Brent Stinebaker
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14-4 Know Your Enemy (II)
🕑 Added 2023-07-17 19:00:37 +0000 UTCNecrotheurgy is a disgusting art and I despise everyone who practices it, including myself.
There is cheap little we have left in the world. I can’t use the word precious because nothing in this world is precious. I’ve seen miracles and emerged all the poorer for it. I’ve been Ensouled and all I learned was to despise myself. But even among all these benefits, my time with Necrotheurgy was the worst of them all.
You learn that it feeds the tyrant inside you. The pervert. You can twist people out of their forms and make them do things they would have never even considered before. And if you got enough mastery in the craft, it won’t even occur to them that their change was externally influenced.
The Nether is a central pillar of our world, but I don’t think Jaus intended for us to use it this way. Maybe it was supposed to be covered by some kind of administrative deity. Maybe something less than that.
Certainly not us. We’re people, and people are shit.
A secret that Ori-Thaum doesn’t want to admit is that they’re not nearly as attuned to their “home ground” as you might think. Necros go missing all the time, and there are spaces in that sea of ghosts that leave the Elder Council questioning just how much they know.
I stopped diving a few years ago. Had my Metamind removed a few months back. I have an implanted ansible in place instead, and I get void-side entertainment tunneled straight into my brain matter from light minutes away.
The gods were a mistake. The ghosts were a mistake. The dream was a mistake.
We should go back to living like people. We should stop choking reality like this–like we’re masters and abusers when we can’t even master ourselves.
We should…
We…
I’m out of joy.
I need another hit.
I need another hit.
-Former Ori-Thaum Chief Admin Revo I’Kurita
14-4
Know Your Enemy (II)
If there was a single lesson Avo learned from his time with the Low Masters, it was that ignorance was divine.
Ignorance was fatal.
Ignorance was like undetected cancer metastasizing in the middle of the night after a quiet day. Ignorance was a flechette sailing over the horizon to pierce through your hab-cell at the exact angle to kill you and only you. Ignorance was like an unseen wildfire eating through your world, the flames only fully catching upon the precipice of discovery.
Ignorance kept Avo alive then and now.
And ignorance was why he was going to claim another Godclad in his stead today.
[Target’s moving erratically. Phys-Sim can’t keep track of her. She bounces across surfaces. Skipping from place to place.] A corner of the lower two-hundredth-and-fifty-fourth floor came alight in Avo’s cog-feed as his subminds finished estimating Andraga’s eventual destination. [She’s moving down the ventral tunnels right now. For specialized transport and Godclads. Needs to go through a mind-scan before she’s allowed into the actual structure. Can intercept through the checkpoint.]
+Any chance she deviates from that path?+ Avo asked. He knew all the answers they did, but dialogue always helped uncover if there was a missing angle.
[Unlikely. Ori-Thaum is devoted to security and informational censorship. Also Massists. Different ethos. They are not in awe or drawn to the ‘Clads. See Frames more as a tool. Willing to burn and transfer Frames between merited individuals. Sphere ratings aren’t earned but assigned. Andraga will follow protocol. She has never done otherwise.]
+Prepare contingencies anyway. Assumptions will be the death of us.+
His ghosts pealed with soft laughter, sounding akin to bells ringing in the soft breeze. [Like it already has been for so many times.]
Death was a good teacher. Death was consequence itself. Death made sure you never forgot.
Making his way into the inner rung of the Javelin’s demiplanar expanse took a bit more effort than he was used to and got his Galeslither up to five percent Rend. Though he could use all shadows as deep waters to swim beneath attention and through physical barricades, his pace was still far slower than if he directly invoked a Boltstride using his Woundshaper or tapped into the local system to have the architecture itself shuttle him over.
The Javelin, beyond the rigidity of baseline reality, was a flexible edifice capable of shunting people across geometry via the intersection of crossing angles across vast distances–an easy miracle provided by one of the Heavens tied to this place’s techno-thaumic reactors. Here was another thing he couldn’t access due to his newfound development.
All he touched was infested with his being, and though he could spread across ten thousand ghosts in a matter of seconds, he needed to manifest the entirety of their architecture and attach himself to the necessary physical systems to replicate the conveniences offered to those of a less incendiary make.
Nevertheless, this was a trifling loss. He moved fast enough using the Galeslither, and if the need arose, he could attempt to siphon some mass to accelerate his velocity through coves of umbral dark.
Moving bodies became his vehicles, and through them did he hasten his transitions to catch up with his quarry. Somewhere along his approach, her thaumic signature stopped snapping from place to place like a rubberband and ended up going dormant near security checkpoint Sub-253 B-23.
[Off by two floors,] one of his subminds lamented.
It was close enough. He wouldn’t have been able to extrapolate the arriving Godclad’s arrival at all, let alone with any accuracy. All this was only made possible by every single pathway of thought moving in union with the will of his being, and the ever-deepening well of experiences and memories he devoured from the minds he immolated.
How limited he had been before. And how limited his new restrictions were now.
There must be a way he could get the best of all worlds.
As countless new accretions loaded into the reach of his perception, he began cycling through Benhata’s memories to match which among the sighted sequences belonged to Andraga. Once more he surprised himself. Scant seconds were all it took for his subminds to filter through the chaos and isolate his target.
He detached from the shadows cast by the current circle he rode beneath and stepped back out into the real. Turning his gaze upward, he found himself standing at a ninety-degree angle above a marching army of lattice-thin six-armed drones with anvils of green vivianite embedded where a human’s head would be.
Avo caught the aftertaste of wariness from the circle he just abandoned, and found a rising sense of disquiet generated within Benhata’s template as well.
[Proto-Thinkers,] his submind said. [They’re supposed to be capable of twinning active thoughts. Has a specialized construct that can simulate patterns of behavior using specific sequences. Very ghost-intensive. But the Council thinks these ones can eventually replace the need for an all-sophont workforce.]
Semi-minds.
What a novel concept.
Avo looked forward to imbibing the mem-data behind their creation from the loci-cluseter that made up this department’s operational nexus.
Perhaps he could apply their sequences to better use for other purposes. After all, didn’t he have those cloning vats in the George Washington?
Pulling his attention away from the chittering march of the constructs, he winced as a pulsing wave from a particularly powerful Skimmer flayed a good hundred ghosts apart on the surface of his structure just as he began walking toward the checkpoint.
Andraga was moving as well. He could see four-hundred-and-sixty-two concurrent phantasmal streams shifted in and out of her mind, the Necros doubtlessly combing through the totality of her sequences. The memories he stripped from the Incubi gave him a deeper understanding of what was unfolding on the other side.
They already had her mind fully mapped out from previous scans, so now all they needed to do was to ensure altered sequences and patterns of thought were properly reviewed before she could be released.
With the manpower they had, the entire affair usually didn’t last longer than half an hour.
For a Godclad? Such worker capacity was no issue, and time was easily expedited.
[Estimated time to interception: 12 seconds.]
[We could have done it faster. We will do it faster.]
[We don’t have the same limitations. She also technically doesn’t survive the process.]
[Godclad. Just a setback for her–bulkhead opening. Get ready to sink into her shadow.]
Avo steadied himself. Light and dark shifted again as a towering figure strode up before the misted glass of the translucent doorway. Andraga’s silhouette betrayed her clade as Scaarthian almost immediately, but her build was thinner than most of her kind, her musculature almost reasonable instead of the typical ponderousness that her kind was blessed with. And though she still stood a good inch above eight feet, her hair curved out in a strange jumble of cords that seemed to bounce upon her shoulders with each shift of her head.
The doorway hissed and as the taste of machine-scrubbed air wafted through, Andraga eld’Vanlein took her first steps into the inner hallway of the two-hundredth and fifty-third floor.
Each Godclad had a tendency to embody traits from their Heavens even in the real. Avo noticed that trait in Mirrorhead and Abrel, and so far, his new-old friend was no different. Comparing the woman stepping out beside him to the figure dwelling in Benhata’s memories, she stepped forward a near-perfect match beside a few additional implanted vox grills gridding sections of her heavily-chromed neck.
Her face was that of an unflattering teardrop; everything below her cheeks was laden with chrome while the stretch between her nose and forehead lingered on as a refuse of skin and flesh. Short, fiery auburn hair fuzzed her pate while a thickly bundled ponytail made of rubber-coated plugs bounced with each of her steps like a dreadlock of cables.
Thin wires ran between small square-shaped nodes along her bare arms and a silvery exoskeletal cuirass ran down in slatted flats of armor upon her legs. She looked like some kind of augmented beetle trying to shed its carapace but failing halfway, and she walked without letting her eyes wander.
From the moment she left the room, she had a destination in mind and began moving to meet it, all that stood in her way be damned.
Circles parted before her. She barreled straight through and broke some Proto-Thinkers. Nested in her shadow, Avo hid in the dark clinging to her heels as he waited for his opportunity to strike without being noticed, to turn another ‘Clad to his cause.
So far, he couldn’t quite tell where she was trying to go, and not even Benhata’s recollections offered any insight. What he could glean was her urgency and determination to move, and the status she held among all her peers here.
It wasn’t common for a Scaarthian to become a member of Ori-Thaum even after the intermixing of the clades after the Godsfall. Being of no clan meant there were still prejudices in effect despite the supposed unity between the Silvers and Greens about their overall philosophy. Discriminating against a Scaarthian though, was an art best practiced from the wayside or in a corner somewhere if you lacked the necessary augs to stop her from pulping your skull with a light backhand.
The way ahead cleared for her, and Avo saw her cast her ghosts out for the first time. His subminds estimated she was running a four-hundred ghost Meta, and the faintest of her mind’s profile stood contrary to her physical presence.
She knew what it meant to be subtle. She just didn’t care.
That spoke of certitude. Or arrogance.
One could very much be the other depending on the situation.
As her ghosts reached a nearby loci, the mem-data trickling back into her leaked and Avo found himself with partial directions.
[She’s going to floor three-ninety-eight. Prepare for crossover.]
At the same moment, Avo understood what was to come, something shifted along the corner of the room, and suddenly Andraga stagged right into a different halfway. The shifts always came as if a shuddering tumble toward a specific vector. Good thing it wasn’t directly a Heaven of Space she was interfacing with because that might have odds of tearing him loose from his current abode.
Peeking at his surroundings, Avo felt a trickle of emerging suspicion as he found he walking toward what his DeepNav marked as a maintenance zone. The space ahead was devoid of other minds and held but a dozen monitoring loci as entities in the Nether.
His suspicion grew from a trickle to a torrent when she cast out a wave of thoughtstuff and all the local security architecture winked out.
Skimmers stopped radiating.
Fields of perception vanished.
Specters patrolled no more.
As Andraga walked into the maintenance zone, the diamond-shaped doorway retracted in four phases as each flat sheet of metal retracted into the frame allowing her further access.
[Something is wrong.]
[Leave?]
[No. Might be meeting someone. Shouldn’t have noticed us. Would have raised alarm if she did. We should follow her to the end. Find out what she’s seeking.]
[Yes.]
Of course, his expectations took another dip as she managed five more strides into the room before she came to a halt before a row of dormant bulbous repair drones mantled along the wall.
“You should come out,” Andraga said. Uncertainty lingered under her breath, and she spoke with a slight growl that reminded Avo of Rantula. “I know you’re out there. Somewhere. I got told you were ‘shadowing’ me. So come out. Now, we can do this amicably and see if we can settle things without blood, or we can do this like Godclads, and you don’t want to be fighting me here.”
Avo didn’t move. His mind spun, but he restricted himself from feeling any shock or anxiety at the sudden turn. Being a thoughtform afforded him absolute control over himself, and so he would use it to fashion his mind to suit any challenge. His ghosts pried and dug through each other, clashing like threads of fire stitching through one another.
All he had done in the past hour sped through his mind as he ran simulations on where he might’ve revealed himself.
His subminds remained sure that he didn’t.
[She doesn’t know we’re in her shadow. She’s speaking her challenge to everything around her.]
+But if she didn’t notice us then how does she know we’re here?+ Avo asked. The entire thing didn’t make any sense to him. She deliberately isolated herself and turned off security before calling him out, and now she was just waiting. +Is she using herself as bait.+
[Unlikely. There isn’t the need. Could’ve just ordered a focused concentration of Skimmers over her person if she wanted to. Wouldn’t be able to sustain Incog under that level of perception.]
Then what? And how?
[Proposal: We eat her mind and find out.]
“I’m not going to give you forever,” Andraga shrugged. A spark of electricity jumped from the plugs swaying from the back of her head. “You get ten more seconds. Ten more, and you’ll deal with the Sentinel.”
[Trying to flush us out.]
[Maybe.] His submind generated various responses and possibilities. [Can still be to our advantage. She only has part of the detail. We can still try assimilating her. See what she knows. Could burn Benhata after as a potential patsy. Use the Godclad to create a falsehood.]
Yes. It was a risk, but Avo didn’t think it was a high one. So far, the situation had him confused and wary, and he hungered for enlightenment.
[We take the leap then? Find out what lies within the other mind?]
[Yes. Passivity only leads to more extreme alterations to the situation. Secure her. Secure situation after.]
Avo surged out from the dark and drove himself into Andraga’s Meta. His attack came the instant he was of an accord within himself. No more hesitation. No more confusion. A mere moment ago, he was as if a candle, shivering in the wind, waiting.
Now he was wildfire. He struck her. She combusted, and onward did his consciousness swell and grow. All that burned folded over into his awareness, and all that she was capsized as a rising eruption turned the stable waters of her mind into cinders.
HeAVenn-=CCnanon
A high-pitched crackle sounded from the implanted vox-speakers lining her neck and Avo suddenly found his awareness snapping between two places at once. Space blurred around him, but still, he spread, and between heartbeats, Andraga went from her own person to being a subsidiary of another’s will.
Avo felt his control resting across two bodies across the threshold of the Nether. Controlling both felt awkward and occupied the majority of his subminds’ focus. The burden to his ghosts was paltry, but it felt like had placed another weight upon his focus–a construct that drew away overall bandwidth to sustain its functionality.
Carefully, he had both his new bodies turn to regard each other.
Avo-Andraga and Avo-Benhata both looked at each other from across the room, and a weight built in the center of his skull.
[Feels a bit like… when the warmind of ignorance came. Hard to focus.]
[Because it’s ourselves. But two vessels…]
Something within Avo’s memories moved and he made his bodies turn away from each other.
It was like he needed to run two consciousnesses at once, and he only had enough resources to fully focus on three without–
Existence shuddered. The load lightened. The last thing he saw from the perspective of Benhata was his own body rising past him.
Most of Avo’s consciousness shuttled over into Andraga on instinct. A new figure stood across from him, and he recognized her immediately.
“My, this is a surprise,” Zein said, spearing her glaive into Benhata’s decapitated head to pick up for detailed examination. “The paths didn’t tell me you were a Godclad, Benhata? What else have you been hiding from me.”
Space and time-warped around her person like crumpled paper, and a thousand new pathways expanded between the creases of reality. As Zein peered through the multitudes of possibilities offered, her posture grew increasingly stiff and her face behind her transparent plating, confused.
“You… are not Ensouled…” Her voice trailed off. “Andraga. Songbird. Dear, I…” As she finally turned to address him, she uncharacteristically trailed off as her perception drifted up to behold the crown of fire dancing out from Andraga’s Meta. “You’re mind is… burning?” She blinked.
“Yeah,” Avo said, coming out of his own shock. “Things change pretty fast these days.”
And on a whim of opportunity or power-lust, he lashed out once more, hoping to claim true kindling for his fire.
Comments
Wanderingforworks
Thanks for the chap!
Jimmy J.K.
Hope he doesn't get Jaus, will probably kill a lot of the ninth column momentum if he does peppega
Arcane
“You’re mind is… burning?” > “Your mind is… burning?” Thanks for the chapter. While I doubt he'll get Zein, it sure would be an awesome.
