Brent Stinebaker
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13-19 Lost Testament
🕑 Added 2023-07-06 19:33:17 +0000 UTCReality might be divine, but the mind is sacrosanct, Jaus Avandaer.
You can change the world. You can make fire sing for you and weave golden threads from the light itself.
You can hide a city in a pond and summon mountains with the merest whisper.
You can have a blade deemed ever-piercing and watch as the fabric of totality shreds when its shed greets a shield made impregnable upon the anvil of lore.
To be a god is to be the ruler-maker; the sword-holder; to take concept as your flesh.
Imagine now someone with absolute dominion over thoughts. Or memories. Or emotion.
Now, imagine it to be all of us.
The Nether is a construct of freedom above all others. Freedom for each and every person to wield a facet of the divine, but to also fashion instruments of war and protection from the matter of their own agency and memories.
This is what I offer you, Godbreaker. Freedom. Radical freedom. Freedom for everyone to be themselves, but understand the other. Freedom for every man, woman, child, and thinker to be their own lord, to reign over the palaces of the internal.
And when the time comes, should your dream come to fruition, I too offer my vision of the coming future–one where we deal in philosophy and enlightenment. Where humanity is above death as the chains of their consciousness continue onward eternal, yet each day their egos die, only to be birthed again from the wretched corpse of ignorance.
You have freed us from the tyranny of the material. Let me give you the higher threshold. All I ask is for you to accept a change to our history–an adjustment so meager you won’t even remember making it.
-Letter from Wahakten, the Thief of Dreams, Priest of the Nolothi, and Servant of the Hungers
13-19
Lost Testament
+I can still feel it,+ Avo said. +Still feel it nested inside me. Paradoxical matter. It’s nothing… but only nothing could have bridged the gap inside the fire. Only nothing.+ Laughter unsheathed from him in a series of low hisses and he pitied the priest.
Oh, to dive so deep and still be greeted by ignorance. What greater pain could a master feel than a chink in the fortress of their knowledge?
+We have more than a single war-mind, and of the counter-cognitives, there are plethora.+
+Good. I believe you. But I don’t think you’ll use them anymore. Not with… what just happened....+ Avo tested his new mental templates, and through his ghosts their vocals served as a backdrop to his. +Don’t want any more unexpected surprises. Hm. I wouldn’t mind but you…+
He was pleased with how Emotion’s ray of perception swept from end to end at the twitching tongues of flame manifesting faint mirages of the recently devoured. To cause such disquiet in a creature empty of feelings was a feat worth savoring.
+Don’t think your owners will want me now either. I’m a plague now. A fire burning through the innards of their sea. I spread. And they want to own everything. Tell me, Emotion. Tell me if I was ever truly considered for ascension among you? I’m curious.+
+Yes,+ Emotion replied, after but a moment’s pause. +Peace would have loathed you. Joy would have wept for you. But I would have been well served by you. You are not Defiance. You would have never balanced me the same way. You are… curious. And different. Too inhuman to truly be scarred by the cruelties of the world, but also willing to drown in the minds of others. He made you well.+
A compliment from a hollow being. How flattering.
And pointless.
+Might I show you a final memory before our words run dry and bloodshed follows?+ Emotion asked. +A moment lost to history, given freely between foes to be. As I have done with my son eons past.+
A trap of sentiment, perhaps, but one of immense curiosity. A mere few minutes ago, Avo would have rejected such a bargain without further thought. To accept memories from another Necro was an expression of the highest trust. Such a thing was entirely absent between him and the shriveled effigies that named themselves kin to his father.
Now, however, things were different. He was different.
Memory had gone from construct of artistry and sequencing to something between fuel and seed, with his body existing as a living garden of immolation, growing and shedding pieces at will.
They lacked the trauma to break his immensity. They lacked the ability to laid their thoughts upon his mind without being unmade themselves.
He was beyond vulnerability. And even if should his confidence be proven hubris, all that waited was death, and all that represented to a Godclad was a setback and a moment of learning.
+Show me the memory,+ Avo said. +Doubt it will make a difference in what is to come.+ As he cast out these thoughts, he noticed narrowing beams falling on his person from the lobby beyond. Surprise flowed into him from partially subsumed sequences and ingested mem-data told him intimate details about the Exorcists that frequented the administrative node the most.
It seemed whatever the Low Masters were doing to hide their presence was no longer in effect.
They were surrendering their masquerade as well. Curious. And desperate.
All this made him wonder more about the moments he was to receive.
The bridge of mem-data that Emotion built outward to greet him was once a nigh-featureless stretch of memories when peered at as a simulation. Now, however, a sky was being painted with the amber colors of sunset while ghosts unrolled a phantasmal horizon into shape.
Emotion stood on a cliffside now, so close to the precipice that Avo wondered if the priest would have chosen to step over the edge if the memories were made real. Beside the Famine stood a younger man adorned with many of the same features but none of the disposition.
+Avohakten?+ The ghoul studied his namesake. Walton’s long-dead son bounced in his saddle atop a massive war-dog. He smiled too broadly and brightly, and the fact that he was bedecked in cerulean plate enameled with the vagueness of a skeleton told Avo he was dealing with someone well versed in the ways of pleasure and vanity.
+I think I would have hated him,+ Avo said, casting his thoughts over into the memory while Emotion just stared at his son. Avohakten, for his part, was staring into the far distance, at countless small and distant dots dragging enormous slabs of marble while others dug deep ravines down through the pearlescent soil stretching out all around them.
+You would have have,+ Emotion admitted. +He was too much a lover, even for me during those days. He cared too deeply, and too little at the same time. A terrible quality for a ruler. Even worse for one meant to be a servant.+
Avo spawned a few additional Whispers from his form to better glean the undertaking happening in the foreground. The patterns of the ravines looked familiar to him, somehow, with their curving bifurcations parceled chunks of land into sigil-like sections that reminded him of…
+Districts,+ he breathed. +This was New Vultun.+
+No.+ The single word was spat with all the force Emotion could muster. The Low Master glared, and Avo learned that just because his foe couldn’t feel didn’t mean he was beyond offense. +Old Noloth. A grand undertaking as demanded by our masters. A place capable of drinking away the excesses of the gods and sparing our peoples the sickness of miracles.+
Avohakten opened his mouth to speak, but no sound followed. Just the rapid movement of lips and laughter thereafter.
+What’s wrong now? Hungers take his voice?+
+No. We did in the time before our separation. It… reminded us of our own. It made us doubt, and it shook our faith.+
And so Walton surgically removed the component that was causing the emotions instead of resolving the issue itself. Ever the Necro, even before the Nether itself.
+You should start by burning this memory. It will reveal to you who we were. What we remember of our old faiths and the cultures and peoples therein.+
+And why do I want this?+ Avo asked.
The priest slipped out of the sequence and casually approached the ghoul’s winnowing flames. +I do not wish to be forgotten. I do not wish for my home to be forgotten. And neither would Defiance, I think. This is your inheritance too. Creature though you might be in my eyes, if you are to be a son of Noloth, then it will do you well to remember what we were fighting for, and what you may decide to fight against.+
The absurdity of the man’s sudden sentimentality made Avo laugh. +Ignorance didn’t work so now you try knowledge?+
Emotion didn’t dignify the taunt with a response. The memory faded. Beyond them, the Exorcists began to move in, numbering over twelve thousand.
+You want to know something before I take your mind?+ Avo asked.
+Speak.+
+I would have never joined you. I despise you. And pity you. Still don’t see why you decided to give yourselves to the Hungers. Still don’t see it. Could have done anything. Could have lived free.+
Emotion gave but a low hum in return. +Take the memories into yourself and then judge us. I will make no defense of what I have done. I regret nothing, but I have sinned all the same.+ A beat followed. +You judge me now in the same way he did then, you know? On this, you are alike. Time will prove if you are as much fool as he.+
The mention of time made Avo think of Zein, and he found himself wincing as he considered being at the mercy of a future beyond his control. +No. Time will prove nothing. Only will and power. My will. My will ascending. I will accept your gifts. The war-mind. This memory. Your ego. The others. Someday. In the end. I will exist above this city. I will lurk in the dream of every dreamer. I will feed strength to those that seek to rise against fate. And I will be waiting for the Ladder to return just so I can learn how the Hungers taste.+
From the priest leaked the closest emotion he had to loathing.
And pride.
+If we could have only conceived of your like before our betrayal,+ Emotion said. Then, he thought about his words a bit more. +But such a thing can yet be corrected, can’t it? To be eternalized as the perfect slave of our empire reborn. That is a compliment. But to you, I suppose I could offer no greater insult. The Hungers will take pleasure in seeing you shackled to a newer purpose.+
All the ghosts comprising Avo’s cognition hissed and cursed. Fifteen other voices hurled slurs and roars of rage as he swept through down upon Emotion and the surrounding memories, his thoughtstuff a tsunami portending a wildfire.
And just as the memories began to burn, something pulsed at the heart of Emotion’s accretion, and his mind fissured from existence.
But the cracks didn’t stop there.
They continued to spread, and where the fire flowed, a spreading chasm in the Nether was there to greet them.
In the clash, Avo felt himself part of a waterfall, plunging again into something entirely unknown.
***
You aren’t.
You can’t be understood.
There is no understanding you.
You are a different angle of a song–a concept impossible, short of twists and self-delusion.
You are a sense that never was.
You are a color that never was painted upon reality’s canvas.
You should have swallowed the thinker entirely. That’s what the priests made you for. To be an endless pit for minds they can’t contain.
You weren’t finished though. Eventually, they just go insane and experience ego-death. You were meant to reach into them. You were meant to infest them without an understanding of anything.
But even if you were completed, it wouldn’t have mattered.
This thinker has a piece of ignorance inside him. He wouldn’t know you. And so, you would have been undone by the touch of your brother trapped in a mind you were both meant to contain.
It is a good thing that the priests made sure you were barren of thoughts.
It wouldn’t do for a war-mind to be so embarrassed…
***
As the chasm flattened, Avo felt his mind elevated back to baseline coherence. Odd as these new sensations were, he wasn’t left in a stupor this time, though he also didn’t feel like he gained anything new.
He was unreasonably disappointed.
At the heart of his being, the strangeness bridging his subminds felt like a lodestone for his ego.
[Didn’t know what that was.]
[Channel another mind template? See what they can get?]
[Memories tell us nothing. Exorcists approaching. Should absorb the Auto-Seance. Take their memories. Then…]
[Could burn away the entire Oversec.]
[Yes. Could. But very loud. Very obvious. Low Masters exposed us for a reason. Want to turn Necros against us. Make us easy to hunt.]
[We burn. We assimilate memories. We are easy to hunt.]
[Need to find method for silence again.]
[Yes.]
[Yes.]
As the first Exorcist cast trauma splashed uselessly against his immensity, Avo coiled around the Low Masters’ Auto-Seance and drained its constructs away. Mem-cons and traps were boiled and added to his inventory. Knowledge threaded into his mind like new currents joining a stream.
He suddenly remembered how to speak High Nolothic, among other things. Supposed details from culture and history–the “gift” offered by Emotion before… whatever he did to himself.
The Auto-Seance itself was somewhat unsurprisingly devoid of additional minds. The other Low Masters must’ve jacked out at some point. Wise. Annoying. Such was the difficulty with fighting another Necro in the open. If you weren’t fast, they would just depart.
Thus was his newest weakness revealed–he could not hide himself any longer. For as fast and infectious as we were, the Conflagration driving him was beyond his understanding to disguise.
A dozen more impacts trickled against his cog-feed. He considered having his subminds create layered wardings as used by Mirrorhead, but he decided against it in favor of swallowing some new traumas for his Ghostjack.
[We now number 44,138 Ghosts in total.]
But despite his newfound mass, he found himself more fluid and fleet than ever before.
He regarded Oversec-C1 with passing interest. New minds were jumping from point to point–their accretions strange and unnatural. Canon-channeling Paladins was what his submind guessed. His other estimated how long it would take for him to spread through the entirety of the system itself along with how much of the Nether could be usurped and if he could survive a Thoughtwave Disruption.
It would be an act of little difficulty to vaporize all these little Exorcists as well. There were millions of them approaching him. Millions casting desperate little missives using their ghosts. He had torn a few thoughts out from the Nether before they could arrive at the wanted destination just because he could.
Their struggle against him was analogous to a swordsman trying to split a hurricane.
Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.
He could drink all of them into his mind in an instant.
And perhaps it was the ease of the action that put him off. The lack of flavor in such a slaughter.
Staying wouldn’t be wise either.
With the Low Masters gone and the Incubi scattered, his purpose here was spent. There was little else for him to pursue besides–
The idea came from a more impulsive theory than coherent thought.
He hadn’t had a chance to “speak” properly with Abrel yet. And here he was with her session within his depths and her mind template not yet included in his growing collective.
She would be far more fun to simulate than any of the Exorcists. Yes, she would be a better part of his diet–a better subject to experiment on.
Except for Chambers, who…
He suddenly remembered Draus shooting him in the face as the memories formed inside him.
[Draus shot Chambers in the head,]
[Almost immediately.]
[The moment she noticed the flames.]
[Didn’t even get a chance to download a full template.]
+How are we still alive?+
[Denton. She’s examining us now. Sunrise too.]
Avo grunted. Well. Not unexpected. Good Reg. She was probably going to hate these flames.
Shaking the thoughts off, he set upon on final diversion before jacking out.
The question: if he was now a self-moving ego, then what was to follow should he unmake another Godclad?
Perhaps Abrel Greatling might offer him true insight.
Comments
Wanderingforworks
Thanks for the chap!
LtDan
No John, you are the Memcon.
Arcane
I would kill for Draus' and the others' POV as well from the moment he became the Mind Supplanter or (MS) for short. Unless everyone in the Exorcists keeps their mouths shut, rumors are going to fly of a Self-replicating Monster unlike anything ever seen. Would they even want to keep this hidden?
