Brent Stinebaker
patreon
14-6 Flavors
🕑 Added 2023-07-19 19:45:47 +0000 UTCWe do not live just one life, Veylis. There are also lives unlived. Paths untread. Blows unstruck.
Possibly is like a phantom existence. A parallel place that could have been, but wasn’t. But “could have been” holds its own power should one seize time by the throat.
All of a sudden, the blow you failed to strike, the words you didn’t say, the moments you didn’t capture are all granted back to you.
All it takes is a step sideways.
But understand that possibility is not totality. Some things remain nigh-impossible still. Like a child combusting into a star, or your father finally remembering to close his eyes after I behead the ninth-thousandth person in front of him.
That man… Sometimes, I swear he forgets who he wed. I have to remind him.
Remember this, Veylis. Understand the stretch of what can be, and you will see more than the falling blows of your enemy before they land. You will the shape of the world in its actions and reactions. And you will learn there is a deeper pattern to humanity than you ever notice.
Now pick up that spear, and let us do this again. There is a world in which you win this spar yet. Let us both work to discover it.
-Zein Thousandhand to Veylis Avandaer
14-6
Flavors
Aggravation.
If there was a single word that could be used to summarize what it was like to fight Zein Thousandhand, it was aggravation.
Five times he ascended back from death to claim her mind.
Five times she tested his mettle and blew out the candle of his consciousness.
The duels between them were shifting and frenetic. After his second return, his subminds generated a countermeasure and exploited the shadows in the room to dive away from her mind-nulling disruption.
She complimented him on temporarily evading his vulnerability by skipping across time to descend into his darkness before beheading him with her glaive.
Again, he didn’t know how she was striking him. All he knew was that when she sought flesh, her blade found it.
Still, there was new freedom in being able to shed his flattering vessel using his consciousness in search of a new body to anchor his ego. With Zein an impossible target, he once again targeted the just-resurrected Andraga, shredding through her memories to mantle himself upon her sheathe anew.
Just in time for Zein to spawn again and vanquish his thoughts in a burst of Nether-shaking ghosts.
His next two attempts involved growing hundreds of loci across the room using his blood and jumping through them like a circuit. He discovered that as long as he was connected to something that served as a catalyst of one of his domains in the real, he could channel his Heavens.
For those final two engagements, he survived a few seconds longer, but alas, when Zein realized what he was doing she swung her blade out once, and all his haemokinetic constructs came apart in sync.
Whatever confusion consumed her early on in their fight faded now to curiosity mixed with bemusement. She was studying him now. Testing his limits and reactivity, shifting from place to place across the span of chronology to see how far away she could go before he noticed or casting a trauma forward across time into his thoughstuff, her mind squealing with pitched interest as she watched her own ghosts burn in his replicating flames.
By the end, Andraga had found herself demoted from an unwilling participant to something between a bystander and an audience member for a series of performative murders. Despite her Heavens, implants, and skills, she was the non-factor between a reactionless thoughtform and a time-striding heroine that thrived in the slaughterhouse that was Idheim’s far past.
Even as Zein cut Avo from life time and time again, the Scaarthian flinched each time she felt his perception drift over her, wilting back despite her want to aid Thousandhand.
As he returned to life for a sixth time, his subminds loaded into place with an ever-expanding forest of options to deploy against Zein. With each death, his approach deepened in sophistication and complexity. He was going to culture more blood-loci again, but the ones in the real would be a smoke screen–the main railways protecting his consciousness would be planted in the darkness.
There was a risk to using both Heavens so heavily at once, but so long as he ensured his Rend was emptied as soon as–
“Enough,” Zein said, standing across from him without her glaive as he fully rose back into existence. “I’ve enjoyed this little bout between us, and I see why my other instance was so charmed to face you. But I have given you all the time I can spare, and so the pleasure must come to an end.”
As the light above them flickered, Avo caught sight of the bone-white ceramic plating that shelled his skull from harm. Unlatched each of the armored petals, he studied his fibrous visage as he sneered. “And it’s over. Just because you said so.”
Thousandhand cocked her head at him. “Well, I could ensure you are greeted with a final death if that is the end you seek. Or I could just leave. Or expose you to the people in the building. You very much overestimate your control of the situation, my young dagger.”
He glowered still, his subminds debating whether to amplify his bestial aggression or adapt his mind toward a more diplomatic model now that they could pursue other benefits using rhetorical means.
A ripple of hate-infused thoughtstuff caught his attention. A low whisper snaked beneath the skin reality around him. Turning his attention to Andraga, he found the Scaarthian glaring at him from the corner, her fists clenched while the augs along her throat crackled.
Avo grinned. “Finally brave now? Know what? I’ll let you kill my body. I’ll take that memory and layer it over myself when I brand your mind with my own.” As a taunt, she shiifted her mind’s template over his own and simulated her near-term memories. Suddenly, he remembered that she was here to pull her son from an Incubi cell before the dive for his team “was to go wrong.”
He created an effigy of the child over the blazing halo crowning his skull, and he watched with glee as her face twisted in violation and outrage.
Sometimes, there were few indulgences more enjoyable than hurting someone while being a ghoul.
[Reducing thrill.]
Avo felt his excitement dip instance and frowned. +Why?+
[No focusing on Zein. Tunnel vision on something you can hurt. Draus mentioned this weakness. We should fix it.]
He wanted to get angry at himself for reducing his amusement, but right was right, and now he had the power to change it.
He needed to stay focused on Zein.
Andraga took a half-reluctant step forward just as he broke eye contact with her. Sound bundled in a tumbling wave around her, and spat an ear-ringing curse in his direction. “You motherfu–”
“No,” Zein said, spinning on her companion. “Do not provoke our dear ghoul. I enjoy fighting him. I will fight him through five more resurrections if you give me the opportunity, but your window will be missed, and your son will be dead. Is that what you wish?”
The Scaarthian Godclad stopped and clenched her jaw. She fought herself, torn between two actions, one stupid and primal, the other tortured but sensible.
Avo saw a more impotent cousin of his beast behind her eyes.
Everyone waged quiet wars inside themselves, it seemed.
Zein pressed her. “Approach him, and he torches your mind anew and becomes suzerain to your soul again. There is no possibility or path in which you overcome him. Not as he is now. And not as you are now. I am the only one sparing you from an undignified fate.”
Andraga let out a roar and her body twisted violently. Her fist mangled a repair drone, and in the next instant, Zein saw it restored. Oh, to be so helplessly emotional–to suffer the whims of impulse and sensory feedback without the ability to tune oneself freely. Avo still remembered that hell, and he pitied the woman for living it.
He pitied the world
Zein waited till Andraga backed off before regarding Avo again. As she twiddled her fingers, all the damage they inflicted on the room shivered, and things went back to looking the way they were before.
It was like the fight never even happened. Or if she copied and pasted one instance of time over another.
“Tell me: What are you doing here?” she asked.
He didn’t answer immediately, still wondering the depths of her awareness when it came to the nature of his mind. By the last few lives he spent against her, she had grown adept at predicting him again, but he still noticed some guesswork in her actions–an extra and unneeded skip or two before death finally found him.
“Come now, dagger, You didn’t come here to seek more training from this old woman. Our battle was a chance encounter–a fluke made fated by intersecting paths and improbable possibility. You want something else. Something specific.”
He let out a low chuff. “Just dagger now?”
“Yes. You are still limited in the way you fight, but not quite the juvenile you were in my other self’s memories.” She pressed her lips together. “I hope you understand that I have committed a grave taboo to understand what you are. It is an ill thing to dig through the memories of another instance. It compromises the safety of the Column cell she directs.”
Avo mulled over what she said. “She’s dead. You know that?”
“Yes,” Zein said, sighing wistfully. “Killed by my daughter. What a feeling. What a flavor. But let’s speak of you. You have changed much in the span of hours.” Clicking her tongue, her eyes swiveled as she sank deeper into her own thoughts. “What have done to yourself to achieve this? The Conflagration should have emptied your mind of any substance with its constant self-attrition. How can you exist right now, let alone control their structures? Again, such development in merest hours…”
If her ignorance was true, then the obfuscating effects of the Conflagration remained active against her. Yet, even with all the minds he drew into his totality, he found himself without an answer as to why she was so blinded to him now.
“You couldn’t have possibly obtained a counter-axiomatic sophont construct for you to bind to your Metamind, could you? No. Aegis would never permit something like that to cross over into the Nether. Such would be a nightmarish calamity.” Her eyes briefly bent into mirthful crescents. “But also very amusing before everyones’ minds all blend into a slurry of insanity.”
She was next to him then, her shift across space and time bearing no prelude and causing him to eject his mind free of his current body in anticipation of a physical attack–there was no point in trying to save his body; she had killed him physically each time without fail. As she ran an inquisitive finger along his collapsing form, she smirked at him and flickered back where she was while Avo hissed in outrage.
He welded his mind and vessel back together before the latter could topple.
“I will trade you knowledge,” Zein said. “What did you come for? What do you want?”
“Going to just give it to me?” Avo asked.
She nodded without hesitation. “You deserve a reward for how close you came to actually affecting me.” She smirked. “You now stand as the second person to harm me in some manner. At least in another path.”
Say one thing for Zein, say she didn't hold grudges when you tried to eat her mind and alter her consciousness.
What a philosophy it was to be under the faith of martial supremacy.
“Informational nexus,” Avo said. “Cluster of loci in–”
A golden path surged out from her and dragged him across the asphalt of time. Suddenly, things became known to him. Confidential memories gathered by Zein in another future flooded his awareness.
He knew.
He understood the structure of Ori-Thaum’s Incubi-based operations. He had the memories connected to theatre convexs and operational leaders. Most importantly, he knew the lead Glaive in charge of the operation that devastated Kae’s life.
Staggering, his rose from the temporal stupor to find Zen staring at him smugly. “Will that suffice?”
More details were accelerating through his mind, and even his subminds were overwhelmed by countless hours of mem-data dumped into him at once. “...Yes.”
“Good. Now. Your mind. What did you do.”
“Not me,” he replied, still distracted by his new knowledge. “Low Masters. They did this. They used a war mind against me. I tried to—”
“Burn your awareness away so they couldn’t claim you?” Zein asked, frowning. “Wise, but I still don’t see the connection. Ah. I was never much of a diver of the Unsea.”
Unsea? He looked at her, surprised.
She scoffed. “What did the Hungers tell you? That they were the one to build the Nether alone? WIthout the Ori’s vivianite, they would have never been able to commit their first mistake. And your father would have never been my problem. Alas. Alas, alas. Things that could have been but weren’t. Just like your little run through Nu-Scarrowbur deviating from my plans. And to think it was my constnat assistance across the paths that got me noticed by my girl–”
“To engineer the outcome you wanted,’ Avo corrected.
“--and killed horribly.” She expressed her disappointment with an exaggerated sigh. “I had such hopes and dreams. A set piece in mind for your triumph! The ascent of Guard-Captain Draus to a Godclad. An open engagement right outside the Fire’s Height, and Uthred Greatling, face reddening with humiliation as his daughter finds herself in conflict with both Stormtree and Ori-Thaum assets. All these moments that could be, never to be in this life.”
She paused. “I suppose I’ll just have to reestablish the continuity of my desired events should I win the Final Game and claim the tower.”
[Final Game. She says it like it’s a competition.]
[Because it is. Her mind and behavior are closer matches of a child in a playground than a black legend of the annals of Idheim’s past. Death is but a setback or a score. Other Godclads are the only true players. The end is to claim the right to alter the canonicity of history and reality itself.]
“Your daughter,” Avo asked. “You said she killed you. How? How can she access your miracles? Attack you across time..”
His subminds generated a number of responses a baseline mind could give to that statement. Pride was not one of them.
Pride, more than even scorn, dominated Zein’s freely flowing thoughstuff as her demeanor spoke of respect. “My girl has always known to be thorough and encompassing in her measure. Especially with proper enemies. I drilled into her essential skills as best I could, and she learned with an undaunted thirst.” A flatness overcame her gaze a moment thereafter. Her expression fell. “Perhaps she learned too much from me. Some advice for you, Avo–know when to stray from your path.”
[Useless platitude without context.]
[It’s Zein. Could be wasting our time and bandwidth deciphering her mental deliberately.]
“Ah,” Zein cut him off and held up a single, armored finger. “That cell belongs to another instance of myself. I must know nothing about them. It is risky enough that I delved into the experiences of my still-dead counterpart to learn about you. Should I make too much noise down the paths, you may find yourself introduced to the High Seraph herself prematurely.”
Avo winced. If Veylis could kill a version of Zein so completely, then he didn’t need to know his odds against her yet. That wasn’t to say part of him was curious, of course. “Is her mind protected like yours?”
Thousandhand threw her head back and cackled. “Oh, dagger, this is not information I will freely give. Especially to one such as you. I would not have you pointlessly dead at her hand before your use is completely served. And I will not risk even the slightest possibility of you subsuming my girl’s consciousness.”
Avo clicked his fangs at her. “Saying there’s a chance.”
“There’s always the chance. But I fear it may take centuries for me to find the path of your victory against her should you face her. Your ego would be a novelty to her but… if it couldn’t surmount me, you will not suffice against her. She will drown you in your own hubris.”
“Not a good habit: Having a soft spot for your enemy.”
Zein accepted his criticism with good grace. “True, but this need not be true forever. For whatever future may come, we yet wish to become family again. As such, we are… reluctant to alter such an end.”
“Do your cells know about this?” Avo asked. “That you intend to protect your daughter. Even with what she did to Jaus? Her father?”
A dangerous glint flashed behind her eyes. Something inside Avo screamed for him to get away, to run and hide and never return. Coldness flooded through some of his ghosts, and he arrested the instinctive portions of his mind that sought to unman his fortitude while preparing for a new attack.
No blows came. No sword. No Thoughtwave Disruption.
“What did she do to Jaus?” Zein asked.
“Killed him.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Death is nothing. You provoke me with noise instead of sense. I will forgive you this time. Do you know why Ninth Column exists?” Zein asked.
“Because the Guilds deviated from Jaus' dream?” Avo said. “Broke the future?”
“No. That is past. That is lost. Ninth Column exists because I will them too. Because I support their operations against the impossible power of the Guilds, and offer the infrastructure to allow them a comfortable existence within the organs of their enemies. No other person–Godclad or not–can give what I give, do what I do. And so, the voiders support me in their desperate hope that I can restore my love and cure the calamity building between powers. And because I struck an accord with to ensure my reality would accommodate some of their wants.”
“So. You make deals?”
“I bridge what remains of his ruined dream,” Zein said. “Through me, he might yet be restored, but also through me, the world can still be preserved.”
”Preserved,” Avo said. “This is about the Arks. You’re trying to keep the Guilds in equilibrium because the Arks have something you need?”
She didn’t speak, but her terse smile hinted at his accuracy. “It takes more than just a Heaven to structure the Ladder. The Arks were… decent enough prototypes, but they serve as reasonable pillars as well. But I have said enough. My time with you is finished. We should have never met.”
“Leaving?” Avo said. “So so–”
She waved.
And between blinks, he found himself standing in an empty grey room beside Zein. His DeepNav placed him near the edge of the Undercroft in the Teirs, and he was over a thousand miles away from where he started. “You can return to the Warrens from here if you wish. A silent war is brewing between Ori-Thaum, the Sang, Highflame, and Stormtere, so you have an opening.”
“Tossing me out of your run?” Avo asked.
“Yes. Exactly.”
He couldn’t help but chuff a laugh. The old woman could be direct when she wanted to.
“You are changing things, Avo. Changing yourself rapidly as well.” Her words trailed off as she considered what next to say. She reached up and patted him upon his cheek in a faux-motherly manner. He responded by brushing her hand off with an Echohead and hissing at her, earning the old woman series of chuckles. Ever did he feel like a nu-kitten hissing at a demon. “Don’t be disheartened about dying. Victory is victory, defeat is defeat. But advancement is also advancement, and growth is growth. The totality of all the facts matter.”
A beat passed. Avo just stared at her. “Can’t tell if you’re encouraging me or mocking me.”
“Both, I suppose. We all deserve some respect for our efforts. We all deserve ridicule for our failings. The responses we offer need not be one thing alone. If you would heed my words now, I have a final suggestion to grant you.”
He grunted. It was tempting to try and make a final go at her, but subminds estimated a “99.99% chance of immediate nulling” if he tried without proper setups in place.
“You should learn to live life,” she said, finally. “Don’t just wander. Don’t just explore. Don’t just hunt and stalk and glory in power. Understand fully. Epitomize virtue and shed weakness. Broaden your palate. Live the lives of others. Live the lives of those you will kill or spare. You have seized for yourself a gift–a power of deeper understanding than anyone in this world can fathom. Use it. Become everything and everyone. As your father said: Seek the colors.”
Avo blinked. He hadn’t expected this. “Why?”
“Why?” She asked. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you telling me this? I would have burned away your mind. I would have changed you to agree with me. To become like me.”
She patted him again, though this gesture with imbued with far more pity. “You have the potential to be a new power. There is a… facet, of his dream in what you are.”
“Jaus?”
“Yes. A comingling of minds. A union of thoughts. Perfect symmetrical empathy to deepen our bonds. You are far more exploitative than this ideal but there is potential. And if a monster can learn to express the heights of humanity and goodness…”
“You want me to be another path for the city?” Avo asked. “Another better ending to reality?”
“Beginning,” Zein said. “What kind of existence would you like to behold, Avo? What is your dream?”
He didn’t have an immediate answer. Zein didn't wait for him to respond before she vanished again.
Alone, he found himself standing in an empty room far from where he started. Thoughts sped through his head. He wondered why Zein–or this version of her–wanted Andraga, and how they were going to hide what happened with Benhata.
Perhaps the Concave would just disappear. Vanish into mystery. That would inflict morale damage too.
But more importantly, he had what he came for, though it came far more freely given than he expected.
Deactivating his Incog, he turned to regard the countless sea of sparkling accretions beyond the featureless walls of the room he was in.
There was a vibrancy to the Tiers that the Warrens lacked. A kinetic essence. A liveliness.
The Tiers.
He recalled once thinking this place was home to him, of having an apartment and owning fish. Even now, he could still remember his district and address.
Now why would that be if his memories were fake?
And when had his father ever left him a herring that led nowhere?
With Ori-Thaum’s mem-data claimed and Abrel still in Voidwatch’s custody, he decided to embark on one final expedition of the day.
This one was to be personal.
This one led him on the path back “home.”
It was time to learn what nostalgia tasted like.
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
Slight delay for next chapter. Refining some character work. I'll try to get it up as soon as the quality is cemented
Arcane
Perhaps the solution to Zein is to have all Subminds play out every scenario as if it's real. Assuming Zein kills Avo by just picking a path where she does, so if he does the above solution then he might survive. Thoughts, Author? Or it will do jack. Thanks for the chapter!
