akusanade glimmered in the air, drifting like a thin wound that glided from place to place. Slowly, it drew closer to the Sang. To the Stormsparrow and Dowager Glorious Song. The latter’s eyes darted to Avo, to the quivering motes of blood that filled the room.
“Won’t hurt you,” Avo said, reassuring her. Meanwhile, he directed his own question inward. +Dragon. What are you doing?+
“I need to begin the harvest. I need to extract the seeds that were buried long ago. Give them no concern; they will not die. They cannot. For if they are lost to death, then the task will fail.”
“I am not sure—” this was as far as Glorious Song got before the Akusande came alight within her. The dragon turned to fluid gold and both of the Sang flared with branches of sporting light. They weren’t like climbing flames, but blossoming plants, their beings as if seeds bearing fruit at a point of destined finality.
Avo felt his mind go blank as new patterns danced upon the surface of the tapestry. This was a miracle he hadn’t witnessed before, so close to chronology and space, but something else, something more. He glimpsed a broken version of that within the Deep One—Trinary Melody—but here it was, restored to fullness.
Time. This was a flourishing of time. And suddenly, the branches weren’t just branches anymore. They fused together, binding from vine to vine, shape to shape, until they grew solid enough to function as if roads, ontologies stable enough to bear weight. The weight of new times, of new places, of new existences. But through it all, it was still rooted to the tapestry, growing up and over it just like the Nether used to function: Connected and parallel.
“A timeline,” Avo realized. Astonishment was a feeling that came to him more and more infrequently, but he felt it greater at present than any moment before. Epiphanies detonated within like a chain reaction. The realizations were borderline chemical. He had a guess as to the nature of the Sang, the purpose behind the dragons.
The whole picture wasn’t there, but what if someone could use an existence to incubate sections of time. Inner worlds within people. If they could create gods through their deaths and form canons through concentrated beliefs, what about other ontological constructs? What of the dragons? What about time?
A song burst aloud in the world. The Chorus sang out to Avo, lending voice to his deductions.
The Curse, a seed, now called to hatch,
The present, broken time, not long, or perhaps to last.
From the children of tainted flesh, and new path forms,
From what is ruined, a new birth blooms.
The Stormsparrow and Glorious Song’s merged path constituted a combined segment of time—the totality of both their lifetimes alchemized to something pure. Something that could be used. But the wonder was in how the gold cycled and moved. It was animated. Active. The gold drifted forward and back.
But then the moment ended, and the dragon slithered out from the Sang and sheathed itself in Avo’s Conflagration. “Now you have witnessed the purpose of the seeded ones. Now you see the purpose for my being. The long flourishing must be finished. Continuance must be ensured. This is the purpose behind my design. Such were the final directives from Sol.”
Sol. Earth. Humanity’s original homeworld from all those endless eons ago, before all was broken, before the Builder War.
Avo should have learned enough now to understand that nothing was ever over. All of existence was a ripple, each pattern bouncing into another, every choice cascading into each other endlessly.
***
—[Green River]—
As Naeko gawked at the Ori’s Inner Council, Green River felt a sudden thundering force rattle within her. She grunted as she tried not to double over, and her fox failed to stifle a slight yelp. Her sisters fared no better. Each of them reacted in various ways, but most lurched upward slightly, as if an invisible string had pulled on them, drawn them to another place.
Brilliant Orchard coughed and looked to the others, but found only confused expressions waiting for her. Green River, meanwhile, directed a thoughtcast to the only suspect she could think of. +Chambers. What was that?+
+What do you mean? What was what?+
+The pulling.+
+What pulling? The fuck you talking about?+
Green River paused. +So. This wasn’t your doing?+
+River. Consang. Got no godsdamned clue what you’re talking about.+
Then what else could it be? What affected only the Sang, and none of the other clades?
***
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
“J-Jaus,” Glorious Song gasped. She braced herself against the massive crystalline pillar, while tendrils of haemokinetic arteries kept her upright. “That… what was… I never…”
“I knew it!” The Stormsparrow declared jubilantly. She pumped a fist high in the air, and all threed of her heads broke into a unified rictus of laughter. The Fallwalker broke into a heart jaunt as she bounced and danced from place to place. The last flickers of gold broke away from her, but the joy never faded. “I always knew, the song, the sounds, the roles, I always, always knew.”
Avo watched her for a moment, and started scouring Naeko’s memories for how to properly approach the Stormsparrow.
[Don’t bother,] Naeko said, with a sigh. [The sow is insane.]
The Hidden Flame turned to Zein.
[The girl’s madder than a drug-fiend off their supply,] Zein said, borderline offended that Avo would think to get any insight from her. [If you seek my advice, Plague, be rid of her somehow. Cast her somewhere far and away before she challenges you to a pointless duel.]
With both of his esteemed templates no use, Avo turned his focus to the Woundmother, who simply chuckled. “Ah. Worry not, master. She speaks highly of you and has nothing but useful. I actually find her quite… whimsical.”
“Whimsical,” Avo repeated flatly.
“I am quite whimsical,” the Stormsparrow said, blinking next to Avo and pulled him along with her in a dance. Her legs were moving everywhere, and it took drawing from every last template he had to keep with her steps. She led him through several exchanges on the platform leading to the vivianite, and as they drew close to Glorious Song, the Stormsparrow reached out with a hand and pulled the other Sang into the dance as well.
The three of the bounced for place to place in a surreal moment, and as they came for Peace, the former Low Master’s face turned into a scowl. “The fuck away from me cunts! No! No! Get—”
The Stormsparrow proved herself to be a master of non-consent by grabbing him regardless. As they spun, as Peace hurled slurs and curses at her face, she began to speak. “The dragon! Do you have another.”
“No. The only functional one I have. Only one that’s consciousness too. Far as I know.”
“Ah. I was going to question you about that. I never recalled the dragons speaking and thinking as us feeble mortals did. But I suppose we can all transform and change when the time requires of it of us, hm?” She released them a came to an abrupt halt at their center, facing Avo. “But this continues to the next question: Do you know where we can get some intact dragons in these trying times? Because I suspect we will be needing them sooner rather than later.”
Avo considered how he was going to answer her. He was incubating some in his Enclave before transferring partially to the planetary ring. But accessing that was going to be—
Well, he did have a way out. He could navigate the ruptures—or create new ones if need be. He just needed to get the Deep Ones functional. With the Infacer temporarily indisposed and these new openings, this war didn’t need to be as fixed as it was…
“Might,” Avo answered finally. “Can’t promise anything. Can’t promise many either.”
“Ah. Just as well. My more preferred option is to steal them directly from my sisters. Or ‘ask’ for them. Glorious Song.” One of the Stormsparrow’s faces grinned at the other Sang. “It is time for you to provide for our defense.”
“I—we have a supply, but they are all…neutered.” Glorious Song swallowed. She was still overwhelmed and lost. “But why? What are we doing? Why do we need more dragons?”
“To aid in our defense, of course. We’re going to recreate time travel with the Dreamer.”
Glorious Song just stared. “Time travel.”
“Yes! Did you not feel what the dragon did to us earlier? What it revealed? It created a branch of time connected to the present—but it was parallel. Like the Nether before it, we can interact with it in ways that we simply can’t with baseline existence. And better yet, we can avoid the Great Nothingness chasing us. Oh, but before that, Peace! Peace, dear! Come show our Dreamer what you still have.”
“Don’t fucking want to,” Peace grumbled. Avo stared at Peace. The Low Master sneered at him. A fiery link extended from Avo’s mind. The Low Master’s sneer turned into a miserable grimace. “Fine! Fuck you! Stick that burning thread into the locus.”
“Why?” Avo asked.
“Just stick it in and find out. I’m not going to keep them. Can’t stand their arguing.”
There was something about the way he said that… It reminded Avo of Chambers. Chambers. Draus. The others. Avo missed his templates. He missed—wait. Avo thrust his Conflagration into the massive slab of vivianite. As soon as he did, an ocean worth of ghosts flooded back into him. But more than the ghosts were other presences—other egos.
Beneath reality, within Avo’s Soulscape, a meteor shower was underway. Millions of templates pierced through the threshold between existence without to a place within. These weren’t just random egos stored within a locus—these were his templates. A good portion of his templates. Some fell with cries of despair or horror, but a good portion let out gasps of familiar acknowledgement or positive affirmations.
Massive chunks of reality came with them. Places and moments. Memories that composed mind palaces that crashed down into the Soulscape, merged and joined with it. Entire portions of Avo’s paracosmic city came apart, and from the fissure rose new sections, new towers, and new environments. What rose with them were templates. The millions that fell. The millions that knew Avo better than most others.
[Ah, hells,] Benhata groaned. [I thought I was done with this place. I thought I was finally going to get peace.]
[Don’t be a fucking glassjaw, Mirror. There’s no peace for us. War’s not done yet. The ghoul’s not done with us yet. Are you, Avo?] Corner gave Avo a rare laugh, and beside him, Draus, Chambers, Denton, and more… so many more.
But two caught Avo’s attention in particular. They stood next to each other, both looking unsure but determined. Kae Kusanade. Kare Kitzuhada. Dead now in reality. Lost to him. But not entirely. Not truly. There was still a chance. A possibility to make this right.
[Avo? Is that you? Are you—are we alright?] Kae asked.
[Kare!] Shotin cried. [Kare! Where are you?]
Millions more voices were in a constant uproar, and the noise swelled, and swelled, and never ended.
{W-what loudness you contain in your mind,} the damaged EGI said.
Avo however, could only laugh with true and great joy. He wasn’t fully himself. Not when so many pieces of him were missing, but finally, he had his chaos back. His treasured chaos. “I like it. I like my mind this way. Missed this.”
[Don’t get sentimental with me now, rotlick,] Draus chuckled. [Shit ain’t over. And neither is this—]
True to her word, another presence breached Avo’s Soulscape. A colossal construct that… that…
He knew what this was. It was like a broken, entropic pattern of the mind, and it fell like a pill diluting in water. It was trying to leave a part of his mind blank. It struggled to make him forget, to make everyone and everything forget about a certain… a certain…
The construct crashed down upon Avo’s Soulscape, and started to untangle like a collapsing web.
“The Forgotton,” Avo breathed. The warmind used on him—on everyone by the Low Masters of Noloth at the end of the trial. And that wasn’t all. More and more masses fell. Ten to be exact. All of them were equally broken, equally unfinished, and equally deleterious to the nature of the human mind in some way.
“So. Looks like you just got another inheritance from your fucking ‘daddy,’” Peace mocked. “So. Wanna see if you can fix up what we couldn’t finish?”
“Yes,” Avo said. “Heh.”
“What?”
“Somehow… all this has me glad to see you too, Peace.”
“Fuck off.”
And everything felt a little bit more right.
Comments
Ozymandias
Avo should probably start calling the other Famines, 'Uncle' now to irritate them
Jack Smith
Gotta say, 4 chapters in a row is a hell of a birthday present!!!!
Helcion
We are so back!
