Brent Stinebaker
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32-20 Clad in Calamity (II)
🕑 Added 2024-12-31 19:42:09 +0000 UTCExistence is suffering. Do you hear it? Do you feel it? The patterns of reality scream, the tapestry is an organism, tortured into intelligence, forced to suffer the awareness of the things we inflict on it. All to feed the base pleasure of absurd animals born from nothing, pursuing nothing, seeking nothing.
But the mistake ends with us. We, the children of livestock and cattle, our fathers mules given to fire and labor, returning as nothing more than skin clinging to shattered bones, our mothers faceless and forgotten, broodmares for empires, rendered barely more than people to spawn sacrifices for a good she wasn’t even truly meant to believe.
And so it comes to us. Us. The descendants of the enslaves. The mutts and mongrels so interbred we are unowned by any culture, unwanted by any legacy, untouched by any glories. But from our blood did the gods slake their thirst. From our hands did their empires rise. From our wills did the Guilds even have foundation.
When the savior called, we were the first to answer, the first to die for the greatest cause.
Peace!
When the savior was murdered—butchered by blood to perpetuate the same sins, we were the once more the first to take up arms, to bring an end to this made.
In the name of peace!
And now, with reality driven to the brink, torn, twisted, tortured, we must bring this fight to an end. For existence has given us so much, has suffer so much because of us. Oh, reality. You too are kin. You too are slave.
So, we give you to peace we never could.
Let all return to a great silence. Let the patterns sink into perfect equilibrium. Let there be an end to the madness—even at the cost of humanity. Let there be a final peace.
-Ashthrone’s Scripture of the Great Peace
32-20
Clad in Calamity (II)
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
A few hundred meters turned light years away from Battlegroup 1, the Sage of the Sundered Mind gloved within the Great Silence writhed, mirroring the earlier reaction of its lesser alternate. But with every flex of its new fingers, reality bled even more, and the laws of existence turned to meaningless slurry from all the existential rot it was emitting.
“Oh, did you let me cut you, boy? Or was it the Plague I struck. So entwined you both are these days, it’s hard to tell.” Zein chuckled and taunted as she struck over and over. Her current blows were like jabbing cascades. She and Akusande materialized in stacked instances of herself across increments of time, with each blow propagating into the next. Her blade of time carved and chiseled new channels across reality, while she levered and dug at Naeko’s new entropic shell using a blade bound to the Domain of Information.
But with every move she made, Naeko formed one in counter, and his actions created more tears along the surface of reality. Tears Avo harnessed via his growing control over the Deep One. A duel unlike any other was being fought — a battle between a Heaven wearing an even greater existential abomination, and a god of masterful killing fused with the last functional dragon in existence.
In the backdrop, another clashing raged. A Deepness Beyond crept closer, with patches of cosmic black wrapping over the Substance, more stars spawning from its depths. The Infacer came for the single coherent entity left of Kill-Team Innsmouth, bearing the title YET THE SEA-STRUCK MOUNTAIN LAUGHS.
Faint echoes of ancient poems swept across the lands, and Avo noted the patterns around it withering strangely, esoteric effects so subtle and fine he was barely able to perceive anything at an initial glance. A bond had formed between the Deep One and the Infacer, binding them together along a string that defied time, or mind, or any material force.
It could best be described as fated vengeance. A commandment of violence and understanding that even the Neo-Creationist EGI couldn’t resist. Though the entity resembled a Heaven created from a laughing face carved into a mountain and protected by coursing rivers, Avo realized it was more akin to a living story than an actual physical entity.
To that end, the Hidden Flame identified one of the oddest Domains it possessed. Stories. Fate. Something almost symmetrical to the gifts possessed by the Stormsparrow.
It’s very presence was affecting Zein as well. It was not yet time for them to battle—the tapestry would not allow it. So she didn’t acknowledge its presence, even though she could have branched another chrono-shaped stab earlier—could have pierced its governance module through the same paracausal blow she delivered, using Avo himself as a conduit.
The Heavens of humanity’s true golden must’ve truly been something. They were beautiful and terrible even as these sunken versions of themselves, and with Battlegroup 1 slithering between the cracks that composed the Weaver, Avo felt his Conflagration draw closer to new secrets, to new broken minds.
{This… outcome…} the EGI that used to government the Great Silence spoke. {Anticipated. Offering. From Voidwatch… to a more… “favored enemy.”}
Zein struck at him again, wielding her blade with a post-divine artistry. The perfection of her timing, of each cut bleeding into another was ineffable. The templates within Avo flinched and turned away. The proudest of his Scaarthians and Kosgans found themselves despairing at her skill. The finest minds within his Soulscape struggled to guess at what was to come next.
Only Naeko remained unshaken. Only Naeko knew, and reacted accordingly. [Time to change the rules.]
He didn’t strike at Zein anymore. Instead, he focused his blows on reality. Slamming the entropy-gloved Sage upon the surface of existence, he landed like a tungsten rod cast from post-orbit. Entire chunks of reality rose and fractured like displaced tectonic plates. As Zein came in for another flourish, she found herself forced back, made to dodge as the space she could occupy grew scarce in an instant.
Grand rifts spread across the horizon, snaking and absorbing all lesser ruptures, growing exponentially with each second.
The Infacer let out a string of curses as its Heaven receded once more. The backdrop of deep space fled, revealing a return of the Substance as the mind barely avoided suffering another backlash. Or worse.
{Zein. What part of deal with the problem right before it destabilizes an entire portion of the Substance do you not understand.}
But Thousandhand didn’t reply. Too busy was she avoiding the growing wounds that shrank her playground down to nil.
WARNING: SEVERE REND-SPIKE DETECTED
WARNING: SEVERE REND-SPIKE DETECTED
WARNING: SEVERE REND-SPIKE DETECTED
REND CAPACITY [SAGE OF THE SUNDERED MIND] - 77%
>75%...
REMAINING RENDSINK CAPACITY - 69%
“Might not be wise to keep doing that,” Avo muttered. “Generating enough Rend to swallow several Sovereignties. Won’t be able to fight longer than five more real-time minutes at the current rate.”
“It’s less wise letting her work at us with impunity. We don’t have a godsdamned dragon, Avo, we got a walking disaster, and so we need to fight like one.” Naeko impacted reality again, and patches of existence sloughed off like flesh degloving from bone. The amount of Rend that followed was truly sickening. Then, Avo watched how the fissures spreading out from it tore through the Substance, ripping the chrono-ethereal canvas like it was nothing. Entire patches of space were exposed after pluming waves of Soulfire furled out like rolling tongues.
WARNING: SEVERE ONTOLOGICAL INSTABILITY DETECTED
LOCAL REALITY UNDERGOING TERMINAL COLLAPSE
Avo felt the effects of Naeko’s actions even before the text scrawled across his feed. The patterns were disintegrating. Everything could mean something else now. Or nothing. There was no definition to the chaos, no order or structure. It was growing harder to move now that space didn’t truly exist. Heat and light and force became intermingled, causing impossible detonations of fire and destruction with the slightest expression of friction.
But still the Deep One lumbered on, staggering through the ruptures like the juggernaut it was.
{Is the… primary risk presented… by Deep Ones… Cannot be eliminated… through any means… convention… even thaumaturgic… ego didn’t collapse… despite damage… maintains functionality after resurrection… but lost… damaged.}
“Like you,” Avo said, replying to the EGI. He was trying to piece the broken mind back together, but it was proving to be a challenge — a thrilling one at that. For so long, he hungered for a true intellect. Humans had masters and experts, each a unique wellspring of knowledge and expression. But a mind was something grander. So much more intelligence. So much more memory. Sophisticated patterns of thinking.
Pure intellects.
As close as the ancients could make them, anyway.
ESTIMATED TIME TO FULL EGI MENTAL ARCHITECTURAL RESTORATION - [101 DAYS 305 MINUTES 31 SECONDS]
So tantalizingly close, but so crushingly far. Zein’s blow had carved a substantial portion of ghosts out of Avo. He was effectively only two thirds of what he had been. How Ignorance was able to divert the strike into his Battlegroup templates, he didn’t know.
Won’t be able to do it if you let Zein stab you two more times, Ignorance replied, leaving a thrill of absolute exhaustion.
Slashes of gold twisted and wove through the cracks stretching out from the Sage. Naeko swatted them aside, using the extended tendrils of entropy as deflecting whips. Clenching his fist, he grabbed the already peeling surface of reality and pulled down. As he did, the world turned into a mess of incomprehensible symbols.
As The Great Silence was bound to information and language first and foremost, those were the first things to collapse with the coming of the new paradigm. What little remained of stable reality descended like a meteor shower, separated by Naeko’s gloved hand by strings of unreality.
And yet, despite all this, Zein continued coming. She lingered at the edge of the collapse, deploying echo and after echo, trying to chart a stable route. Akusande circled the chaos, but from it came an echo, a single intent conveyed by the warmind nested dormant within its being.
Remember your promise.
Ignorance stirred. Yes. Trying to find an opening.
The warmind within the dragon spoke again. She will cut again soon. She has already planned a path. The hesitation at present is meant to lure you into a false sense of security. Her opening to cut you down has already been sent across time.
A pocket of disbelief spread through Avo. He scoured Naeko’s current ontology and found no place she could strike. Not easily. With how many ruptures were spreading out from the Sage with every passing moment, there was scarcely any room for Zein to transfer a successful blow. Her paracasual attacks also trembled the entirety of the tapestries remains. With both time and space in their current sordid state, there really wasn’t anything she could properly exploit.
Then, he realized her intent.
Perhaps she wasn’t aiming at the Sage. Perhaps her cut was traveling elsewhere. Seeking another extension of himself. Avo turned his focus to his most vulnerable facet: battlegroup 1. They were current halfway into the Weaver, taking winding paths through the internal ruptures that composed its ontology. Slowly, the static accretion of the EGI there was catching fire as well, and despite some of The Great Silence’s fractures spreading closely as well, there was no sign of—
No. Watch. Feel. Within the branching temporal wound Zein inflicted on existence radiated a symmetrical entity to Ignorance. A warmind. Akusande. More faint emanations of chronology trickled out from the gash, Zein’s echoes blending with the Trinary Melody’s entropy, stalking Battlegroup 1 through the nest.
Avo saw. Avo realized. And Avo was embarrassed. “You let her affect us with your specialty?”
Don’t blame this on me. Can’t sense what is hidden across time as well. Zein is calculated. Always has been. Always missing the obvious attacks for the true blow that kills us.
All this time, Avo thought the battle was between her and Naeko. No. The Chief Paladin she enjoyed fighting, but he was a hard target. The hardest anyone could face. She went for something far suppler; a disciple she regretted taking and tried to cripple: Avo —- a vulnerable extension of him at that.
I see it, Ignorance said. Why tell us now.
Because she will not suspect this, the warmind of Akusande said. Because I am bound to her will. And a single mistake will result in the hardening of my enslavement to her choices. But you have a chance more than any other. She will find you soon. She will not send her actual self. An echo will be sent. But if you seize the wound the moment she arrives…
Yes. Even the lesser Sage could hold Zein, keep her in stasis thanks to his power over violence and force.
One mistake. One misstep. One act of betrayal.
That is all it would take to decide this duel.
“It could be lying,” Avo said, considering a final other possibility.
Why? For what? Would just cut us and be done with things if it is. Ignorance let out a chuff. We take this opportunity. We use this moment. Let Naeko know.
It was time to catch a destined blade before it fell.
***
—[Zein Thousandhand]—
Show your neck, Plague. Show me where your flame-flesh resides. Thousandhand watched and waited, sending her faintest chrono-clones into the Weaver’s moving ruptures. The Trinary Melody sang with thrilling notes that shook time itself. The destabilization it caused created the perfect cover for Zein to advance.
But even knowledge bequeathed from the Dreamer didn’t make tracking his submind offshoot easier.
If there was one thing ever-so-viable about the Plague, it was his minds. His ability to consume, absorb, and shape knowledge. To suffer no decay in focus or lapse in attention.
Zein had become who she was through years of vigorous training. Alas, her foundations were human, with human flaws and human limitations. As such, some ugly habits carried over, and she found herself using a quantity approach to track her quarry.
Outside, more of the Infacer’s swarms vanished into a massive chasm of information-death. Such was the best way to describe it. Simply a great pit where information went to die. Across their shared link, she could still hear the Broken One cursing at her, condemning the nature of her birth, the fact of her existence, the flaw of her apehood. She ignored them, bemused.
Ah. To be so smart, so old, and so impotent.
She wondered what that was like. Especially the last part.
Then, from behind a rupture, she saw them. A misted palm of Peace some three kilometers long, navigating the insides of the mind-torn Deep One. Trickling flames spread out from the mists, infesting the static that composed the EGI’s ego.
Another disturbing gift of the Plague: it’s ability to assimilate minds. All minds. Any mind. Quite a horror for a human. But Zein liked horrors. Killing them, specifically. All that required was for one to have knowledge of their enemy, a moment’s opening, and the proper tool to bring them low.
She manifested a blade of trauma once more and transferred it over to one of her many echoes. It was a shame not to deliver this kill in person. Alas, facing Naeko was taxing the bulk of her attention, and Avo was not a creature she would get a second chance at killing. She just needed to—
The Sage of the Sundered Mind twisted and sent a forest of Rend sliding over the wound she was currently channeling her miracles across. Zein suppressed a sigh. Damnable boy. Always smashing and breaking and using his brute force. His bad habits were returning—years of living as a Godclad would do that to a warrior. Everything was something to break for him, something to overpower. It made him clumsy and predictable. Especially the last few blows. They resembled more of a tantrum than an actual set of attacks meant to deliver meaningful harm.
Why, when she finished with this farce, she would need to carve him out of Avo. After that she needed to reteach the boy some—
A trickle of mist slipped into her perception. Through the dense darkness, a palm suddenly burst through–-the lesser Sage of the battlegroup.
Zein’s mind went blank. How did he know she was there? That her Heaven was present within the wound. She tried to withdraw her presence—to escape—but his timing was perfect. Impossibly perfect.
Five fingers of god-breaking force clenched her. Across light years of space, her manifested self went still, and as did Akusande.
“It was a good trick. Cutting me using that decoy. Cutting me across time.” Avo’s mind let out a low chuffing laugh of malice. “My turn. Naeko. Squeeze.”
And the Chief Paladin did just that.
