A day later, Icon accompanied Ashtoreth to the old headquarters for what Ashtoreth was sure was likely to be the most important eting of her life. At the very least, it would be the most interesting.
Icon had eventually run out of assurances she could think to ask for, then begrudgingly and hesitantly agreed to not only help them with the repairs to the Diadem reality spool but to give them access to the archive itself, sothing she'd apparently been able to do the whole ti despite being in quarantine.
Frost, Hunter, and Sadie were already seated along one side of the table when they arrived. Across from them was General Matthews, along with several more people in suits or uniforms who she'd never seen. Several of them had speakers and microphones set up, each no doubt connected to a room full of yet more important bossn.
Icon took her place at the head of the table, with Ashtoreth sitting beside her, across from Matthews.
"All right everyone," the general said. "They're here. We can get started. Let's keep interruptions to a minimum through the initial overview please, then move on to questions once that's done. Icon?"
"Thank you, General Matthews," Icon said. Speaking to the room, she said, "I can only apologize if my affect is ill-suited to the matters at hand. I am a spirit from another civilization whose purpose is arguably not oriented toward etings such as these. Now, since the general has already asked you to withhold your questions, I suppose I'll begin."
Ashtoreth felt a little sad for Icon as she said all this. She a spirit of another civilization who was now alone in this one and bearing a huge set of responsibilities. Not only that, but Ashtoreth and Kylie had essentially undermined her self-confidence as a way of getting her to cooperate.
Not that Ashtoreth had any regrets on the matter. She just felt bad for the spirit, was all.
"First," Icon began, "let say that in the ti of the precursors, secrets were highly valued. As such, I may not know the answers to every question it might occur to you to ask. I know only the stories that old humanity told itself about itself. We'll start with the nature of reality everything."
As she spoke, multiple people began to type quietly on electric typewriters, adjust audio equipnt, and fiddle with small caras that were pointed her way.
"Everything that any of us will ever experience, everything that a sapient being can experience, all of the realms both inner and outer… this constitutes the cosmos. But there is sothing outside of what we can touch and fathom. It is sotis simply called Outside, and sotis characterized as a set of entities referred to as the Near Ones. The Eldritch horrors of your fiction, and more generally the human imagination's obsession with the unfathomable and incomprehensible, the chthonic and the Dionysian, seem to have carried the echo of the Near Ones into human consciousness—just as your mythologies have echoed Heaven and Hell."
Icon paused, seemingly unsure as to whether she should wait for the note takers to stop typing, then apparently decided just to plow on ahead.
"The Outside hates, or is at least antithetical to, the cosmos. In practical terms, this ans that it wants to destroy absolutely everything that we can all conceive of. Most precursor humans theorized that this was more akin to an auto-immune response than any real maleficence on the part of the Outside, but the result is the sa. It seeks to degrade the integrity of reality to the point where everything collapses, then ceases to exist. A sort of Big Crunch; the cosmos is popped like a balloon, then deflates."
Ashtoreth watched the other side of the table, noting how all of the various officials seed to lean in, their interest piqued. She knew that the bossn were all familiar with Heaven and Hell as major players, but she could guess that the Near Ones had mostly been an afterthought to them.
"The Outside attacks the cosmos by funneling its power into it, but can only do so in those areas that have been initialized into the system. In this regard, one might think of the system as a strain, or a stained glass window, or any other number of objects which shape and limit substances that pass through them. In order to manifest in reality, an outsider must in so sense abide the rules of reality."
She looked at Ashtoreth, then continued. "The prevailing theories of both ancient humanity and present-day Hell are that this is, in fact, a fundantal purpose of the system. Perhaps it is reality's own auto-immune response to the threat of the outsiders, or perhaps it was engineered to function as such. Perhaps it's even the system, and not the cosmos itself, that the outsiders despise. Regardless, the system functions as the orderly counterpoint to the chaos of the near ones. Clear distinctions and delineation, universal nas and objective semiosis are its fundantal nature."
She turned to Matthews, then swept her gaze across the other mbers seated at the table. "As for how that relates to humanity: it's vital to the constitution of the cosmos itself that the invaders produced by the Outside are destroyed, because they fray the fabric of reality every second they remain. And so of those invaders are powerful. Very powerful. They are strong enough that in ancient tis past, even the Authority of Heaven had to strive to contend with them."
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Now it was Ashtoreth's turn to have her interest piqued. Hell dealt with the outsiders, or so she had been told: but before Hell had been unified under the fiends, it had been Heaven? Did the angels still fight the strongest outsiders?
"But," Icon continued, "to contend with them ant fighting, and fighting ant dying, and dying ant depleting Heaven of its angels. The alternative was to use a creature other than angels, but this ca with its own long-term predicant: if an alternative to angels was used to fight the strongest of the outsiders, then that alternative would need to be powerful enough to challenge the Authority of Heaven itself."
This just flew in the face of everything Ashtoreth thought she knew. Fighting Heaven was a matter of being a high enough level? If so, then they'd done a good job of building themselves a different reputation.
"Before the ti of my creation, Heaven replenished those souls that it lost to its eternal, glorious war by choosing humans to beco angels. I don't know whether they created you to fulfill this purpose, whether they all began as humans themselves, or whether Cradle—Earth—was a world they found, once upon a ti, which simply happened to host the only species that could fulfill this end. But what I do know is this: angels have only one known thod of reproduction—ascending humans."
Icon paused to let her words sink in, and Ashtoreth could hardly bla her. Dazel had already told them a part of this, but it was another thing to have confirmation.
"In the beginning of recorded human history," Icon continued, "humanity was a dismal species that inhabited upon the only inner realm without magic or the system. They had no technology to speak of and lived in utter squalor: mud huts and tribal warfare. I imagine your anthropologists are familiar with these conditions."
She seed to consider saying more, then shook her head. "I'll do my best to skip over so of the mythologized details from my ti… but these humans rebelled. Or rather, many of the angels that they beca rebelled in order to free their forr species from their status as a box of spare parts for Heaven's machinery of war. As to how this was done, I can't say—ascendance is said to have co only after a kind of psychic pruning, an enforced ntal surgery which made a human either forget their origins… or simply co to care nothing for them."
Ashtoreth frowned. As far as she knew, that last part wasn't even possible. You could get close, of course, but it was like that one video ga protagonist with amnesia: there was no way to wholly erase soone's self that wouldn't leave them a road back to it.
"Under the leadership of an entity called the Archangel Midnight, a group of angels rebelled. She beca the first Empress of Humanity, a title which I'm sure will translate interestingly to each of you. Regardless, the peace she sued for led to the second age of humanity—one where they were allowed magic, and the system, but still paid a tribute in souls to Heaven's great engine of war."
Ashtoreth wanted to ask what happened to the Empress of Humanity, but she knew that she couldn't, and not just because there were no questions. By mutual agreent, nobody was going to ntion Dazel to Icon, or say anything that hinted at their knowledge of his existence. Unless Icon ntioned that this so-called Empress had either died or given up their power, they'd have to act as if they'd assud she'd been in charge the whole ti.
"This goes on and on. Humanity's eventual rebellion against this status quo is not so much because their greatest fighters are ascended into angeldom and then never seen again, but rather because Heaven sees wisdom in letting all things end—including the cosmos. The status quo that they seek to maintain, and to my knowledge have maintained, will eventually see all of existence as we know it cease to be as the outsiders finish wearing down the fabric of reality. Humanity, on the contrary, sought cosmic immortality."
Icon paused again to let her words sink in. Ashtoreth was sure she was as shocked as anyone else. Reality itself was dying?
"In the first rebellion, the Authority of Heaven made a truce of convenience. The second, however, was a fight for their lives. The Five Realms were created as humanity's empire expanded. In ti, Ashtoreth's species was created to dominate demons and devils and unite all of Hell."
She resisted to the urge to add that clearly, humanity succeeded on that front.
"I imagine you can all guess what happens next. Instead of uniting under humanity, Hell united under Heaven. The betrayal of the fiends was utterly devastating. The war was all but lost. In the final days, your precursors made preparations for an unavoidable resumption of hostilities, then—sohow—cast Cradle to the far edges of the cosmos. I cannot give an answer as to why the people of this world had no knowledge of their history: neither I nor the archive know why this was necessary."
Icon let out a breath, then, looking over the room and rolling her shoulders as if coming to end of her speech.
"The rest I believe you've mostly put together. In the wake of Cradle's exodus, Hell becos a cosmic power that slowly expands its rule while also taking on so portion of the outsider problem—perhaps even all of it, though I can scarcely say why Heaven would allow that."
She held her hands up, palms out, to the room.
"I'm sorry. I know it's probably the last thing you want to hear, given that Hell must seem an insurmountable enemy to you. But as far as I can see, this war won't truly end until you defeat not only the Hierarchy of Hell, but the Authority of Heaven—and at long last seize the Throne of Creation."
She practically winced, then added, "Questions?"
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