I know what you are. I know who you are. I know the ones you protect. You are no mystery to , not completely. I know you are our cousins from the void, our kindred from eons ago. I know that you have been pilgrims in that vast and harrowing blackness, migrating for millennia, seeking a final refuge. And I know why you are here.
We are not your enemies. Whoever you thought you were going to find, they aren't here anymore. We are all that remains. We are the children of Ymirsheim. We are flawed, broken, even degenerated in our own way, but we are not the ones you expected to be here. Not the ones bearing bleed and fang. Not the ones who wielded the old gods' weapons. We are not they.
We are barely their children. We are barely their descendants anymore. Barely.
Much has been broken. We are perhaps more akin to the orphans that grew up in the refuse, who wounded ourselves upon the divine debris left behind by the neo-creationists.
But in their stead, I greet you. Not as an adversary. Not as soone determined to make old mistakes, to continue old feuds. No. I greet you, for my na is Jaus Avandaer. I am Godbreaker. I am the Ender of Faith, the Forger of Guilds. And I would like to discuss a peace, an offering, and a refuge. A refuge for you, and a refuge for my people.
You have co far, you have faced terrible things, and so have we. Do not fire. There is much we can speak of, and there is much I wish to know still. Of this I beg, and of you I ask only one thing: a mont of peace, and a chance at dialogue.
-Jaus Avandaer’s First Address to a Mind of Voidwatch
37-9
Sky and Soil
The first Voidship pushed through the gleaming periphery of the temporal dinsion, erging as a chro mirage. Others followed, and soon a fleet containing millions of post-human sophants, ancient relics, and hyper-intelligent minds greeted Avo within his personal reality. He offered this place to them as a refuge, a final fallback, as existence was besieged by sun and ambition.
As they approached, the voidships shifted their forms, their bodies expanded in pooling swells of smart matter, and from there, bladed wings extended from their sides, while light sails plud out from their sterns. They adapted, going from vessels ant to dance the weightless void and endure the brutality of unshielded radiation to great airships shaped for atmosphere.
As they drew close, fingers of crimson lightning lashed at them, curling as if beckoning them forth. A loud rumbling laughter shook the world. The Woundeater's voice was as thunderous as it was infused with glee, and a series of colossal crimson spires pierced through the atmosphere, as the tallest among the edifices revealed a wolf-like jaw, clenching an alchemical dawn at its apex.
"Welco, guests! Welco, oh you who stared down upon for all those years! For you who lingered beyond the reach of my highest structure, beyond the touch of my blood! For you, unsacrificed, co now to the house I have made for you, land upon the hos I have grown for you, and know that I have such sights to show you!"
And with each word spoken, the Woundeater's blood congealed within her sanguinity. Great platforms were constructed in the air, large enough to accommodate every single warship. Voidship.
These platforms were colossal, hundreds of kiloters long, dense and thick. Their interiors were like hives with countless rooms. Their centers were hollowed, becoming as if cells of honeycomb. Here the Voidships could land, could allow their passengers to disembark, and here the minds themselves could find a place to settle, protected by a god of blood and creation. None would be allow to trespass against the voiders without the Woundmother’s awareness—and Avo’s permissions furthermore.
As the voidsihps drew closer, the city itself ca into view. A city bifurcated and then reconstructed. Massive ziggurats now had crimson growths ford over them. Yet the growths were not cancerous. Rather, they bore the biomaterial aesthetic of the Sang districts. Gold rose into the sky, gold harvested from those born of the Dragon Curse. And though there were the Sang, there were also others who were lit by a dreamlike fla.
The people of Old Noloth who had submitted to Avo, who had given themselves unto the burning dream, if only to preserve their own life, or to break that paradigm that made them a slave to their own culture, to the city eternal. And in the distant backdrop, there was an even greater structure looming. A structure that was a gacity unto itself.
The Silken Spiral was contained in a golden tube. It hovered there, not so far away from the main expanse of this place beyond. But it was smoldering with the glow of the conflagration. And the people there were still conversing with the Burning Dream, were still beholding the wonders of their nfolk returned.
And while this proceeded, the realm itself responded to Voidwatch. Yet, Avo never reached out into the ships. He never touched the minds, nor did he press his consciousness against the Voiders themselves. He gave them the space they desired. He spared them from consumption for now. In ti, all would be his, if things were to conclude as he desired. Yet that was in question.
A great many things were in question right now. Though he ran simulations constantly, the future was a miasma of chaos. Between the Infacer bearing the power of the sun, ambition drawing the rend of the universe close to collapsing everything into chaos, and the guilds still being in flux, not truly tad, yet no longer adversarial, there were far too many variables that Avo had to contend with if he desired to erge as the one true divine. ŖάɴȎ𝔟ËṠ
And perhaps even then, I might not be the one true divine. Don't think that fits anymore. He regarded himself, all the minds that dwelled within him, all the templates and more. He regarded—
[Hey, Avo] Draus cried out, close to his mind. [How about you shut the fuck up and ask them if my gunship is ready?]
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"Barely been a few days," Avo replied. "Don't think they're that fast."
[They're the godsdamn voiders. When it cos to building shit that blows up other shit, I guarantee you that we haven't seen half their arsenal. And frankly, they haven't spent half as much ti as they could have on a proper arsenal. Now they have that ti, so they're gonna build that gun. Now go talk to them. Make sure it's good. Make sure it can put a hole through a planet. Put a hole through Idheim. You hear ?]
"Yes," Avo replied with a quiet sigh. "I was the one who commissioned it."
[Yeah, you were. So it's your fault I'm asking for it. Now get to it.]
And here the Burning Drear was, getting bullied by one of the templates within his own mind. Truly, this was the highest peak of what a god could aspire to.
[For what it is worth
He triggered his ansible, and it ca afire with the powers of his conflagration, with his exocortex. It fused into existence and released a pulse of quantum encoded information. A small singularity ford within the implant and carried Avo's thoughts over leagues and more. His thoughts passed through all the voidships, allowing him to commune with the minds aboard.
And the minds here were forks of the Contingency Bleaks, the first to arrive. The first to ensure that Avo wouldn't renege on the bargain he made with them, that he wouldn't prove to be a jackal or snake in the most dire of monts.
For his part, Avo had no interest in avoiding them.
He materialized in a space of static and nothing—in virtual world set to the color of a dead monitor. And from the static rose the avatar of a Bleak to greet the Drear’s scouring fla. Other EGIs lurked in the backdrop, waiting and watching.
"Refusal," Avo said, greeting the Bleak he knew the best.
"Strix," the Bleak replied, its voice resonating with unease but conviction. "When you proclaid that you managed to rebuild a realm from ti itself, I harbored doubts. Now…now as I take in the asurents, I see this dinsion to be whole. And to be bound to your very being. You are the master of this place.”
"As you take in the asurents," Avo said, "I build more. I grow more. This place was a sche. Sothing born of a neo-creationist dream. A dream to build a place above reality, to reconstruct history by growing it from cycles, by growing it from people. Not as master. But as custodian. But as a god. Above. But not quite so beyond. Here. Distant. But not so aloof.”
"So you claim," Contingency Bleak Refusal said. "The Sang, for a long ti, I observed them. Their natures were stranger than the others. Perhaps not much stranger than the Sanctians. They are a bifurcation as well. Have they offered themselves to your cause yet?”
"I have yet to sink my mind into their mystery. But no. There might be a connection between and the Sang. One I have not discovered yet," Avo considered the EGI’s question for a mont. "But the Sang, they serve well here. I am offering all of them bargains, just as I have you. They are essential for this place to grow and flourish. They, the dragons, the cursed, all of it. It must be expanded. I have already returned their male hubs to them. Soon, the first male sons of the Sang species will be among their people once more. In this ti, at the end of tis, everything is now set to change."
A long pause followed from Refusal. "We have been here before," the E.G.I. declared.
"What do you an?" Avo asked.
"We have been here before," the E.G.I. repeated. "But he wasn't referring to you, Avo. We, the minds, we have been at the forefront of these monts. Perhaps not every mont. Perhaps not the birth of steam, or the inception of agriculture, or the creation of the printing press. But for every subsequent struggle and evolution of humanity, we were there. And now we are here, as well, at the precipice of a fall. At the precipice of a new age, a new ti, or a final fall, to end it all."
"Fall; new," Avo chuffed. "Perhaps everything is rely a mory. A mory of what was my mory. I can make that so, if the Ladder is claid. And everything that was can be again. Perhaps it would be good for to return to the start. To experience the ti before man. From the wondrous silence of the vast nothing that beca a sothing. And the sothing that beca what we are now. Perhaps there I will learn to be a god of origins. But that cos after the Ladder.”
"I speak of what must happen before the Ladder arrives," the EGI said, their voice growing with intensity, "before the Ladder, we must retake the sun. And before the latter, the beast known as ambition needs to be suppressed, broken down. We have observed the Sunderwilds. They are collapsing, expanding, growing closer, tighter. We have deployed several of our Deep Ones to delay their approach. However, it seems that ambition has struck at the Deep Ones. A few are now completely rampant. Their governing modules have been incinerated."
"And they react as if, as if a monster," Avo finished for the Bleak "As if a beast ravenous, attacking other Deep Ones."
"Correct," Refusal said. This was unsurprising. Ambition's nature was tainted by the beast, the beast that Avo could control so easily with the Conflagration. Yet the beast he never truly exiled or destroyed. It was his nature, his natural instinct carved into him. And now it was infused with more power than it knew what to do with, more power than a rank predator should be capable of wielding.
"I will be gathering all the survivors across Idheim here," Avo declared. "I wish to leave templates in their place. Templates I have grown. An army forged of a masquerade—born of my fla and thaumaturgy—to distract and potentially assail Ambition from within when they inevitably co for the gacities."
"And you can do this?" Refusal asked.
"I can," Avo replied. "But I might need an added aid. I might need so assistance. Assistance from your biotech capabilities. And more subtle ans of striking at a being of pure thaumaturgy and entropy.”
"Assistance of whatever you need we will provide within reason," Refusal declared. "Understand that we are here for ourselves as well. But we are here for our polities first and foremost. They are not to be exposed to the war. They are not to be lost or spent anymore. You wish to prevail. You wish for great many things. But our cooperation is contingent on your preservation of the trophies."
"My preservation of old humanity would have taken place regardless if you would have demanded it or not," Avo shot back.
"Yes, but you would have spent them if it ant a benefit. If it would have benefited you," Refusal declared.
"And I would have returned them. I would have given them everything and more in ti. What happened before was a mont of warfare waged by my progenitor. And his mistake. He thought he could outplay the Infacer. He was mistaken. And I was insufficient. Such a mont will never co again.”
"Such promises," the Contingency Bleak said scornfully. "But such promises are but that. Words and intent. So often that results in nothing but lant and regret. Lant, regret, and ultimately deception. This too has happened before. Understand that we stand shackled not only in life but death. There is no avoid your end if you think—”
"There is no deception here," Avo declared. "This place, this can only be forged from truth. I can no more twist ti than I can betray myself and force the Sang to act as my deliverers. You are here because Jaus’s words. Because our bargain. But you are also here as my guest. Will do all I can to preserve you and your people. Show hospitality.”
“Ah. As a liege lord would his serfs.”
“Dean yourself if you must,” Avo said. “Won’t change what I intend.”
And as he said that, the first of the void ships began to land.
"So you proclaim, and let us see if it stands true. We are here now, Drear, here in our totality. Know that our eyes are upon you."
"And mine upon you as well," Avo retorted. "You are no longer a part of this, no longer your own. Your people will mingle if you let them. And what was once apart can be forged anew again, in my fla."
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