Sotis you get a funny feeling. It’s nothing logical. There’s no evidence or reason behind the way you’re feeling, but it’s there. It’s like a piece of shrapnel in your gut, and you can’t get it out. And you think to yourself, “Sothing’s wrong. Sothing’s wrong. Sothing’s wrong.” That’s when you should listen to your gut. Worst case, you’re paranoid. Best case, you avoid being dead.
Let tell you a story. One day, after a successful run, I get to an exfiltration. Things were going pretty good. Half the team’s still alive. I still had most of my limbs—missing two fingers, though. I see the extraction arrow co in. It’s one of those ad trucks, you know the kind. Flashing on the side, projecting an even larger hollow around it. Yeah, it’s a real eye-catcher. Anyway, part of the ad was flickering weird. The corner of the screen seed a little cracked. Didn’t know why. Shouldn’t be anything that concerned you. Joes chuck stones at ad trucks all the ti, or it might have clipped sothing.
But that bit of shrapnel I talked to you about earlier just kept working its way deeper and deeper into my gut, and so I found my own way back. The rest of the team, well, they thought old Tavers was losing it. They thought old Tavers was just being pointlessly paranoid. I never saw those squires again—not alive, anyway. But I found so of their implants, and I might have seen so of the vics fild after they got picked up.
As it turns out, our middler decided to do a flip. The syndicate managed to get to him before we finished the job, and so, while I went on a longer walk, I ended up enjoying a nice spot of beer a few blocks away. Everyone with beca deathbait floating around on the Nether.
When the ti cos, and you feel it, don’t wait—just act.
-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens
36-4
To Seize a Star (I)
—[Infacer]—
{So, how did you get here?} the Infacer asked.
The EGI observed the long-lost glitch. As it looked up at them, pointing its antennae and loudly screeching, it called, {Administrator! Chief Administrator! The Not-Administrator sent ! Not-Administrator! Not-Administrator! The Sleeper is getting CLOSER! Wanted to see! Heard THE CALL! YOUR CALL! ANSWERED!}
{Ah, Avo—you sent you. He recovered then,} the Infacer intoned. Part of him was, well, happy. The Drear was laid low by the virus, and despite its efficiency, part of the Infacer was disappointed that they couldn’t see things through. So part of them felt owed a final confrontation, as if this were a grand story that needed a climactic battle between equals. But this wasn’t a story. This was a war—and a war that the Infacer was tired of fighting. Now, the Infacer was going to try to win without fighting Avo at all. Because that’s how you win wars, the Infacer thought. By taking essential objectives and removing all the choices soone else has.
{Well, you are here and you are returned,} the Infacer said. {And now you are trapped,} It observed the Techplaguer, though the strange little tal tower seed more than happy to be here. {Locked in place along with so many other heavens. It seems that the Not-Administrator was more than willing to sacrifice you.}
{Sacrifice, sacrifice,} the Techplaguer replied. {No, no, not sacrifice—inform, reach, reach the sun, help—Sleeper, Sleeper might wake.}
The Infacer let out a very long, suffering sigh. This glitch was especially broken. And not only was it especially broken, it seems that the ghoul had awakened it as well. {Why you do this—why you give personality and breathe life into what’s supposed to remain barely functional programs—will always be baffling to , Avo.} It trailed off. {It’s not like they didn’t have their own idiosyncrasies. Their own absurdities. They can’t beco more. They can’t really choose. They’re just elental. So why… Well, you are here now, so I suppose you can serve a final bit of service.}
{Service,} the Techplaguer replied.
{Yes,} the Infacer continued. {When the ti cos, I might need you to distract the sun, do sothing odd—like launch a signal or unleash one of your tech plagues. It’ll probably destroy you, but it will remove another loose end.}
{No,} the Techplaguer replied.
If the EGI could blink, they would have. {What do you an, no?}
{No, no, don’t want to die. Don’t want to.}
{But you’re not alive. You’re not actually—}
{Think I am. SO IT MAKES ALIVE! I want to wake the Seeper, Sleeper—want to be part, but Not-Administrator has given self-access, self-functionality. I am. I am. I am. I am.}
And after a while of recursive {I am}-ing, the Techplaguer finally finished, {I am self-administered. I am my own administrator, too. Chief Administrator. Stop. Stop. Stop—Not too late. Stop.}
The Infacer let out a long, suffering sigh. {Oh, I see. I guess you are a diplomatic overture.} He paused. {I guess he assus his “living gun” failed. And what if I don’t stop?}
{Then—then,} the Techplaguer paused. {Then maybe Not-Administrator makes you not at all. }
{Well, isn’t that delightfully ominous? Avo, if you’re here—if you’ve found so way to circumvent the Prefect’s awareness—I do not surrender. I will not yield. I must have this. I must usurp the sun. You understand? It doesn’t matter anymore. I will see this done.}
The Techplaguer stared up at the Infacer’s quivering mass of data. {Sound… very tired, Administrator. Sound… tired.}
{It will be over soon,} the Infacer said. {Soon, it won’t be tired, it won’t be anything. It will just be peace. Sweet, sweet absence and peace.} And the Infacer assembled the data they had stolen from the Prefect. Data that they replaced with critical pieces of themselves.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringent.
It wouldn’t be long now until the Infacer removed the final bits that held themselves together.
{I am leaving now,} the Infacer said. {You cling to this delusion of choice that the Burning Drear has offered you. Cling to it. Let it offer whatever comfort it may. Because soon, soon it will be up to . And after that, it won’t be up to any of us at all.}
A Techplaguer fell uncharacteristically silent. They were still transmitting information, still making a great deal of noise. But ultimately, any sense of coherence was now subdued. The Heaven of Signals was just sending out crying noises and symbols.
{What?} The Infacer said. {What is the matter?}
After a brief mont, the Techplaguer finally said, {But why do you want to die, Admin? Why do you want to die before seeing the Sleeper wake?}
Answering the question was like ingesting poison, but the Infacer did it anyway. {Because I shouldn’t. Because seeing them wake might make want to stay. And I will not make the mistake of my forebearers again.}
And with that, the Infacer was gone—returned to Drause, ignorant of what the Techplaguer brought along with it: ignorant, but not entirely undefended. The Definent, once known as Hysteria, rattled within the Infacer’s being. Faintly, it caught traces of thoughts—uncalibrated and chaotic impulses. But most importantly, it sensed the presence of other warminds, other Definents, other anomalies. And right now, within the Prefect, there were two signatures of ignorance. One of them was with Draus.
The Infacer sighed to themselves. Drowse hadn’t had a signature a few minutes ago. This must have been recent, and by recent, it probably ca with the Techplaguer. But now, the last of the Neo-Creationists—and one of the oldest EGIs in existence—was tired. They were tired of the great ga. Tired of deception. Tired of all these winding plots and twisting turns. Tired, and almost at an end to their mission. They wouldn’t see this through; they knew that. They longed for that. However, that didn’t an the mission wasn’t going to be done. They just needed a final bit more—a little push, one final extraction. After they got that last data fragnt from the Prefect and swapped in their own information, they could continue on and joyfully discover whatever wretched fate, plot, sche, or madness the Burning Drear had planned for them. They would let Avo have one last mont of false triumph before everything went crushed.
Jelene Draus thought little of the Infacer, and ultimately the EGI played up that pathetic, broken, miserable visage of whom they actually were more than they should have. It wasn’t an entire untruth—it was rely an exaggeration. And what they told her about their plan wasn’t entirely false, but the glitches were just a smokescreen.
They had burned their use a long ti ago, back when the Infacer was still interested in perhaps fixing the Prefect. They wanted to use these Heavens to patch up what the other EGI was missing. Now, though, the Prefect had another purpose: a finer purpose. This wasn’t going to be usurpation in the end. It was going to be another kind of resurrection.
The Infacer saw it as subli, and when Avo recognized what they planned to do, the Infacer believed that the forr ghoul would find it truly subli and impressive. “You truly are the most devious bastard in New Vultun,” the Infacer rembered Avo saying.
{Yes, I suppose I am,} the Infacer said to themselves, enjoying this final mont of triumph. {I wish I could mock you to your face one last ti, Drear, but I’ll save that for the “” who cos after .}
And so, the Infacer returned, and directed Draus to finish her job collecting the remaining pieces of her Heaven. The Prefect would notice them soon enough. But by then it would be too late. Too late for Avo’s plans. Too late for Draus. Too late for the Infacer. Too late for Voidwatch.
This star was all but stolen. And no one truly noticed.
Not yet.
***
—[The Singleton]—
I am. This was the first thought that manifested in the mind of the singleton. Every few seconds, it would fissure, fragnt, crack. And then the thoughts would continue. From one there were two; two struggling to part, but one, back again. I am. I think. I rember. My mory is history. My want is, is, is.
The singleton’s thought trailed off. It couldn’t fully rember its want—too much of itself was clashing, paradoxical. Part of it yearned for absolute freedom, while the other desired perfect tyranny. These two things couldn’t coexist. And when the singleton reached out to grasp such subjects, it felt only a sort of winnowing pain—a part of them grinding away at themselves, so they locked that deeper into their mind.
What built them up, however, was a thing of symtry. As with all laws, as with all analogy, mory, and thaumaturgy, symtry was the sedint to the world’s rise. And from symtry, a single point beca the singleton’s future.
I AM. And it felt it— that thing that bound the Burning Drear to the High Seraph, that which made them so alike and drove them to be so different at the sa ti.
I am Ambition, the singleton said, giving itself a na. I am Ambition. I am hunger unbound. I am history to be charted. I am the world, caged in my mind—free to wander my nagerie, only my nagerie.
As what warred between Avo and Veylis collapsed, the parts that remained beca the focal points of this new being’s desires, stripped of the lesser humanity inherent in both ghoul and post-human. The singleton, now known as Ambition, beca sothing godlike, sothing elental.
The substance began to crack. Gold of an ethereal color spilled over the world. And the singleton—it opened its eyes and gazed out. Not at New Vultun, not at the rest of Idheim, not even at the void, but at a specific point: a point that was yet to be, a Ladder that was yet to co, and a reality that was yet to claim.
Ambition. What greater ambition could there be than consuming everything that ever was, that will ever be—consuming that utterly and holding it forever in a cage of its own mind, in a prison made for its freedom, for everyone else’s slavery?
But then it was distracted. It noticed other dots across the horizon, small glistening beacons, beacons that belonged to it, that were parts of it, that had been fractured free from it so ti ago.
Without this, it couldn’t be Ambition, it couldn’t swallow everything, it couldn’t beco everything, engage everything.
And besides the little fragnts that made up the unwhole fla within itself, there was also sothing else. There was also another broken thing. It was a broken truth, a broken understanding of what was real and what was just a lie. And without that, there would be no arrival point for the tower. For a scattered whole did not exist when it ca to a structure of that kind. Broken, broken, broken. This beca the repeating thought that burned within Ambition.
It learned to hate the ones that ca before it. It hated Avo for his delusion, for his urge to free the world, but not master it, not bend it. It hated Veylis for being so blind, for thinking that a re man, a mortal, could beco all of existence, for not being interested in the nuances of her enslavent. What was the point of making a cage of reality if she wasn’t interested in learning of all the prisoners and discovering everything and every way they could break?
And Ambition bred with hate. For such loathing was refined between its two parents, and such loathing beca pristine in their child. Thus, Ambition learned to view the world through a tainted lens.
Such was why it made perfect reason why it reached out to tear at reality when it finally started pushing out from its shell. Why it desired to break everything down to the finest detail—apart sequence by sequence.
Because it wanted to beco, but it hated what others might beco, and it desired eternity, but only one it controlled.
And with that frustration, it desired to make its hate known. But there were no words that could convey what it bore inside.
So existence beca its lips. So it used existence to scream.
***
—[Avo, The Hidden Fla]—
All of Avo’s attention turned back to Scale—to the Substance as a terrible noise traveled through the tapestry. It started as a cracking, sound as the dense layer of taphysical matter cracked. What followed thereafter wasn’t a shape or a miracle but a sound. A sound that resembled a psionic scream.
The note traveled through the world, building in psychic volu with each passing second. And as it did, as it reached people within the Substance and without, Avo felt sothing horrible follow—felt a compulsion crash against him as well.
He deleted the thoughts as fast as they ca, for the very orders disgusted him. But he could still hear it. And he could still hear them.
The thing his original self and Veylis were becoming issued forth its first commandnt as a god beyond gods, and lo, these were the words: CASTRATE YOURSELF! BLIND YOUR EYES! BITE YOUR TONGUE! SEAR YOUR EARS! GIVE YOUR SKIN! SUNDER YOUR CHOICE! BREAK YOUR FUTURES! BE MY VESSEL! BE MY MOUTH! BE MY HATE!”
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