Brent Stinebaker
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34-25 Triumph of the Unworthy (IV)
🕑 Added 2025-04-06 18:36:47 +0000 UTCNo… Please… Please don’t go.
I’m… I don’t want to face the dark alone. I don’t want to go into the nothing alone. I don’t care that you’re… I don’t care… Please… Please… Just stay with me for now. Stay. I don’t want to stop being… I don’t…
Please… Don’t leave. C-can you hold me. I just want to… I want someone to know I was here…
I just want someone to know I was here…
-Last Words of an Ori Glaive, Spoken to a No-Dragon Skinjumper
34-25
Triumph of the Unworthy (IV)
—[Aedon Chambers, The Lovebringer]—
“That’s right, Cuntus! Piss off! Slither off like the coward you are!” Chambers said. His voice echoed across all of existence,.the tapestry speaking for him, as his Domains of Love and Correspondence poured across countless other patterns. Yet, a moment after his declaration, his mind whirled as he found himself facing an outpouring of Rend, waves of entropy rippling out from the Murderess.
Kae’s pathborn was a ruined thing, her body composed of glistening umbilicals, all attached to the withered, mutilated form of his consang born from Veylis’s paths. His heart twisted as he looked upon Kae, yet a placating voice within his mind helped center him. [She’s not me,] Kae’s template said, though she sounded no less disgusted than he was. [She’s not… she’s not even herself. But Chambers… she’s going to overload. You can feel it…]
And he could. The sheer amount of Rend pouring out from the spreading rash fissures that lined her body were like epicenters of rot. If reality was body, she was a cancer about to metastasize on an overwhelming scale.
“Shit,” Chambers muttered. Veylis was gone, but now he had to deal with this. He couldn’t just do nothing—she was still inside Avo. Her spreading rash was ripping his Soulfire up something bad too. “Shitshitfuckshit. Kae? Ideas? What can we do here?”
The urgency of the moment was compounded when the Majority spoke to him, “We must leave. If you have any means of removing her from within this space, then do so. If not, we must be the ones to egress.” Every single shadow that made up the Majority twitched and radiated discomfort. More than a few knew what they were facing. All wanted to be away. Chambers didn’t blame them—his ass should have been running too. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t just abandon her again.
“Maybe you don’t need to,” the Lovebringer whispered. “We have a chance to do something here. But it is a risk. A risk that might see her turn the Rend on us.”
REND CAPACITY - 96%
VENT! VENT! VENT!
Kae’s template was bound to his mind, and let out a gasp of discomfort at his plan. [No. Aedon, I told you she isn’t real.]
“Yeah? And was that up to her? Did she ever get a chance to decide that for herself?” The bitterness in his response poured clean out of him. Kae might’ve been a Citizen, but how much life fucked her, she might as well been a gutter rat like him. “I gotta try. I can… we can do this. Maybe we can’t stop her from overloading, but maybe I can help her make her death count.”
The template hesitated. Then, Chambers felt something happen inside him. Inside his Amnsitech implant to be exact. It was like Kae’s template divided into two. Both spoke at the same time. [Attach one of me to her. We should share most of our cognitive architecture. We might be able to return some measure of agency back to her.]
A twisting feeling coiled around Chambers’ gut. “But… you might get nulled or some shit.”
[That’s why there’s two of me now,] she said. [We are expendable. And more importantly, we are—I suppose in some way—immortal. Use it. Make this count.]
The thought was still uncomfortable, but a cry from the pathborn and a spike in Rend helped Chambers decide. “Alright.”
He reached out, attaching a Bond to the Majority first. “I’m going to move you guys away for now, just in case. But before I do that, can you hit me with something that makes it… I don’t know, fucking weird or hard for someone to attack me?”
The Majority hesitated for a moment, and a resonance pulsed out from within them. “Vote in progress.”
“Vote?” Chambers asked.
“Concluded,” the Majority finished. It reached out with a massive enshadowed hand and grasped Chambers’ tendril. Then, from the Heaven of Information pulsed with some kind miracle. Lines of text and numbers splashed over the Lovebringer, shrouding him in a layer of… something. “You should be spared direct harm. But—”
“I know what I’m thinking about is stupid, but maybe it’s the right kind of stupid to be dealing with Veylis. I’m not capable of throwing down with her. I know that. But you might be able to. More importantly, we might need someone for the Infacer—and you guys might just be that. So. If you’re still in, if you’re still with me, I got somewhere else for you to be. Somewhere else to make you count. Or I can send you back. It’s up to you.”
This time, there was no vote with the Majority. “You are a good man, Aedon Chambers. You have earned approval from us for your deeds, but not your intellect. Even so, we share a common front—and an opportunity to break our greatest foe. We will fight with you still.” Then, there were just two small voices speaking. “But be safe. Be careful. Do not die. You deserve better than death for what you have done for us.”
Chambers knew those voices. They were… the Seekers. From when his evil self did the… Chambers winced at the memory. “Fuck. Yeah. I’ll… I’ll do what I can. I’m sending you guys across to be with Draus and the others first. I’ll throw in more people to help you as soon as I can.” He paused. “You know, for a bunch of mind-twisting fucks, it’s kind of nice to be on the same side as you for once. Don’t worry, I won’t forget to mention this to Avo. Don’t know if it’ll stop him from doing some weird shit to your down the line, but… he won’t kill you. That’s probably true, at least.”
Awkward laughter, cursing, and a general mix of emotions resounded from the governing body of the Ori. “So you say.” They directed a look at the Soulscape. “Focus on preserving him first. The Burning Dreamer… We wish to see him preserved as well. For reasons we will refrain from mentioning.”
Chambers snorted. “Yeah. Shifting now.”
At once, a magenta glow radiated around the Majority, and they vanished into his tendrils, snaking across Lovenet. Meanwhile, Chambers reached out to Draus and the others. At the same time, he turned his attention on the Murderess of Love. “Shit,” he muttered again. A massive, series of rotting slits extended out from the broken god’s epicenter, and millions of small, withered little hands clawed at the edges, masses of homunculi pushing and prying, trying to escape whatever fucked up nightmarish plan they were spawning from. “I’m starting to have second thoughts”
[Starting,] Kae’s template laugh.
“I know. I’m a half-strand dumbshit.”
Her laugh went from mocking to genuine. [If only there were more fools like you.]
Somehow, the Lovebringer blushed. “Fuck it,” he said, extending a tendril to touch the Murderess. He carefully avoided all the gross, nasty bits as much as he could, but the Rend that was pouring off from her wasn’t something he could ignore so easily. “Let’s see if we can toss Veylis’s bomb back at her.”
Merely centimeters away from the Murderess, he let out a soft breath. “Hey, Kae.” Her entropy crashed against him, staining his ontology, making his frame wail and strain. She looked up, regarding him with miserable eyes, and a smile so sad it belonged on a painting played across her face. “Hello, Chambers. I… I think you should leave now. There is nothing that will stop what is about to come.”
“Yeah, about that,” Chambers said. Ah, he let out a laugh. “Fuck it, I don’t know really what to say to you, but I want to start with I’m sorry you’re here… sorry I couldn’t… you know. But I want to ask you a more important question: do you want to blow up here, or do you want to blow up in Veylis’ face?”
She stared at him for a long moment. She might have been pathborn, but there was still enough humanity in her for him to sense things—things corresponding to his life, and things like love. “Oh, Chambers,” she said, “you have always, always been too—”
And the template jumped across his Bonds, spearing into the pathborn like a subtle virus. It occurred to Chambers then that what Veylis did to Avo, he might have just done to sorta-maybe-evil Kae. A flicker of something pulsed out at the core of the pathborn, igniting the mind of the umbilical-tethered Kae.
“Stupid,” he suggested. He closed his eyes internally and let out a cough. “Yeah, plenty of people have told me that.”
“Sweet,” she replied. “So desperate to find happiness even when things were bad. Desperate for everyone. Not just himself.”
WARNING: THAUMIC OVERLOAD IMMINENT
Chambers hesitated for a moment. “So… is it working?”
Kae stared up at him. “Well enough. I… I cannot choose. The pathborn is fixed in what it can do. But I can make myself not chose now. To decide not to do something.”
“Good enough,” Chambers replied. “So. I think we can use this. How do you feel about overloading where—”
“Where the Deep Ones are,” Kae said, interrupting him. “It is the best place. It will disrupt whatever the Infacer and Veylis have planned. Neither of them are immune to the rash. No one is. Not quite like you.”
Chambers paused. “Yeah. I… uh, listen, I never got to talk with you. About what happened…”
One of her festering cords crossed over with his Bonds, but rather than a paradox or a backlash, she merely comforted him. “There is nothing to talk about. It is not your fault. I do not hate you. And you should not hate yourself. Now. Move me across and swap me with Draus. It won’t be long now.”
Instead of pulling her across immediately, Chambers demanifested his Heaven momentarily he greeted her umbilical-bound body, ephemeral to ephemeral. Without hesitation, he reached out and hugged her, even as the rash spread behind her, even as he felt gross, foul-smelling fluid cling to his skin and stain his hair. For a second, he just held her, and to her ears he whispered, “I’m sorry. I wish you didn’t have to die again. I wish… I wish the world wasn’t this way for any of us.”
“And maybe it won’t be,” she said, reaching out with a shaking hand to hold him. “Your fate was changed. And you can still save so many others. You have already saved so many others.”
“But I couldn’t save you.”
But Kae smiled. It was a true smile. A triumphant smile. “You are saving me right now.”
He swallowed and tried not to embarrass himself by crying now. “Yeah. Well. Maybe… maybe I’ll have Avo dream up something better for you when the Ladder, uh, comes or whatever this shit is supposed to…”
A screaming homunculi dropped right next to them. He could feel her ontology coming asunder. They were out of time. He sighed. She shook her head. “Do what you can for who you can. And… I don’t think Avo is the only one to decide. He isn’t the only dreamer here. Now. Move me before it’s too late.”
Chambers nodded and e pressed his lip against her cheek. “I wish I—I wish I could have met you earlier in my life. I always wanted a little sister.”
She smiled. “I think you came just in time for me. Now, be just in time for the rest of them.”
That was all Chambers needed. Something unbroke inside his heart, and though he wasn’t any wiser, any stronger, or any better at killing, something in his mind settled, and he was more himself than ever before. A flash of crossing tendrils and weaving Bonds rewove the Lovebringer into form, and he wrapped his being over hers, feeling her on the verge of total metaphysical collapse. “All right, time to make this count.” He reached across existence, stretching his bonds as he reconnected with his cadre again. “Draus, I’m gonna start moving people now. There’s gonna be incoming on your end. And I’ll be moving you somewhere else right after. Get ready.”
A mess of images and sensations flashed across as he connected with her. The battle on her end was so fast, so intense, that he could barely keep up. Chambers was glad he didn’t stick with them. He would have been nothing but a liability among all those monsters. He had no illusions about his capabilities. He might have been a gutter enforcer one, but a warrior he was not. Best leave this fighting stuff to the actual killers.
“Move where?” Draus finally responded, her thoughts absolutely razor-focused on surviving as another wave of attacks—too fast for Chambers to track—crashed against the mists shrouding the Guard-Captain.
“You’ll be jumping another instance of Veylis.”
“What? What about—”
“Oh, I got something for her,” Chambers chuckled. “Just be ready.”
***
—[Jelene Draus, Guard-Captain of the Symmetry]—
Draus didn’t know what kind of surprise Chambers was talking about, but right now she would accept anything. The shell of the Seraph was proving to be a nightmarish adversary. Thanks to miracles spawned from the Stormsparrow’s mask, she kept ahead of Veylis’ chrono-forged attacks—albeit only barely.
Another blade, created from a merging between the paths and Avo’s sequences, slashed out. It wasn’t a physical blow, not truly. Rather, it was a thing of concentrated entropy. It seemed that, at the highest Spheres of power, when two Godclads were absolute rulers of their Domains, when they possessed so many Domains reality resembled a canvas, the battle between them became simple.
One would try to backlash the other, or fill them with Rend. The other would try to do the same thing.
A palm expanded from within the guard captain, parrying impossible amounts of force. But this was just a distraction, a diversion. Across from her, the Shell of the Seraph twisted, shattering apart as the Stormsparrow chucked a spear out from within the Guard-Captain. It impacted the form of the Shell, and it detonated, creating a massive fissure. Out from it came fragmented memory and a pulsing thoughtwave disruption. Draus cursed, then stepped through widening shard of glass, narrowly avoiding the mind-rending blast.
Both sides struck at each other, wielding the collective patterns and Domains upon the tapestry. They smote and struck, and reality ripped and tore. They were like two giants dancing upon a landscape made of wet tissue—a struggle not meant for existence to withstand.
REND CAPACITY - 36%
A brief lull entered their engagement. It was a lull that lasted less than a half second. Draus eyed the Shell of the Seraph as it hovered a few meters away—space and chronology mere variables in dispute as both sides warred. The Seraph’s many limbs extending in an open embrace of violence—a swirling cloak of ash and flame, a symbol of Avo’s flayed mind draped over Veylis, serving her.
“How long do you think this can last?” Veylis asked, her tone devoid of taunt, only genuine curiosity. “How long do you think you have before the Infacer takes what you came to save? Before the Deep Ones are no longer yours and you are made to retreat?”
Initially, Draus offered no reply. There was no point—he hadn’t come for conversation. He had come to murder the woman she once called Highest Veylis Avandaer.
But just then, a thin tendril slipped through the din and chaos. Everything that was torn and ripped came alight, glistening as the bonds of the Lovebringer approached. Before either could react, the bond-spear gleamed through the Guard-Captain, and Draus, only then, offered a reply. “Don’t know, but I think you’re running out of time before I do.”
And suddenly, she was gone—her position shifting as she was pulled across the Lovenet, cast into another area altogether. In her place, she saw something passing by: a ruined, wretched form created from festering umbilicals, coated in spreading tears? No—rather, it was a massive patch of reality absolutely subsumed by wombrash. And there, at its core was—
“’Kae,” Draus said. The disfigured, mangled form of her friend was bound at the heart of the fissures, of countless umbilicals reaching out, lashing at the world. She offered a quick smile at Draus before she waved.“Hello and goodbye, Draus. Take care of Aedon for us.”
The Guard-Captain didn’t know what to say. She just watched Kae go, accelerating into a field of brilliant color before vanishing altogether.
***
—[Kae Kusande]—
And a moment thereafter, Kae emerged where Draus just vanished. There, she found the Shell of the Seraph approaching her, reaching to seize Chambers’ Bonds, freezing at the sight of Kae’s arrival, at her sundering ontology.
“You!” Veylis said.
“The thing about sacrifices,” Kae began, a hysterical laugh on her breath. “Is that they should be sedated or pacified before deployment. Otherwise… you risk them destabilizing the experiment. You should have known this, High Seraph. Every neophyte Agnosi knows this.”
And with that, she came apart on a metaphysical level, and the dam holding a new variant of the Wombrash at bay tore across the core of New Vultun, new Ruptures mingling with those already left by the Deep Ones.
Comments
Emo Used HM01
"There was no point—he hadn’t come for conversation. He had come to murder the woman she once called Highest Veylis Avandaer." <- Would this not be She? Since it's from Draus's pov
Deathly_God
Glad to hear you are recovering! Watch out for your health!
Brent Stinebaker
New scheduling arrangements. I'm going to try to alternating posts every day for both stories (and then some). Full recovery (and improvements) in progress.
