And it is in ruination that we divine the vessel that will be our deliverance. Flesh must be flayed and bone must be broken before steel assus its rightful place.
To abandon suffering before self-construction is delusion in practice is blasphemy of the self.
It is in witnessing the flaw that the mortal witnesses the face of apotheosis. The dismbered will never forget the worth of what they lacked, the blind the world unseen and seen again, and the sickened strength where once was naught.
Herein is the dialect of true apotheosis, for imbuing power before weakness is conceptualized fully desecrates the animus of all sophants and renders oneself an altar toward hubris…
-Book of the New Alloy, Verse X, Resurrection III
13-2
What Was Lost (II)
Avo fell into the realm of his death and Kae plunged right after.
Sinking into the star-bright gleam of his Soul, he gazed across the stretch of his subreality and took in its growth. Where once the space simulated but a Sangeist and nothing more, now the Fra encompassed leagues beyond even two Heavens of considerable imnsity.
Arteries of blood cracked and sprawled through his personal expanse, the Woundshaper nudging at the roiling midnight black winds of the Galeslither. Parted between loops of self-devouring dragons, they argued with gestures and hissed words, leftovers from the gods they used to be.
But sohow also more.
From the way the Woundshaper spoke, their growths were stymied in the age of pantheons – constrained by rival powers and the limitations of sacrifice and worship.
Bound to him, no longer were they to be so starved. In place of free will, they were granted access to a flow of growth unfettered, unchained by mythology.
From a ager fragnt bound to a blood-cycling machine, the eldritch deity he renad Woundshaper had grown to be sothing it could have never fathod. Expanding in scope and domains, it spread from re blood and matter to encompass aspects of luminosity, and biology.
A far way traveled. The Heaven burned smugly, with ever-deepening pleasure.
Across from it, the Galeslither was of another mood entirely. The nature of its adjustnt frightened it, and the loss of its ability to determine its own fate gnawed at it from within.
Avo studied his lesser Heaven but briefly and found himself sharing in its discomfort.
To be enchained to a greater will and serve as little more than an instrunt to be called upon was disquieting. Sothing he needed to address with it sohow.
So focused on the choice denied to his cadre that he ignored the being inside him as well.
Offering choice was growing to be more burdenso than he expected.
“Wait, that’s a whole other…” Kae said. She floated her crystalline tear-made dais over next to him, her attention drifting to the prize won from the last victim he preyed upon among Abrel’s team.
Three cyclers. Six ontologics. One Soul. Enough to create another Liminal Fra. And then there was the question of what he was to do with all the additional cyclers as well…
“You killed another Godclad,” Kae said, sounding more than a little astonished. “I an… permanently. And took in their Fra.” Forcing order back on her drifting thoughts, she turned and faced the Woundshaper, focus hardening her expression. “I need to see how you build new canons. Or take things out. Just… use the ta-Fac in general. I need to see how it functions.”
Humoring her request took no effort at all. With a thought, his flas spilled out and burrowed through one of the other Fra’s cyclers. Like ebbing fingers on wavelengths of reverberating fire, he pried the dragon free and pulled it close to himself. All it took to bind it to himself thereafter were threads of radiance stitching it to the nucleus that was his Soul.
Through it all, Kae’s mien darkened. “This is… I rember this. A Soul shouldn’t be capable of this. Soulfire isn’t self-aware–it doesn’t just heed soone’s thoughts. But with the Imitators…” Her voice trailed off into a groan as she clutched at her head. “But it wasn’t supposed to go in a Fra? How did they put it in a Fra? How? Nothing I did could kill it! It didn’t die! It was more like light or… just molecules… just cells…”
“Kae,” Avo said, wanting to halt her rambling.
He didn’t expect her to shush him in his own Soul. “I’ll apologize later. I need to think right now. I need to…” Her voice trailed off. “Avo. Show your Soul again? Please? I want to see it. I have to…”
He unfurled the structure of the Woundshaper and parted the raging gales twisting forth from the Galeslither. Both were clasped by two rings of self-devouring dragons suffused with echoes derived from taken lives.
The Agnos approached, his all-simulating brightness shadowing a look of building certainty on her face.
“The fires are rippling outward.” She laughed. “I was too broken to see it. Too broken to rember.” She lapsed into silence as she just hovered there, studying the quintessence of his ontology as her voice took on a mournful note. “I rember I made part of this. Godshaper. I taught the Imitators how to crossover. How to replicate themselves within a Fra. As part of a Soul. Your fires aren’t actually fires, Avo. They’re cells. Thaumaturgic cells.”
A beat passed. “My Soul–My Fra? It’s… artificial?”
“I…” Kae began, concentration adding a mont of consideration to her words. “No. The Soul I used is just the sa as any other. It’s still sothing we can’t replicate. But if the Imitators are fused inside it, it learns. It can rember. It can change. It can derive thoughts from you. It’s like a borrowed half-sapience with the capabilities of post-sophant intelligence.”
“I don’t understand,” Avo said.
“Imitation,” Kae explained. “The na was perfect. Like vulnerable cells, the environnt was contagious to them. But they adapted. Always. I put them in realms of fire and frost and impossible planes of space. They survived it all. And when we had sacrifices enter the rooms, they all dread and rembered the nature of canons. Often they started thinking they had each other’s lives.”
RESURRECTION - 4%
For a long while after, neither of them spoke. The Heavens spoke to each other in the backdrop, but Avo found little of note in idle gossip turned bickering.
The silence broke finally as the Agnos released a sigh. “Do you know why your father did what he did? Why he pointed Ori-Thaum at . Frad for the murder of...” She drew in close and reached out from the nucleus of all the burned here, but refrained from contact despite her yearning. “Oh, Dawton. He was just doing his duty. He was trying to help the city–all we wanted was to use our knowledge! To fix the Rash.”
Her voice rose high into a shout, but before her the Heavens towered and the Soul just burned as always.
What worth was human pain before the eldritch – the powers above powers?
“No,” Avo finally replied. “Didn’t want this for you. But he wanted sothing for . My guess is that he was shaping the situations and conditions to do sothing he wanted.”
“To make sure you would be the only one to reap the benefits of my work?” Kae asked.
“Maybe. Beginning to think his plans run deeper than I ever knew. Sent Draus to save you too.” That was sothing Avo never asked about. Draus and Kae. He had been so consud by tasks and preparations he barely spoke to the Agnos about her life at all. “Don’t know why he did that. Send her.”
“Draus?” Kae pressed her lips together. “That’s… she was in the service of a Highfla Instrunt for a ti. I was part of the team commissioned to build his new Heaven. We spent so ti together then.” She smirked. “She was so grumpy. And lonely; even isolated from the other Regulars. Never seed to sleep. I an, I worked late too so we ended up running into each other more and more and more.”
The smirk faded. “And when the work was done, the, um, Instrunt decided to… take offense at what we made. If it weren’t for Draus, I think he might’ve killed one of us. I don’t know what she did to calm him down. She wouldn’t tell when I asked. I don’t know why she risked her life against her own people for us either.”
Avo grunted a laugh. “Draus raids Crucibles looking for war and death. Tried to keep the boy safe. Tried to save the father. Sa thing with you. She doesn’t care about dying. She just wants to find a good enough reason to burn. And you’re more than good. I think.”
Kae blinked. “I’m… more than good?”
And there it was–that tribalistic urge among all humans to be wanted. Another facet he and his brothers had been born without.
Avo wondered if the Walton left him devoid of such a social weakness to keep him free from the chains of humanity.
“Dawton,” Avo said, changing the topic. “The Paladin. He was supposed to guard you during your task?” The man was also her lover, but there was little need to savor the taste of that wound.
Kae was unbalanced as things were.
A soft smile painted her face as a montary reverie passed through her. She was recalling an event from her past, one that resonated over even all that was present.“That was the official capacity anyway. I never thought I would end up breaking official conduct there but…” She shrugged, unashad of her failure. “He had a way of making everyone a bit happier when he was there.”
Avo ceded ti and space to her. Dying was a simple act on his part. He increasingly considered a suicide implant of so kind.
He found himself, to his grim amusent, thinking back to Mirrorhead’s cortex bombs. Perhaps sothing like that would do.
The Agnos began speaking again, mastering herself a final ti as the resurrection cycle climbed. “Project Godshaper was just supposed to be a series of experintal trials for a taphysical tuner–what beca your Soul’s tafactory functions. But I was never ant to truly fix anything despite official oaths. I think Highfla agreed to the terms with Voidwatch with double intentions, and the voiders likewise expected us to get nowhere without their support.” A soft snarl passed through her features. “And I guess no one expected or Dawton to actually try fixing the Rash, but I guess you don’t need to be a great power to pull off your own surprises.”
Interesting. Her attempts at resolving the Rash hadn’t been ntioned in the Column’s report. But again, first-hand detail always provided a new angle of perspective that a bird’s eye view didn’t possess.
Kae continued. “The idea of using it to fix the Rash was mine alone. Well… and Dawton were uh… I told him while we were… but it wasn’t his fault! We ended up doing sothing that was… a bit beyond the paraters of the project. I–I didn’t an for it to happen! But in the mont I couldn’t resist.”
Avo wondered if she was talking about her relationship or what they attempted on the Rash.
“From the trials, we found that the sacrifices were fully capable of building new Heavens in an instant. Of course, we needed to co up with all the structures and components needed for the rituals of mythology but I did it–well, not just ! My team! And Dawton and his trainees! We all perford a miracle for miracles: Perfect efficiency Heaven construction.”
Her excitent passed and she turned pensive. Introspective.
“And modification. That was sothing he and I tested on our own. Without letting anyone else know. I changed one of his canons. Made it better by adjusting his hubris.”
Through all, Avo listened and urged the flas around him to flow. He studied the nature of his own being as each individual flow of pulsing brightness bent up to better show their wavelengths.
It felt the sa as looking down at his claws or sliding his Echoheads further into view.
“The ta-Fac,” Avo said. “That’s just the Imitators in my Soul trying to build things I want?”
“You give it direction, but it still has simulating structures from the root data it can follow,” Kae said. “I… honestly, Avo, with how the Imitators are, it’s probably more accurate to say that you’re as much a part of them as they are a part of you.”
“Like my blood,” he added. “A taphysical haemophage.”
“I… suppose at a very limited level. The Imitators just infect and create more of you though.”
Once again, the concept of symtry chid like a repeating bell. The artificiality of his current nature; the artificiality of his Soul. The properties of his blood; the properties of his Soul.
But if he followed the taphor down the trail, that ant…
Kae preempted his sudden epiphany. “That’s the main reason why I needed to see their Fras too. Voidwatch has a concept of what bits of their mythos they let us see. Rember what you said about your haemophage? Your blood? Well, there’s this idea called an ‘eclipse phase’ that details how long a cell can remain itself before a virus rewrites its nature. The sacrifices started carrying each other’s mories within a day. If your Fra is capable of being… contagious, then that’s probably around the sa ti they’ll start developing. Changing.”
With each passing word, he felt his influence swell vaster and vaster in pace with his growing understanding.
If what she said ca to pass, he wasn’t just a shapeshifter of self-modified miracles, but a kingmaker above kingmakers – soone with the capability to shatter the balance of the power in this city utterly and completely.
All the infection took was contact between the fires of his Soul and another.
Like Abrel.
“I still don’t know how they managed to ld it with a Soul.” Kae circled his nucleus much in the sa way one of Sunrise’s bees did. “I tried it on a Soul–it doesn’t emulate taphysical properties. It can endure extre forces, but mirroring the environnt and consciousnesses isn’t…”
Her growl of frustration followed.
“Hate not knowing things?” Avo asked.
“I hate not being able to figure my own work out! Your Fra is clearly designed on the basis of Godshaper but… I have no idea how they managed to put what the Imitators could do in theory into practice. I wasn’t done when… when…” She huffed as she derailed her thoughts from painful mories. “Wait. Practice? Practice! Avo, try… try accessing one of your canons! Don’t graft a piece from another Heaven just um… um… trying commanding your Soul to ‘interface’ or sothing.”
He did as she asked, conveying his want to the system with all the clarity and detail he could add. The Fra was still a stranger to him, its capabilities and growth a new revelation with each death.
This ti was no different, and this ti, Kae made all the difference.
The vector of his traveling radiance turned to heed his new demand. Like hyper-accelerated needs, narrow corridors ford where the yolk spreading out from his Soul brushed the sides of both his Heavens.
“Master… I feel… faint…” the Woundshaper muttered, its voice growing dimr by the second. Across, the Galeslithered neighed softly, and from it ca only surprise, but not fear.
“Yes,” Kae said. “Yes! It still works! Oh, your Heavens will be fine. I think.”
Avo glared at the Agnos using his Soul. “You think?”
“I'm not sure, okay!” She threw up her hands. “Honestly, the fact your Heavens are sapient at all is probably because of the Imitators as well. They’re carrying mories and personality fragnts over from what your echoes worship! Pretty much personality constructs or… or divine engrams.”
With her words, new strings of m-data pulsed over Avo’s mind.
[CANONICITY REVIEW BEGINNING]
->WOUNDSHAPER
->GALESLITHER
ENTER SIMULATED CANONICITY NOW?
Cautiously, Avo sent his affirmation, and he felt his Heavens expand themselves for lack of a better term.
Detaching his Soul, he drifted out next to the Agnos to gaze at what he had done.
Connected to him, threading rivers of fire pried each of the forr gods, opening two bright-made gateways.
Kae shot him a look and took a deep breath. “Alright. Let’s see if this does what I think it does.” She paused. “Oh, Avo, if you start getting… mixed thoughts let know. I don’t think my False-Hev can be affected but… if you start rembering parts not from your own life… that’s probably .”
He answered with a note of disregard. “Necro. Won’t be bothered.”
She didn’t seem convinced.
With a burst of gliding motion, Kae dove through the threshold, and he felt sothing shift inside him as the Woundshaper pulsed with Soulfire.
RESURRECTION - 31%
Unwilling to co second repeatedly in his own Soul, Avo projected himself through the Heaven on tendrils of crawling resplendence.
On the other side, he found himself coming up just behind the halted Agnos, and below them, the breadth of a blood-made district bearing the aesthetics of a ti bygone loaded into view.
He stopped just beside the Kae, who seed just content to watch.
“What is this?” Avo asked.
“The past?” Kae said. “Or at least, what the sacrificed think the past to be.”
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