Godclads

Chapter 14-11 Facets of Truth

We have no idea where Concave-Shadow is, only that he appears to have shit all over his office floor before disappearing.

Why?

I don’t know why. Don’t ask me why. If I knew why, I wouldn’t have said ‘We have no idea where Concave-Shadow’ is.

The strike cell is missing too for that matter. Unfortunately, they didn’t even leave us shit as a clue.

Just nothing.

Something smells–I don’t mean the literal shit I’m staring at, I mean the situation in general. You should hear the chatter on my end–the inner halls are throwing a fit! Over twenty Incubi nulled in a single operation and now this.

Do I think it’s a Highflame warning for us trying to jack into the Greatling?

Do I think Highflame broke into one of our secure facilities, disappeared one of our Concaves, smeared his feces all over the floor, and just pissed off afterward without doing anything else?

-Thoughtcast between Concave [Redacted] and Incubus [Redacted], Ori-Thaum

14-11

Facets of Truth

+Holy shit, that’s a lot to take in,+ White-Rab muttered.

+Yeah,+ Avo grunted. +Lies and misdirections and falsehoods and missing details.+ He studied the accretion around the Wight as its flow turned inward. The other Necro was considering something. Avo still wasn’t sure how much to trust him, but right now, it seemed like the other two were more lacking in knowledge than he was.

Strange how these things turned out; he came to seek revelations connected to his past, but now found himself an educator of hidden esoterica and forbidden histories.

He hadn’t given them the full scope of what he knew–making them aware of the Hungers without necessity struck him as careless at best, and foolish at worst, but with what insight he gave regarding Walton, things gradually came together in White-Rab’s mind.

+Well, I guess that explains his skill. I always thought he was too good. I mean, I’m too good–but he was something else. He could spot the smallest inconsistencies in sequences and mem-data like nothing. It was like he’d been through everything already at least once.+ White-Rab paused. +Fuck, I’ve been jealous of an immortal mind-replicator. I don’t know what this is going to do to my ego. On one hand, I might just be the best human Necrojack there was, and on the other end, there’s shit like the Low Masters swimming around in the dark.+

+And me,+ Avo added.

A bad thing about instilling yourself with humanity is all that tender social tissue comes with it. You start feeling hurt about not being respected, or left out.

From inside the Wight, White-Rab winced. +Well, I mean… you–you’re probably pretty threatening theoretically but uh, I gotta be honest here, consang… most of us don’t die from thoughtwave disruptions. We just forget things. It’s not great with the intimidation factor. The whole blood-puppeting-burning-thoughtfire is nice though. I gotta say.+

Avo glared at his cognitive donor as hard as he could through his proxy. His perception tightened into condensed rods of attention, and he considered casting himself into the Wight and “branding” some respect into White-Rab.

Abrel agreed. [Fuck this guy. I hate his type. He’s not willing to call you a joke to your face, so he tries to make you feel better. Real glassjaw shit. Eat his brain, Avo. Wait, eat the Stormtree sow in front of him first. That’s the kind of cruelty that greases your steel, right?]

The aero around them rattled. Avo felt an unnatural vibration of force surge through his proxy.

He turned his focus back over the Reva Javvers. While he had been pouring his ire onto White-Rab, she reciprocated unto him. “Try it. You move, and if he doesn’t get you, I will.”

They were assured by false hopes. Neither of them had the capability to finish him this time. Even if he lost his proxy to them, he could just send another, or start striking at them from apart using his Heavens. So long as he severed the link between him and the proxy in time, all they could take from him were a few paltry ghosts.

And somehow, knowing he could kill both of them reduced the spice of a potential fight. Loathe as he was to admit it, his engagements with Zein had always been stimulating if nothing else.

Uncertainty was a gift to the senses, and a variety of possible outcomes whittled away the boredom when faced with arduous tasks.

He continued with his diplomacy more out of novelty alone than anything else.

+Let’s get back to the topic at hand,+ Avo said. +You said you had something for me from Walton. I want to see it.+

White-Rab coughed. +Oh, yeah, right. That. So, I couldn’t exactly… access it. Don’t have the right sequence of memories. But I’ve been holding onto it for you. What’s say we link and I show you what I’ve been doing.+

+No link,+ Avo said. +Connect to me deeper than my thoughtstuff and my ego spreads into you. Like a plague. Or a wildfire. Won’t survive the experience. But I will remember you.+

He meant that in more ways than one.

Siphoning away some blood from his proxy, he formed a locus right next to Reva, and she eyed the crimson crystal with open suspicion. “Your blood’s vivianite.”

+You already know that,+ Avo said. +The texture is familiar to you. And your ghosts can rest inside.+

She nodded, and a begrudging look of acceptance passed behind her eyes. “It’s a neat canon. Got a name for it.”

+We all have tricks of the trade. You want to tell me why I couldn’t liquefy you earlier in the apartment but had not problems jacking your mind using the same Heaven?+

“It’s as you said: we all got tricks of the trade.” She conceded her thinly veiled question with a twist of her neck. As she pressed his new locus into the halo emitted from the Wight’s skull, she spoke again. “I knew you weren’t Highflame from the moment we fought. There was something too… raw in the way you did things. And you were alone. That’s Fallwalker habit and a bad one at that. But it also has me confused. I looked through the reports–there were three others with you: a full cadre. Why didn’t they back up you? You all went full manifestation up in Light’s End. Why just you in Nu-Scarrowbur?”

That’s a good question, but he had no desire to tell her anything. +You’re Stormtree. Supposedly. I think I already said too much to you. But he’s not Stormtree. And the same question applies to you: Why are you alone, Reva Javvers? Where is your cadre? Why are you working with a non-Guild Necro?+

His words made her run her tongue under her front teeth, and he found himself remembering that Draus had a similar habit.

[Oh. Looks like you have some inherited penchants, rotlick,] Abrel taunted.

Deep in the shadows cast by the Hypertube station, Avo responded with a chuff of frustration.

“Rab here cleans away any memories that might get me in trouble after we do things,” Reva answered. “Don’t worry–I won’t be able to recall any of this. Don’t want to either.” She briefly glanced at the Wight. “We’ll all be in deep shit if the top knew where I was right now.”

Benhata hummed. [She’s more worried about her companion. She treasures his safety and trusts him completely. To let someone alter your memories without fear is an honor most don’t even offer members of their own family.] A note of sadness slithered through Avo as he found himself vicariously mourning the man’s sister. Even haunted by the suddenness of her death during the war.

Shaking his inherited trauma off, Avo refocused. +Expecting quite a bit of trust from me. Not going to be hard for you to sneak some memories into a locus you’re connected to. My mem-data might just be worth a good hit of imps in the Deep Bazaar. Or maybe you’re looking for a promotion.+

“If that were true, we wouldn’t be talking right now. I would’ve tried to finish things back in the apartment. Enclosed space. White-Rab protecting my mind. Memite preventing us from bringing the whole block down… Yeah. Nice, nasty little brawl in a room. Just my kinda thing.”

Another very Draus thing to say.

Abrel laughed. [Dead gods, Avo, you didn’t just catch a fetish, you inherited a whole-ass type!]

Avo ignored the cackling Highflamer mocking him from within his consciousness and pressed on. +Good thing it didn’t happen. Don’t think you would like the outcome.+

She shrugged. “Well, considering that losing your train of thought literally kills you, I think I got good odds for this rematch.”

They just wouldn’t stop bringing up his vulnerability.

[Yeah,] Abrel snorted, [that’s what being bullied feels like. Welcome to the human race.]

+Alright,+ White-Rab said. +Transfer complete. All the memories and sequences are in place and ready for you to–+ He didn’t get to finish before Avo snatched the locus back and reabsorbed it into himself before subsuming the ghosts with his consciousness. +Do… whatever it is… you do. Holy shit, you weren’t lying about your ego spreading like wildfire.+

Finally, a bit of fear. How Avo missed inflicting that in others for the short time it was gone.

The other shell of the package burned away easily but infused his mind with a complexity of design that remained unmatched in all his adversaries beyond the Low Masters. The reason why White-Rab probably wasn’t able to crack the encryption was because the entire thing could only come undone at midnight in the Penumbra far below the city. A Meta’s clock and DeepNav position were accounted for when interfacing with this thing, and over a dozen moving memories cycled through each other thereafter, all of them appearing as randomly inserted artifacts of people, sound, scenes, and objects.

Even with his mind as it was now, it still took him a beat to process the patterns connecting all the sequences. They weren’t parallel or contrasting or just gibberish placed together as a permanent lock that could only be accessed by trauma-patterns.

No. All the constantly changing memories intersected each other, but the intersections were a distraction–a ruse to waste one’s attention. The true way to undo the knots required a masterful display of timing and sequencing.

What Walton wanted White-Rab to do was sequence his own memories in place across all the accessible progression tracks with the allotted time before a switch happened and things were shuffled again, and using the inflicted symmetry, collapse all the sequences into a single memory.

This was as much a puzzle as it was a call for expression–to treat the Nether like a tool and a canvas.

Avo doubted he would have figured out the secrets behind this construct so soon if he was still a stable-mind consciousness. Perhaps with more growth and experience, he might have been able to glean the principles behind its make. By that point, using his haemokinesis would reduce the time limit, but remained a test of his abilities in construction.

Something he probably would have failed, and kept failing at for quite some time.

Presently, his very being boiled all he needed to know into him. If that wasn’t a sign Walton didn’t anticipate this transformation, then Avo wasn’t sure what to make of things.

With the cracking of the protective shell, he drew into the sweet nectar of the deeper mem-data, and found himself reliving distant memories.

This time, however, he wasn’t himself. These were Walton’s memories. Junctures from his past lives and experiences are now passed on to Avo.

The first that called to his attention was a place and a moment.

One that captured the very essence of devastation.

Through Walton’s eyes, Avo swept his gaze across a horizon strewn with rubble and ruin, the skies above alight with blastwaves and thaumic exchanges. Ash drifted down from on high like falling snow, and he remembered feeling disappointed…

So disappointed.

Another war. Another extension of this pointless, unwinnable struggle.

His other selves remain deluded–though that might be more related to issues in their cognitive design. The Hungers believe that Noloth may yet find a way to seize victory, but his erstwhile masters have long lost themselves to self-deception.

This conflict wasn’t going to lessen their hurt. They were well past that threshold now. The degradation would only intensify from here.

Jaus Avandaer made certain of it.

As they rest at the heart of the Nether, so too will all the excess cog-data and mental detritus arrive. With more and more Metaminds coming online, the Agnos has been drawing even more of the nobility out from the dragons–fashioning them into shape to serve as receptacles of another’s thoughts.

The truly amusing thing was that the servants of Jaus didn’t even know the harm they were causing. They just thought it was a Necro-thaumic reaction related to the Nether. He left them ignorant of just what they were stripping away to create a perpetual and metaphysical instance of one’s own mind.

The ghouls were a fitting stopgap for the agony with their replaceability and willingness toward worship. Still, their minds were only plugs damming what was being drawn from the Hungers. Already, he could see further changes in the behavior of his masters.

Before, they had been depraved, and violence, and merciful, and sullen.

Now, increasingly, they fit their title.

Hungry. Hateful. Rageful.

A diet composed so much of who a person was.

If only everyone could subsist on tangerines or oranges. Idheim would have been a much happier place.

Alas.

He found himself walking the mangled graves where once stood the Warrens. The devastation the Guilds had wrought from fighting each other far exceeded anything the Uprising demanded.

Such was one aspect of his work that he quite appreciated–his ghouls performed their duty and triggered the war just as anticipated. Once they unbalanced Ori-Thaum’s annual tax sufficiently, that was all it took to convince Highflame to strike.

Of course, the Chivalrics were always easy to entice.

Still, it was a shame so many of his children had to be butchered like this. The other branches didn’t care, but he had always felt a sense of… pity when it came to their personal monsters.

The ghouls had no choice in this affair–no purpose beyond to spread and die and spread and die and spread as much as they possibly could.

With the Guilds’ mastery of biology, he doubted his ghouls would endure a full century.

But if Thousandhand was right about the Ladder returning, then perhaps things weren’t going to last that long.

A shiver of movement caught his attention. The sheer weight of secondhand starvation striking him kept it.

He stopped in place and finally found himself standing in a playground, judging a small, pale figure reaching a claw up to the sky for salvation.

A ghoul?

And this far from the underground.

It must’ve had quite the journey to survive.

With his footsteps announced by breaking glass and clicking debris, he cast his ghosts out to greet the subject of his fascination.

When he latched onto its mind, he felt himself experiencing the near-delirium of despair and hunger, and in the pinprick of consciousness remaining within it, he realized it had noticed him as well, though it deemed him a figment of his fever dreams.

Now such sophistication of thought was quite unlike a ghoul. It’s parent stock must’ve been of good quality to ensure such cognitive complexity.

Digging past its pain and torment, he settled his ghosts in the depths of its mind and considered his first words. Simply saying hello wouldn’t do–it had more pressing concerns.

Then, it occurred to him.

He would cede the choice to the creature. Let it decide how this conversation goes.

Yes, why not? Why not let the ghoul make a choice, if only the last one in its life?

+Do you wish to live?+ he asked.

Though he sent these words as a question, there was a good chance the malnutrition had run its course and there was no road back.

But this was about the present, and now the future.

He wondered what the ghoul would say.

“Yes,” he heard it rasp. “Yes…”

Avo shook himself loose from the memories and let out a breath.

It was a lot. It meant a lot.

It meant he wasn’t just a loose compilation of desired thoughts, and that there was, at least, a point of inception he could call his own.

He was real.

Real enough, anyway.