Reality 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 rest whisper.
You can have a blade deed ever-piercing and watch the fabric of totality shred when it greets a shield deed impregnable by the anvil of lore.
To be a god is to be rule-maker; the sword-holder; to take concept as your flesh.
Imagine now soone with absolute dominion over thoughts. Or mories. 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 instrunts of war and protection from the matter of their own agency and mories.
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 ti cos, should your dream co to fruition, I too offer my vision of the coming future–one where we deal in philosophy and enlightennt. 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 give you the higher threshold. All I ask is for you to accept a change to our history–an adjustnt so ager you won’t even rember making it.
-Letter from Wahakten, the Thief of Dreams, Priest of the Nolothi, and Servant of the Hungers
13-19
Lost Testant
I can still feel it, Avo said. Still feel it nested inside . 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 ancient priest.
Oh, to dive so deep and live so long yet 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 type of 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… Avo tested his new ntal templates, and added their vocals as a backdrop to his to better mock his forr owners. This happening. More unexpected surprises. Hm. I wouldn’t mind but you…
He was pleased with how Emotion’s ray of perception twitched from end to end of the tongues of fla 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 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 , Emotion. Tell if I was ever truly considered for ascension among you? I’m curious.
Yes, Emotion replied, after but a mont’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 the sa 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 complint from a hollow being. How flattering.
And pointless.
Might I show you a final mory before our words run dry and bloodshed follows? Emotion asked. A mont lost to history, given freely between foes to be. As I have done with my son eons past.
A trap of sentint, perhaps, but one of imnse curiosity. A re few minutes ago, Avo would have rejected such a bargain without further thought. To accept mories from another Necro was an expression of the highest trust. Such a thing was entirely absent between him and the shriveled effigies that nad themselves kin to his father.
Now, however, things were different. He was different.
mory had gone from construct of artistry and sequencing to sothing 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 imnsity. They lacked the ability to lay 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 mont of learning.
Show the mory, Avo said. Doubt it will make a difference in what is to co. As he cast out these thoughts, he noticed narrowing beams falling on his person from the lobby beyond. Surprise flowed into him from partially subsud sequences and ingested m-data told him intimate details about the Exorcists that frequented the administrative node the most.
It seed 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 monts he was to receive.
The bridge of m-data that Emotion built outward to greet him was once a nigh-featureless stretch of mories 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 mories were made real. Beside the Famine stood a younger man adorned with many of the sa features but none of the disposition.
Avohakten? The ghoul studied his nasake. 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 enaled with the vagueness of a skeleton told Avo he was dealing with soone well versed in the ways of pleasure and vanity.
I think I would have hated him, Avo said, casting his thoughts over into the mory 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 during those days. He cared too deeply, and too little at the sa ti. A terrible quality for a ruler. Even worse for one ant 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, sohow, 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 an 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 movent of lips and laughter thereafter.
What’s wrong now? Hungers take his voice?
No. We did in the ti 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 mory. It will reveal to you who we were. What we rember 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 flas. I do not wish to be forgotten. I do not wish for my ho 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 rember what we were fighting for, and what you may decide to fight against.
The absurdity of the man’s sudden sentintality made Avo laugh. Ignorance didn’t work so now you try knowledge?
Emotion didn’t dignify the taunt with a response. The mory faded. Beyond them, the Exorcists began to move in, numbering over twelve thousand.
You want to know sothing 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 mories 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 sa. A beat followed. You judge now in the sa way he did then, you know? On this, you are alike. Ti will prove if you are as much fool as he.
The ntion of ti made Avo think of Zein, and he found himself wincing as he considered being at the rcy of a future beyond his control. No. Ti will prove nothing. Only will and power. My will. My will ascending. I will accept your gifts. The war-mind. This mory. Your ego. The others. Soday. In the end. I will exist above this city. I will lurk in the dream of every drear. 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 complint. 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 mories, his thoughtstuff a tsunami portending a wildfire.
And just as the mories began to burn, sothing 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 sothing 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 uncontainable.
You weren’t finished though. Eventually, they just go insane and experience ego-death. You were ant to reach into them. You were ant 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 ant 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 ti, 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?]
[mories tell us nothing. Exorcists approaching. Should absorb the Auto-Seance. Take their mories. 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 mories. We are easy to hunt.]
[Need to find thod for silence again.]
[Yes.]
[Yes.]
As the first Exorcist cast trauma splashed uselessly against his imnsity, Avo coiled around the Low Masters’ Auto-Seance and drained its constructs away. m-cons and traps were boiled and added to his inventory. Knowledge threaded into his mind like new currents joining a stream.
He suddenly rembered 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 sowhat unsurprisingly devoid of additional minds. The other Low Masters must’ve jacked out at so 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 they 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 so 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 ca 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 experint on.
Except for Chambers, who…
He suddenly rembered Draus shooting him in the face as the mories ford inside him. But those weren’t his mories. They were ca from another vessel–another mind he usurped, if only briefly before demise halted his assimilation.
[Draus shot Chambers in the head,]
[Almost imdiately.]
[The mont she noticed the flas.]
[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 flas.
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.
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