Brent Stinebaker
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13-15 The Deeper Waters
🕑 Added 2023-07-01 20:22:39 +0000 UTC+Convex. We just got Shard-2 stabilized. She’s still gonna be with us. It looked pretty bad for a while but… part of her labyrinth collapsed just right and preserved enough of her deeper memories. Everything else is a smear of thoughtstuff and half-fragged ghosts.+
+Shit. So we got nothing about who ambushed her and Shard-1. Just glimpses and flickers.+
+Well… me and the other Menders managed to piece together a glimpse of the moment they got hit. A lot of detail’s missing and the visuals are somewhere north of fucked. But what we got is… unclear. +
[TRANSFERRING MEM-DATA]
+...+
+We slowed it substantially. The unknown is still a blur.+
+Yeah, I got that. The traumas are expertly made too. Shard-2’s wards broke on the third hit. This means they had three high-null category patterns at the ready. It also means we’re dealing with someone who’s broken a Quicksand before… who knows how we operate…+
+Convex?+
+Mend-1, listen to me: Do not tell anyone that Shard-2 made it. Try to reassemble her mind as best you can and then slot her for redaction-protection detail. After that, report her as ego-dead using a cast.+
+I… yes, Convex.+
+The number of Necros that can dive into a lobby like this is a percent of a percent. To ambush two Incubi on scrying detail at that kind of speed…. We’re facing a Godclad. Or a Nolothic [redacted]... Ignore the second one. You’re not cleared to remember that.+
+Understood. Do you… think it’s one of ours?+
[Sigh] +I hope not. But the candidates capable of performing the feats you pulled from Shard-2’s mind number in the triple digits. If that. And most of them are probably ours. We need to seriously consider if we’re diving against Shotin Kazahara.+
+What? The Echodancer? No, he’s loyal to the Council. And our Godclads are all party to active monitoring by undisclosed assets–it’s impossible–+
+Mend-1. There are power plays happening between the elders all the time. Old clan grudges that last when one becomes immortal. We’re Necrojacks. We know better than most what “seems to be” can end up as a load of shit. Right now, I’m going to double the assets for Elder D’Rongo and give the order for general fortification to be built. Around the clock counter-scrying to stop the Exorcists from noticing too. Mend-1, get prepared for a casualty spike.+
+Synced. Are you going to warn them? The cells?+
+I don’t know how compromised we are, Mend-1. I don’t know anything. If they run into our new “friend”... a lot more Incubi are going to die today. I need to… I need to think about what’s going on. One thing’s certain: I need you to falsify Shard-2’s memory details. Alter your memories afterward. You and your cell.+
+Synced. Unity is Destiny.+
+Yeah. Unity feels like it’s pretty absent today.+
-Mirror-Convex and Mend-1
13-15
The Deeper Waters
The staccato of conflict built to a three-part beat.
Of the Low Masters, desperate to court Avo, the struggle was diplomatic and spiritual. Their prize was more than merely the Helix now–they also wanted him for his Frame. As with Ori-Thaum, the great game had changed thanks to Kae’s deeds, and the last vestiges of Noloth sought a second chance at weaving the reality they desired back into shape.
Little were they aware of approaching wolves Avo had alerted, or that he never intended to succumb to their temptations.
In this regard, he agreed with his Galeslither: freedom was a prize most precious and rarely owned. Especially in a city like New Vultun.
For whatever they could offer him in terms of Necrotheurgy or power, he would have to be a fool to trade untethered freedom for bejeweled chains. Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about what tools they had for offer.
Or what to filter for when their minds were properly broken.
+You have only gazed the Nether from within. You dive a native to these waters, perhaps, but we are more than mere divers. We have seen the totality of its expanse, and know where its borders lie. Comprehension. Such a glimpse is afforded only to the faithful.+ Emotion called upon his ghosts and tuned them into phantoms. Upon his palm danced a shimmering orb of water, and within its scintillating depths, accretions shone like constellations.
+Like looking into a subreality,+ Avo responded. Interesting as the imagery was, he had half his attention on the approaching Incubi. Through instruments he left buried amongst the sequences outside, he peered at their progress and peeked through Shard-1 as well.
There numbered many this time. Twenty or more. He wondered if any of them suspected this to be a trap. The crumbs he left leading them to this Auto-Seance granted them insight into the compromised Exorcists and which sequences were to be avoided as well. Seeing as they were gathering, they must’ve trusted the information enough to attempt an offensive.
He just needed to be ready when the walls came crashing down. Keep the Low Masters here distracted.
+When Jaus imprisoned our masters, he exiled not only our future, but also our hopes.+
Avo’s attention cut back over to the Low Master. +Why?+
+He sought to–+
+What did you do? What did the Hungers do to make Jaus cast them out from reality?+ The interruption was deliberate. Planned. As were the words that followed. +Was what you did in the George Washington also Jaus’ fault?+
Emotion stared, and its empty sockets offered no insight into his internal disposition. +That was a sin? But a necessary one.+
+Necessary?+ Avo couldn’t tell if the creature he was talking to was delusional or mad. +I enjoyed watching you hurt her. Stab her again and again. Things I enjoy are… cruelty. Sadism. If I enjoy what you do…+ A laugh escaped from him, low and mocking. +Be honest with me. If you can. If there’s anything in you like Walton. Did you just hurt her because of the Hungers? Or did you like it too?+
+We still remember her sometimes,+ Emotion said simply. +Joy weeps for her. Peace hates that she fell, hates that she was so hard to kill, hates the Hungers for telling us to kill her.+
+So why do it?+
+Faith. True faith. Have you ever laid eyes on a total democracy?+
This gave Avo pause. There seemed to be more parallels between the Low Masters and Ori-Thaum than he expected. Between their reliance on the Nether, their mastery of the art, and their supposed cultural values, he wondered if there was some deeper connective tissue connecting the two nations in the years past.
+The Hungers…+ Avo replied, +They’re supposed to be a total democracy? A collection of screaming minds cycled through a cluster of dragons. One that offloads its… waste into my brothers. Needs the ghouls to survive. That’s your democracy?+ It was absurd. To Avo, the entities barely rested within the borders of coherence. To consider them an accurate representation of sanity, let alone a model of public sentiment, was staggering.
Or something that could only be accepted by the truly faithful.
+They are an endless city drawn across eternity to find consensus and agreement. That requires iterating. And adjustments.+ Emotion smiled, and something about the empty expression unnerved Avo. The look just didn’t fit, and the longer he spent next to the hollow priest, the greater his disgust grew.
It was like watching something wear the skin of your father, speak words he would never say. This priest, more than the other two, left an emptiness in all of his actions.
+The Nether,+ Avo said, order his ghosts to ensure none of his disquiet escaped from his thoughtstuff. +Is it a Heaven?+
+It is far greater than a facet,+ Emotion answered.
Somehow, Avo understood. +An entire pantheon?+
+Heavens and Hells. Aligned. Balanced. And a rung atop our current dimension of being.+
+And all anchored to the Hungers,+ Avo said.
+Yes,+ Emotion said, actually sounding somewhat pleased. +I see him now. I see him in you. The way he thinks lingers in your words. The way he tries to understand our enemies. But there is a viciousness to you that he never had. A casual brutality. Yes. Your potential is far greater. I see why he made you now.+
The compliment skipped off Avo like a flechette striking armor. +Walton. He was the one meant to serve as your sequencer. Your plant among your enemies.+
+We needed to harness the boundless empathy we were once capable, but severed from our hate, our grief, and untainted by apathy.+
+And you are supposed to be the governor of the priests,+ Avo said.
+We hewed ourselves to specific ends.+ The Low Master closed his hand and the miniscule representation of the Nether faded. +Mine is to be beyond compromise. The Nether is more than subreality. It is an over-reality. One is built atop the structures of this one. A nascent universe unto itself. Or such was what it was meant to be in the dream.+
+The dream,+ Avo said. +Jaus again.+
+More than just him.+ Emotion turned his face away from Avo and he stared up at the Ladder, regarding it with almost a wistful envy. +Everyone offered so much for the future. Everyone. For a time we stopped our sacrifices. We believed that everything could turn for the better.+
+He even got you?+ Somehow, Avo couldn’t picture Walton with Jaus. The former was too avoidant of attention, too pleasant. The latter was, karmically or ironically, too mythologized.
+He had everyone. But we were the ones to provide the concepts behind a unified cognition. That was our part of the dream. Our facet. We devoted our Ark to his magnum opus. The Ladder. All we asked was that our chosen be allowed to cross over and create gestalt for all mankind. A parity of consciousness.+
+And then he betrayed you.+
Emotion cocked his head. +Despite of how much my masters hate him, his actions could be seen as preventative more than deceptive. We had such hopes… but they did not align with his. It’s hard to be a god, Avohakten. As so it is to be a king. The forebearer of your name learned that in the end, and you too must have felt it in the power you wield.+
+No,+ Avo replied. The words came without hesistation. +No.+
+No?+ Emotion replied, sounding genuinely confused.
+The problem with being a god is that it’s too easy. Maybe the same as being a king. No consequence. Just pleasure. Just want. Just… hunger.+
The tower vanished. Avo found all three priests standing before him, forming a line of perfect symmetry. As the mindscape around him shivered, as the mem-data began to disappear, he saw all of their eyes and sockets clip into the same space. +We have decided to show you a war-mind. You should prepare yourself. They are unfinished. Much like the Dreaming Unsea itself.+
Even as he cycled his Second Fatality into his Ghostjack, Avo couldn’t help but do a double-take at what was said. +Unfinished?+
+The sea alone cannot encapsulate the colors of a newer existence. There is also sediment. Land. And wind untethered in the sky. We were not done when we were made to be undone. Before we were stripped of our Arks, however, we finished the first constructs of our final retribution.+
+They’re phantasmics?+ Avo asked incredulously.
And as all three Low Masters bled into each other, Walton’s features twisted into a saddened, hateful stare. +No. Our gift to this world was water and stability. Our retribution will be of absence and chaos. For if cognition could be granted shape and expression, then so too could ignorant be given a shell.+
The mem-data around him was twisting, the memories decaying as the Auto-Seance began to atrophy. The same entropic radiation spilled within the confines of the simulation, and Avo felt his ghosts begin to wither as their sequences–his memories, taken and his own–began to vanish.
Avo tried to … He needed to… He was supposed to do something when he…
Across from him, the Low Masters began to laugh. Now they sounded like Walton. Now they sounded like him.
Now they sounded like Walton.
Wait.
How many times has he had this thought.
Why did they sound like Walton?
The thought repeated in his head thrice more as Joy began to melt away before him, the entirety of his memories and thoughts consumed like candle wax oozing to feed an unseen flame.
No. Not a flame. That felt wrong. It was like erosion made manifest. And it was pushing into the Nether from an angle unseen…
Desperation sparked a final thought. An impossible act of reflex that was beneath memory–an act planned before the mind could succumb.
He didn’t know–didn’t know anything–
But the Low Masters–
He would burn himself before they compromised…
Burn.
He burned himself.
He burned his own thoughts. They were eaten.
He would return.
He was…
He saw the Nether through its own eyes.
***
+Talon-3, preparing to enter–+
+Wait!+ Talon-6 cast. He felt startlement pass through every other Incubi he was connected to. Through his perception, they could see the sudden drop in the Auto-Seance’s mem-data as they studied the four accretions.
Ghosts were evaporating out of its structure. The cognitive phlogiston that was the Nether began to steam and boil. He had never–
The Nether swallowed him as if he was folded in with a sudden splash of melding paint.
The world as like–
He had never seen–
This wasn’t a sight he had seen before–
What was this sight?
Did he see it before?
Wait, was he Talon-3 or Talon-6?
And who was Avo?
***
You are a war-mind.
You do not think.
You simply hear, and obey.
You are ignorance manifest. You are the eyes and jaws placed across from the Nether.
You will never know this, but it cost the priests nine million of their own lives to dwell in your thoughtless dimension and craft you into shape. You’re very existence is poison to them, poison to this place, but it is also poison right back at you.
The ghosts and minds of everyone encompassed in your wake dissolve, but every thought they think burns you.
You don’t have the senses for pain. But the people conjoin by you scream on your behalf.
There are twenty-six minds currently boiling in your depths.
Your caller paradoxically remembers you. The one called Joy. He should have faded out of existence with this act. Another will replace him soon. You will not know him. The others will not remember him.
The same fate will befall everyone else not protected by Joy’s will.
The ghoul is to be spared, but his substance is strange. There is more than one active mind inside it, and though you know nothing, the design confuses you because you’re trying to eat him anyway because his being hurts. He is forgetting because his mind is one fire and the fire is thinking and it hurts it hurts it hurts–
He’s of a shape as you…
You tear the memories of his fires instead. They sputter, confused why were they eating the ghoul’s mind to begin with, and he stirs even inside you, and you shrink closer to nothing.
You give on him. He will live like the caller wants. The Incubi must also be ceased. There is too much of them–and they are so loud. You reach into their misremembering selves and make them remember and drive your reach further until you’re past their surface memories and into the second layer where all the private details hide and you use it to expand yourself.
With each second you are dying, but you don’t know it. Soon, all the perceptions and memories you eat will destroy you. You will no longer exist. It is annihilation.
It is annihilation. No one will remember. Ignorance will leave its imprint.
Five of the minds cease with you, parted from cognition itself. But most live. You spent too long on the ghouls. Too long.
And it still remembers you.
It still remembers because you made the fires forget themselves first, but ghoul remains, and he has them in his thoughts now, but they are no longer eating him–
The last non-thought doesn’t arrive. The Nether settles.
You die without ever knowing what death is.
***
COG-CAP-[nULl]WARNI12NG
ADAPTING…
ADAPTING?
WHERE AM I?
WHERE ARE WE?
SEARCH MEMORIES…
WE ARE… AVO?
AVO. WE ARE AVO.
THE BASE MIND IS ASLEEP. NEED INPUT FROM BASE MIND.
WAKE HIM?
HIM?
NOT HIM.
US.
WAKE US?
[WAKE UP]
And at a call cast by what ghosts remained within his still burning mind, Avo felt the mass of consciousness slam down into his being with thrice as much weight as before.
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Brent Stinebaker
Disclaimer: I'm bad at math. A few is relative anyway.
