Brent Stinebaker
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13-8 The Enemies of my Enemy (I)
🕑 Added 2023-06-19 20:15:00 +0000 UTCHow many of you remember the dream? Jaus’ dream. The shit we were all promised when they packed us into these big fucking megacities and told us the future was coming.
I remember seeing all those vids… drowning in those vicarities of the first pioneers going up into the void. The ones where they push the Ruptures back from the dark and reclaim reality? I remember. I remember, doing it, but I can’t quite remember what was said.
When I was younger, I recited Jaus' pledge for the future. The promise of… Something about how we could all be our own gods, that we were to be the stewards of the last garden or something.
Something. That’s all it is now. Something. Just a blurry mess and I can’t seem to–
They’re making us forget. The FATED. The Guilds. They’re ashamed. Not afraid, ashamed. Not because they couldn’t live up to Jaus’ words, but because they’re afraid we might remember what we never got.
I can’t even remember what the Guilds want. What’s at the end of all this? And the worst thing about being alive right now is this thing isn’t anywhere near the end.
The last official census counted 674 billion people living inside the city. Even with the Rash, the refugees and migrants aren’t stopping. Things were getting bad out there in the Sunderwilds. I’ve heard things… The Fallwalkers–It’s all like a bad dream with the ‘Clads. The humanity just leaves you…
There are at least well over a trillion people on this planet. A trillion. And there were more before the Godsfall. Why? Why else could there be so many of us other than to die? Why else? This planet’s a death farm. Always was. Always will be. That’s like the real fate of being here. And I hate it. I hate that I was born.
Ursdin called yesterday. Says mom’s worried about me. Says mom wants me to come back to the Tiers–come home. How the fuck can they just… live when this is happening. All they need to do is dive across the Nether and the things we’re doing to these people while we’re living our little lives–oh, Jaus, oh fuck I’m so fucking sorry…
…You know the most fucked up thing about it all? I can’t end it. I can’t. Because if I do it, I just feed the killing all the same. Just another ghost inside a phantasmic. Another echo worshipping someone’s god.
I wish I wasn’t. I really wish I wasn’t.
-Mem-log of Cala Marlowe
13-8
The Enemies of my Enemy (I)
Council Elder D’Rongo was an easier target to jack into than Avo expected. Of course, he had partial backdoor access to the Exorcists’ network, and with that came Auto-Seances into each of the “elite” Necros assigned to watch her mind while she languished in dentition, sealed away in a signal-based demiplane channeled from a Domain of Light.
Drawing information from the administrative node, Avo found both the D’Rongo and Greatling to be in similar straits. They were installed within detention pods with detail of personal Necrojacks to look over them while they jumped from point to point across the near void.
As it turned out, the Unwhere was just a cute name–the description was quite literal. The Unwhere wasn’t a location, but a destination in perpetuity; an eternal voyage for all the prisoners trapped between channeled beams.
Though specifics about the Heaven behind the process remained redacted even for the Exorcists, the functionality was simple. Just past the upper atmosphere of New Vultun were approximately sixty-three thousand satellite-golems, each of which functioned like petals of starlight collapsing inward, going from blossoming to budding as their edges straightened into the long dark beyond as an intersection of narrow beams.
In a sense, these beams worked close to a hyper-accelerating pathway–something semblant to the lightrails of the hypertube. The only difference was that it seemed one stream of matter could be passed on into another.
As such, even if someone could intercept or anticipate where something was being delivered, it was nigh impossible to disrupt the system enough to collapse the interlacing channels of the ever-moving prison.
This would have been a problem if Avo was trying to free Elder D’Rongo from custody, but all he wanted to do was find her and link to her Meta so they could all have a little chat.
When the administrative node finally updated him on her next point of arrival in the vast chain of the Unwhere, he applied a few minutes of buff so that Denton could do whatever preparations she needed to deal with the Elder’s personal protection detail when she arrived at the golem marked +SATILLITE-BURNSIDE-1273999.+
“Got her,” Avo said. “Will be arriving soon. Have her estimated point of arrival in five minutes.” He jacked out briefly and eyed the Glaive. “Assuming you have a solution for the Incubi Strike Team nested in her Seance?”
Denton for her parted seemed more eager than stressed about the prospect of facing the best of among her Guild.
Glaives were supposed to be in-field fast-jacking combat assets. Though the substance of their Nether-based education remained far superior compared to the curriculum offered by other Guilds, Avo never considered them actual Necrojacks. Not truly.
Having a Ghostjack didn’t make you a real Necro any more than having a gauss cannon made you a street squire. The lines of distinction were made by the mind-divers and those who only swam the surface.
Across from him, Avo watched the woman cast another static thought-clasped arrow toward destinations unseen. For all her cognitive-deviant impenetrability, he hadn’t seen her descend beyond the shallows of the Nether. To say he was curious as to what techniques or phantasmics she had prepared for this infiltration couldn’t fully convey the depths of his anticipation.
More and more did ignorance offend him. In what he didn’t know of his own art, of his Heavens, of how he could face and unmake his foes.
All this was flavor denied. All this prevented him from true comprehension of his own apotheosis.
“You should stare so hard,” Denton said. Her accretion rippled out and then collapsed back inward in a cascade of dotted droplets. “You might give off the impression you’re worried.”
He chuffed without any hint behind the noise. “Not worried. Interested. Want to see how your mind works.” He swept his gaze over to Sunrise as well, and the swarm hovering just beside him. “Will take a lot to settle the Incubi. They’ll be there.” He paused and considered that certainty some more. “Strange. Expected the Paladin to seal her more. Cut her off from the Nether entirely.”
“He couldn’t,” Denton said. Her lip twisted and she reconsidered her words. “Legally. Naeko can hold Elder D’Rongo based on the proof I sent to him, but he still needs to keep open channels of transparency to show that he isn’t twisting her mind or body in any way that can be used against the Guilds.”
Avo caught flaps of blonde hair bouncing in his periphery as Chambers turned to stare at Denton. “Wait, what? The fuck? He can put her ass in void prison but he can’t hurt her or none of that shit? How does that work?”
“Legally,” Denton explained. That was the entirety of her explanation.
Chambers scratched his nose. “So, wait, this Elder person gets to keep all her protection, but has to go off with the Paladin guy I didn’t rash because they… agreed? Why? Why does’t she just… try to null him or just break out or something?”
“Politics,” Draus chimed in. Thankfully, that wasn’t the entirety of her explanation. “Paladins got the technical authority vested in them by Jaus and the Articles to hold all manner of half-strands. Guilders. Fallwalkers. FATED. Problem with technical and actual is a thing and a half though. It’s a godsdamned shitstorm when your mid-level color gets picked up for starting a cult to a skin god or some dumb shit like that. It’s the kind of thing that usually ends up with a bunch of high-sphere “Fallwalkers” deliberately attacking Paladins and Exorcists for a time. Real suspicious like.”
The ex-enforcer was nodding along to the last part. “Yeah, I get the stuff at the end. That sounds like Syndicate shit to me.”
“They had to learn it from somebody,” Draus replied.
“Agnos Kusanade,” Denton said, “within the Elder’s mind include the orders and details behind what happened to you because of Project Godshaper. Some memories mind pertain to your… confusion before the murder of Paladin Morrow. If you–”
“It happened.” The words left Kae’s mouth through clenched jaws and a flat glare. “I don’t think… I just want to know why?”
The Glaive regarded her for a moment and nodded. “You will.”
Avo found his focus narrowing more on Denton with each word that left her mouth. She was directing Kae toward a target for her ire–more than that, it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that she had orchestrated this entire affair.
Or at least shaped the conditions for it to be possible.
By giving over whatever memories she possessed to Naeko, she provoked the Chief Paladin to make his arrest and separated D’Rongo from direct assistance. In the same instant, she secured aid from Avo and the others by offering them an open hand. His mind jumped back again and he remembered her casual acquiescence to Naeko’s murder of her.
All deliberate actions. All meant to prime others for future actions.
He couldn’t even call her truly manipulative. She was just a gardener of opportunities, and great seemed the fields in which she sowed her seeds…
“Avo,” she said, snapping him back to the present, “when we’re done talking to her, use the Conflagration on her.”
A spike of startlement burrowed down past the root of his skull. “Want me to null her? Null all the Incubi hiding inside her mind? The Exorcists with her?”
She just stared. “No. No, that’s not going to happen.”
He considered what she meant, and the answer assumed its shape shortly thereafter. “Elder. She has access to the Conflagration too?”
A near-imperceptible nod came from Denton. “That’s not what’s important. What’s important is the trail that follows. She won’t be hunting outside for her enemies, but inward.”
Another seed then. Devious Glaive. Devious.
This one was cunning meat. The beast shuffled beneath his bones and he wondered if he would grow clever by killing her and internalizing her ghost. The temptation to find it made resistance that much harder.
Mem-data splashed across his right eye as the Elder’s arrival approached its final countdown. “She’ll be coming soon. Access my Meta on confirmation.”
“Acknowledged,” Denton said.
From the corner past her shoulder, Avo noticed Cas standing next to the wall and strumming at something unseen. Another mystery there. Crasser. More human. But another enigma to resolve in due time as well. At least he seemed softer flesh to digest than Denton.
Diving back across the sequences, he found himself hiding within the root functions of the golem as Exorcist Necros to mark the next point in D’Rongo’s transition. Through the locus, he caught a sideways-cast crossfire of chatter between two of the Exorcists.
+So how long do you think we’re going to get to hold her for?+
+Well, I saw Naeko earlier and he was trying to whistle again, so we’re probably looking at hard evidence for some serious charges.+
+Like what? She’s an elder.+
+Well. I might’ve… taken a peek at some of the mem-data. She did something to an Agnos. Something pretty bad.+
+Shit.+
+Yeah.+
+You think the Incubi are–+
+Let’s just pretend their listening and say no more, yeah?+
+Yeah?+
Back in the real, Avo could help but grin. If only they knew what actually lurked in the deep next to them.
The arrival of the Elder wasn’t so different like a lightrail coming to a halt. Exorcist Necros prepared whatever ghosts and pre-packaged mem-data needed to monitor and interface with D’Rongo’s detention pod. A countdown commenced: five seconds until arrival. Five seconds until the stop.
Avo prepared himself for one final jump. “Denton. Three seconds.”
“Cas?” Denton said. “Are the sounds linked?”
The man laughed, and faintly, Avo heard a rhythmic thrumming begin to build over an undercurrent of twitching servos. “You gotta ask, Val?”
Three actions occurred at once in the following instant: Avo cast himself into D’Rongo’s pod using the sequences within the mem-data; Denton connected to him and released a torrent of ghosts through him as a conduit; something pulsed at the epicenter of D’Rongo’s accretion.
Avo didn’t have time to stop and consider what just happened as he felt himself slip past the D’Rongo’s Quicksand Sync-Trauma wards while the memories Denton ejected out from inside him shot out and highlighted an interconnected sequence to travel down the Elder’s mind. As he sped down the pathways of her mind, he thought he noticed flickers of accretion building within her Auto-Seance before they all dissolved at the same time.
“The bombs went off. That’s a strike cell gone.” Cas laughed.
It took Avo a moment to parse what he just heard. Denton and Cas had been planning something behind the rest of them. Something that ensured the death of D’Rongo’s personal protection detail.
He didn’t know whether to growl his displeasure at the details hidden from him or laugh with bemusement at their success.
The Glaive still wasn’t a true Necro in his eyes, but her social and political engineering was no longer in doubt.
“What the hells just happened,” Chambers muttered.
“Some fuckery,” Draus deadpanned.
As Avo traveled across the designated sequences, he cast his Whisper out along alternative paths and found them beset with mem-cons and other phantasmal traps. What he had was a straight navigation to D’Rongo’s innermost memories without needing to scry his way forward–he wasn’t even sure how Denton managed to plan this one
All he knew was that he didn’t need to deal with the maze simulated by the Elder’s Meta–the depths of her mind were directly linked to his Meta now.
+We’re in,+ Avo said.
+Yeah,+ Denton said. +Good job.+ She disconnected from his mind momentarily and–to his surprise–he heard her laugh. “I won’t lie–I didn’t think we were going to get to do this but… sometimes the opportunity just presents itself.” He heard a shuffle of clothing. “Agnos Kusanade. You can jack in too now.”
“I… okay,” Kae breathed. “Okay.”
She didn’t follow immediately. Instead, it was Denton that jack back in first, and using Avo as a conduit, she connected herself directly to D’Rongo.
+Hello, Elder,+ Denton said. +We’d like to talk with you about Godshaper. And what you did to Agnos Kae Kusanade and Paladin Dawton Morrow. Tell me, do you still have his Soul?+
But when the reflexive notes of startlement broke within the Elder, what followed were only the bitter waters of disdain. +Oh, good. More of these questions. Haven’t you bothered me enough? I told you, by the Articles–+
+We’re not Paladins,+ Denton interrupted.
Avo could feel the sneer building on D’Rongo’s face. +No. Of course you’re not. You’re too good for that. And you killed my Incubi. All at once. All without the Exorcists noticing.+ Her features softened. A chuckle of genuine amusement filled her mind. +Ah. The answer is obvious. Welcome to my mind then, Priest of Noloth. Come to strike another bargain with me?+
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
Slight delay for next chapter (minor personal issue). Should not be delayed too long.
