Brent Stinebaker
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34-19 A Deception in Ash
🕑 Added 2025-03-12 08:51:05 +0000 UTC+Hey—Juv. Things aren’t looking good here.+
+Synced. Need me over? Don’t got many left, but I managed to ambush an Ori Knot. Stole a few golems. With all the Thoughtwaves goin’ off, they probably won’t be able to figure out who’s hittin’ who until it’s too late.+
+Heh. You’re always like that. You were always the best of us. Never a moment of doubt or despair in you, girl. So willing to fight. So willing to adapt. So indifferent to death—+
+Don’t go gettin’ sentimental on me, Commander. Sentiment ain’t ammo. I need you fightin’ and killin’, not mopin’ and dyin’. We’re Highflame godsdammit. Act like it.+
+Stop. Stop. You’re going to make me laugh, and that’s awfully uncomfortable with most of my left lung missing. Listen to me… The Authority is going to demand another frontal assault.+
+...+
+Draus.+
+Yeah. I know. She’s aggressive.+
+She’s a fucking idiot. She wasted us. She’s going to lose us this war. Her and those other… those Chivalrics. They’re not warriors. They’re not willing to burn at all. They just want to be in a story. They just want to stand and peacock at the end.+
+Commander, this is—+
+Draus, shut the fuck up and listen to me. Listen. I got one final bit of instruction for you. Something you can learn and apply for the future: Don’t listen to her. Suffer some… interference.+
+What? The fuck, Nicoma, you tellin’ me to disobey orders?+
+I’m telling you that you shouldn’t waste your life. Not for her. Not for any of them. I should have pushed you harder. Made you take a Soul—become a Clad. We would be winning now. We would be spending our lives instead of wasting them. Lorea—she’s just a part of the cancer. They can’t win this war. They can’t. They’re not our champions and heroes—we’re their fucking nannies. And we can’t bear the weight of this hubris anymore. A good core can’t hold a head determined to crash into a wall.+
+...+
+Just… don’t attack. Don’t waste yourself. Don’t waste what’s left of us. We are the worthy. You are the worthy. Not you. Not them.+
+Then what the FUCK have we been doing all this for, Nicoma! Why the hells are you tellin’ me this shit now!+
+Because the ones who should dream don’t, and the ones who do are just… just half-strands… not that different from a Joy-fiend. The fuck you think Lorea’s paradise is? A bigger godsdamned mansion? A world of her own? How long does that last before she fucking ruins it for herself? She’s chasing a high, and we’re getting spent for it. I showed you everything there was about war… but I was a damned fool. I should have had you dream a little. Be something more than just a killer. Maybe we would’ve won otherwise. Maybe I could have—+
[SESSION LOST]
+Nicoma? Nicoma?+
-Commander Winston Nicoma and Guard-Captain Jelene Draus during The Greatling’s Folly, Fourth Guild War
34-19
A Deception in Ash
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
How easily one’s consciousness and perception could be turned against the foundations of their ego. For as hard as Avo struggled to quell the memetic sickness crawling through his memories, corrupting his very being, the virus delivered by the Ashbringer adapted and changed, becoming a living dialect against all Avo—and all he could become.
VENT! VENT! VENT!
REND CAPACITy-[3r4ERR1&*!
“I saw a flaw inside myself. A flaw beyond the surface.” The Ashbringer’s voice still echoed, a lingering recording given unto Avo for a reason he couldn’t quite be sure of yet. “The flaw still churns inside you. Like a cancer. We know cancer. It comes to claim us. It was by design. And so is this. So is this.”
[Ah, shit shit shit!] template-Chambers screamed as he sprinted across the collapsing Soulscape. A good portion of Avo’s Memory Fortress was sinking into incoherence. Rather than crashing down into dust and debris, sequences untangled, lashing nearby areas with discordant memories of other places, of false memories. It was a Necrotheurgic calamity—like giving a God of the Mind Schizophrenia.
Through the Exo-Paracosm, all Avo conceived of could be made true through application of miracles and a cost of Rend. And so he fought himself, wrestling down his own manifestations to halt the surging sickness threatening to burst out from within. Canons shattered as soon as they were called, and with each suppression, his entropy built—but was siphoned away.
Chambers. Chambers was still there. Trying to save him.
Chambers. There was a great deal said in sentimentality about camaraderie and friendship in poems and stories. Such a thing was a soft force—feeble against bombs and bullets, but even so, when a dark moment drew close, there was nothing more reassuring than having someone with you against the dark, than having a force more than yourself fight for you. To remind you that you were worth fighting for.
Inside and out, Chambers stuck with him. As did the others. As did his Heavens. There was meaning here. Meaning that could be forged into a new Heaven—but meaning beyond a Heaven. Metaphysics was built on the grounds of symbology, ritual, and blinkered understanding, but in this moment, Avo found it lamentable that there weren’t more Gods of Family or Companionship; that people lived together, but remained so far apart.
He understood. He knew. Even now, his templates helped him shoulder the burden. Draus, more than any other mind, helped him resist absolute madness via her unique cognition. Adapting her structure to what remained of his ego slowed the collapse substantially—ensured he could rebuild if he ever managed to contain the spreading ash. And despite being utterly ignorant of the Necrotheurgic arts, she continued calling out to him, giving suggestion after suggestion, approach after approach.
[You gotta go deeper into yourself,] Draus said. She stood upon a towering structure sculpted from blood and frozen lightning, taking in the oncoming tides of ash alongside countless others. The remaining blocks crashed inward, stacking close together like plates on scale armor as every template Avo had bunched together, desperate not to experience another death—perhaps a final death. [Think this thing is like one of the No-Dragon flesh plagues. Uses your immune system to fuck itself.]
“Likely a bit more sophisticated than that,” Avo said, but he took her words into suggestion, reaching out into the coming ruin. Error flooded his mind. Memories belonging to him continued to disentangle, tumbling together while—
Wait.
Lashing claws formed from Soulfire sprouted from the burning skies. They snaked down in all directions, branching and multiplying as they formed a defensive cage to preserve what remained of Avo’s inner ego. Waves of distortions rushed out from the clawed digits of these hands, severing what was stable from that which was infected, but still, the ash continued the spread, the plague unaffected by connected sequences.
[I—how is that possible?] Kae said, squinting at the chaos.
[It shouldn’t be…] Peace breathed.
But Avo just laughed. His templates turned their eyes to him, countless millions sporting unified expressions of disbelief, annoyance, and despair.
[Oh, good, he’s finally gone fully mad,] Abrel sighed. [Well. We might be fucked, everyone.]
Corner just shrugged. [Run’s gotta end—]
“No. Not tied to you. It’s tied to me. It’s not even a true mem-con. It is a thaumaturgical virus. Based in conceptualization. Understanding. Only vector remaining. Only thing that allows the ash to spread.”
[Huh?] Chambers blinked, looking up at the many limbs stabbing down from the sky. Fire and ash blurred together as columns of chaotic sequences rose in the distance. Avo couldn’t properly sequence the corrupted memories, but he could still guide them. Because they were a part of him—because the Ashbringer hadn’t changed something in Avo mentally, but ontologically.
It was a subtle act of sabotage—and the initial offensive of traumas masked the true threat hiding just below the surface. But now Avo had a glimpse of what was truly wrong, and he could begin the process of evolving once more.
After all, how brittle were his mind and Soul if they couldn’t change.
“You’re not infected. Neither is your real self.” True to Avo’s words, Aedon Chambers was clinging hard to Avo, constantly transfusing Rend to other places. The Stormsparrow blessed Chambers with a special mask before she departed for battle, and a loud ringing bell sounded to a chorus of song as Chambers drew near to places he could channel entropy. It was through these means that he could find his way to the border walls with his senses still mutilated by the hounds. But the fact he remained coherent throughout told Avo something; the fact the Ashbringer was also collapsing from within told him more.
His Pathborn self was designed to eliminate him. But there was something lesser about them. Neutered. Veylis respected him as an adversary, but her understanding of him was still colored by her personal biases—and what she thought him to be.
And so, Avo extended his mind, creating a bridge to his other self still drowned in the madness of pleasure. It was time to see what he had that the Ashbringer didn’t.
The first sensation that struck Avo wasn’t conventional lust, but unfettered hunger. A desire to eat, to consume, to become. The Ashbringer was in bliss as he envisioned consuming the entire world—no, all of existence. He dreamed of how the Voiders would taste when blended with those of Idheim. He yearned to know the alternate histories he could simulate with trillions within his Soulscape.
But deeper still was an undercurrent of something primal. An old urge, a black need that was left starved and unmet for so long.
As fire sank into a sea of ash, Avo found it within the Ashbringer—and sensed a corresponding concept inside himself.
He saw an emaciated, starved creature shivering in a maelstrom of flaking whiteness. Its body was thin. Its limbs were long. Its eyes were the pitch of tar, and its snake-like muscles squirmed beneath its transparent flesh. From its mouth came hissed whispers. “H-hungry… so hungry…”
A ghoul. A dream of what Avo was—what he used to be and never wanted to become again. Such a pitiful monster. Such a miserable sight.
Avo didn't know if humans hated their childhoods so, but seeing what lurked within the heart of his Pathborn was… Revulsion wasn’t the right word. Neither was horror. It was lamentable. Such a ill thing to be. Such a ruined little organism.
“How far I have come.”
Avo began to pull bits of mem-data—every last bit of information that constituted his own inner ghoul: his long starved beast. He recalled the urge to do harm. The surges of casual cruelty that compelled him to harm others, to find succor from their flesh and delight in their pain. Slowly, a counter toan the Ashbringer’s hunger budded within Avo, and he compared the two.
Now, a twin ghoul lay upon a lotus formed from fire, whimpering the same way, begging for the same things.
That was disappointing. Avo imagined himself beyond this by now. More by far. He could have changed it, but it seemed that some of his nature was more than just consciousness or unconscious. Rather, some of his nature was purely rooted in genuine want. To be the beast. To be just a monster.
“Why can’t I fully let go of you?” Avo asked. He created four replicas of himself—representations of his many evolutions. The first was his crippled and broken origin, a ghoul missing limbs and organs from the barge all those months ago. The second was the Bone Demon—finally enhanced, given a taste of power. The third was a flame, animated and glorious, seeking greater heights than what flesh and matter could offer. And finally, there was the Strix—a Heaven and homage dedicated to Avo’s own ascended ego, where his mind reigned over matter and reality.
All of them looked down on the ghoul as if family waiting one of their own to pass.
“Should I start with you?” Avo asked, speaking to his original self. That one was most ghoul-like. But he still fought. He was still more. Because within him resided a dream born from Defiance. To resurrect his son in some form, to give a slave means too—
The suffering, starved ghoul within the Ashbringer and Avo both shattered. A single gauntlet shaped by solid gold and ineffable power, reached out, split into eight, and seized each avatar of Avo by their throats. A sudden pressure overwhelming, implacable sank deep into the Hidden Flame as a hand shaped from the vice grip of progressing time closed over his struggling Soulfire.
The mangled remains of the starved ghoul crumbled away like a broken eggshell, but from within flowed radiant yolk. Radiant yolk composed itself into four counter avatars to each of Avo’s evolutions.
The first was a girl. Barely more than a toddler. Her skin was the color of early dusk, but her eyes were piercing and bright—one blue and one brown. The child’s gaze was one Avo saw before… on the face of Jaus Avandaer himself. Her lean form and hard expression spoke of her mother as well. Even little more than babe, and the High Seraph already knew she was born to break those she deemed her lesser.
Across from Avo’s Bone Demon stood a towering cyborg. Even as a mortal, Veylis’ flesh was treated and augmented to the very extremes, and the technology married to her flesh came from the Infacer themselves, ensuring she was beyond any other in body and mind. The back of her skull was lined in a layer of phase shielding and silicon. Her chest pulsated with a singularity engine, and rows of golden hands revolved at her core, fingers brushing over each other as her face—impossibly smooth—took every bit of the smaller ghoul in.
The Burning Dreamer that Avo became found himself countered by a golden road composed of out of yellow bricks, leading to a distant structure—the Flayed Ladder.
And finally, the Strix screeched and struggled while a gilded titan composed of countless limbs and molded from the inevitable progression of time drew it closer. The Demiurge radiated with absolute power as all the path within its body tightened, as all the possibilities collapsed into one, leading to a final end.
Leading to the High Seraph of Highflame, Veylis.
“Let me answer this riddle for you,” the Demiurge spoke. Her voice echoed through Avo as well. “The virus that afflicts your Soul isn’t something so feeble as your urge to eat. The will to harm. I would never insult you in such a way, my esteemed adversary. No. There is only one entity worthy of tearing you asunder from within.”
Despite this, Avo couldn’t help but laugh. Of course the Ashbringer would do this—he was created by Veylis’ Paths after all, and what would the single most arrogant thing she could do with an enslaved nemesis? Why, have them create a smaller instance of her into a memetic masterpiece.
“Ego is boundless,” Avo said. He tried shifting his sequences, but she held on as the Ashbringer adapted alongside her. Avo caught a glimpse of what was happening then, and felt a thrill run through his being. Oh, it was worse than he imagined. Parts of the Paths were now permanent bound to Avo’s Exo-Paracosm. Slowly, they were becoming one and the same, mind and time melting into each other.
All is true.
“This was an inevitability of our embracement. The Dyad perfected the Ashbringer. For our true selves draw closer to each other by the second, and so I see you for what you are… but you, escaped sliver of the true flame, do not see me.”
And the Ashbringer began to recompose itself, and suddenly, Avo saw even its very name change.
AVO, SHELL OF THE SERAPH
“So, then, Broken Flame,” the Pathborn simulation of Veylis and Avo both spoke in unison. “I recall our battle being undone in the world beyond. So. Let us see this settled in what remains of you within.”
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
Next chapter being updated
Brent Stinebaker
Corrected. Thanks
