Godclads

Chapter 34-2 The Great Deception (II)

I have always dreamed of creating a Heaven of Mind. Mind, or perhaps a Domain analogous to it. Alas, with the construction of the Nether—a wonder in its own right—the world has been granted a “public use set of canons” in a sense, while we of the Highest Art have been denied of what could have been.

A pity. Such a Heaven could have changed a great many things. Including for us. Especially if you consider all you might be capable of doing with consciousness or intelligence. As Agnosi, doubtless you might have already started thinking about how great your artistry could be if you knew everything—if you simply never forgot.

Now, I wish for you to consider what if you can pull solid matter from your memories? Or even conjure essential materials. But on top of that, what if you could stack minds upon each other, create a perfect harmonious system? Such things would have revolutionized our world beyond description. Indeed, if we were granted such understanding, we, augmented ephemerals might actually be able to stand as direct equals against the minds themselves by the metrics of processing, memory, pattern recognition, and creativity. We would uncover connections and patterns few others could ever conceive.

Yet… I find myself also treading into trepidation, for so far, my considerations remain the realm of the thinker, the tinkerer, the maker.

What will happen when a Guild desires a new weapon? A completed Hell of Mind like the Nolothi were trying to finish? What then?

Our self-reference and awareness are all that truly make us “alive” in the sense that matters. Such is what I believe. But what happens if consciousness itself is shredded?

What kind of death will follow that?

-High Agnos Jakuta A’jayi

34-2

—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—

[FUCK YOU! AND FUCK THE HUNGERS OF NOLOTH! YOU ARE—YO—BRAINS ARE BAD! BAD! LIKE A BADLY… GROWN NU-DOG!]

[Y-b-yo-yo—Shut the fuck up, you dumb cunt! Talking to me about my b-b-brain while your fucking lips can’t work well with your mind. If you’re the best Agnos New Vultun has to offer, then I need to ask the fucking Dreamer to kill me, because you helped Avandaer fuck us up the ass. We got fucked! By a pack! Of subhuman! DUMBFUCKS!]

[I’m not the dumbfuck! You—you are! You are twice the dumbfuck you… fucker! You, and the other priests.]

[Yeah? Well we sure broke your life pretty good, didn’t we, Kusanade?]

[I—You—fuc—CHAMBERS! CHAMBERS! I NEED YOUR HELP! ATTACK HIM! ATTACK HIM, NOW!]

Trying to have templates of Kae Kusanade and the Famine of Peace work together was proving to be a highly amusing mistake. What started as a cold and terse exchange of expertise and theories about the nature of warminds had devolved into curses and slurs as other templates had to be called in to keep both sides from getting into an active brawl.

The Kae were the ones to lose their tempers first—something that proved to be her own fault as she started criticizing parts of the warminds’ designs. Peace, meanwhile, lived in a perpetual state of misery and loathing and was all too happy to insult the Agnos for offending him and insulting the hidden weapons that kept the City Eternal safeguarded for all these years.

And then Chambers entered the fray with the loud declaration: [Hey, half-strands! Lick the gangrene from Dannis’s barb-wire whipped taint! The only reason why any of you are still around is because of Defiance! And he left you as soon as he fucking could!]

Which caused things to devolve further into anarchy and chaos as the Famines of Peace suddenly turned their bemused hatred from the outraged Kaes, to Aedon Chambers—far better at trading insults and mocking someone’s failings than the both of them.

That, and Avo was helping Chambers with the insult crafting. Because Peace was indeed a half-strand, and just because he was a part of Avo now didn’t mean the Hidden Flame regarded him higher than that whitish substance that leaked from a joy-fiend’s mouth while they were choking to death.

So it was that the glorious task of “completing” a warmind fell by the wayside as the Soulscape veered toward conflict and violence. Naeko looked on with a slight frown while Zein yawned beside him.

[What true tortures you have divined, Plague,] Thousandhand said, smacking her lips. [A battle between the most feeble scholar I have known in all my years, and a broken, miserable priest who has about as much skill as a particularly enraged aratnid given a dose of nova.]

[It is kind of funny watchin’ them go at it, though,] Draus said, watching Kae rage with pleasure. [Good for her too. She’s gotta have an outlet and who gives a fuck about Peace? Hey, rotlick. Maybe give everyone a Peace to torture. Might be good for settlin’ angry minds.]

The suggestion was amusing, but petty tyranny was rather boring. Peace was an annoyance. The other templates could deal with Peace if they so decided, and he could face them in whatever manner he so chose. Why intervene when there wasn’t the need and let these lesser consciousnesses miss out on novel experiences?

“Going to let them have a few more moments. Then get them back on track.”

He looked at the sunken constructs that jutted out of his Soulscape. The patterns that comprised the broken warminds were transparent and outlined by shimmering wrongness. It was like the bones of some ancient creature turned to glass, gliding through existing structures, twisting the simulated cityscape at points of intersection. More importantly, however, now that he had some time to observe them, to digest them, there was a resonance that pulsed out from them. A ringing that aligned thaumaturgy and Necrotheurgy.

In the brief time since the collapse of the Nether, a great many changes had befallen New Vultun. With everything else taking priority, Avo barely had time to consider what he could do. Until now. Now, as he had time to prepare, to study, there were more than a few things that drew his notice.

The first wasn’t with his warminds, surprisingly, but with the templates themselves. They were slowly coming ablaze—but rather than just being a conduit for Avo’s miracles of Conceptualization, a new adhesion existed between his ghosts and the Soulfire that comprised his ontology. This made the Hidden Flame recall something: the Nether wasn’t just a public-facing Domain that everyone could use, but also an act of existential remodeling. Its existence separated the structure of the world into three. The metaphysical, the mental, and the material.

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Now, the first two were bleeding back over into each other, and that meant…

What did that mean? In his excitement to see if he could create a warmind—or even something better—to ferry one of his Deep Ones out from the Substance, he also had to consider just what was happening with the templates. They no longer had budding accretions. Such a thing was only possible when he had Hysteria, but now, they were getting heavier. But the weight was also slowly trickling a limit.

One thaum for one ghost.

{Like… electrons and… and…} the broken governance EGI he recovered from the Deep Ones said, then collapsed back into disarray. Avo didn’t fully understand what they were saying, but Ignorance told him things regarding physics

Whatever the case, now was to be a time of preparation, enlightenment, and evolution; not only for him, but for his cadre as well. He might have bestowed shards of the Stillborn on Draus, Chambers, Shotin, and more, but they needed to take things further. Advance like he could. To allow anything less was to redo old mistakes.

Chambers was already a remarkable specimen compared to who he was before, but there was still room. For him. For Draus. For everyone. But that also meant giving them what he had: Understanding. Insight. Knowledge. Thus came the other reason why he wanted to start making new warminds — the Majority had their means of communication; Chambers was trying to replace the Nether, but that left him vulnerable and overextended. There needed to be more clandestine means for the cadre to communicate. Means that only they had. A shared edge.

And so, as the Kae’s, Chamber, and Peaces continued their dispute, Avo himself worked on, his Soulfire crawling over the translucent structures left behind by the warminds. Rebuilding the Forgotten earlier was one thing—something he could reliably replicate himself now. He could start there. Examine its functionality and study how that might react to thaumaturgic integration. Reaching deeper inward, he compelled Ignorance to action and began summoning missing memories, things that were lost or destroyed, banished from his many minds.

WARMIND OF THE FORGOTTEN — I AM THAT WHICH WAS, AND THEN WASN’T. I AM WHAT IS, BUT SOMETHING YOU CANNOT KNOW TO BE. I AM THE LOST BUT HERE, I AM THE SHAPE IN THE DARK, THE FORM IN THE SHADOW. I EXIST. BUT THIS WILL NOT BE KNOWN TO YOU. AND STILL THE WORLD WILL BE.

Avo worked—and he worked efficiently. While he began forging a new cognitive construct on the inside, he also twisted and bent the temporal bridge he grew from the ontologies of his Sang. The nature of his parallel timeline was exploitable in this regard. So long as he had a point of connection to the present in the form of the Stormsparrow or another chronomorph, he could return to a point in the present. However, the passage of time in the new realm he created could take a winding path to arrive at that point.

So, he turned the temporal realm into an arcing structure. Lengthened the passage of time binding the present of reality that is to the realm of Sang-grown time. At the same time, it was strange. He existed in two different progressive periods, and as he elongated the passage of time in the parallel dimension, a new lag assailed him. It wasn’t unlike Nether lag either—but even more disquieting. A delay spread between different portions of his mind, and parts of his Soulscape flickered and began to skip compared to the rest. It was like hosting an out-of-sync lobby Stormjumpers lobby in his own mind.

As that happened, the Kaes and Peaces stopped arguing, compelled back to action as they noticed the abnormalities affecting Soulscape—and also the gleaming orb of darkness rising in the Conflagration-wrought skies like a foreboding dawn.

EGI-EGO INTEGRATION - [29.44523%]

The broken warminds were harvested. The translucent bones were pulled away by gusts of sweeping flame and bound to the growing warmind. Yet, unlike before, Avo didn’t just cast it out into the world, striking wide and deep. Instead, his flames and consciousness burrowed deeper into the warmind, and through his Definement of Ignorance, he began an in-depth study of its designs.

[How incredible,] template-Kae breathed. All the knowledge passing through him flowed through her as well. His insights became hers, and she studied the structure of the warmind—of its deliberately unstable design. A touch of entropy and instability lingered within it. Without the Nether’s existence, any metaphysical effect on memory or mind would affect the fabric of the tapestry. Yet, there was something special here—even if it was the cognitive equivalent of a Hell. [It’s so… neat. And efficient. The vulgarity barely exists. If this was used… it might barely sicken someone’s being at all.]

Peace snorted. It was as close as an expression of pride on his part. [We had to make due. And we had to be fucking efficient. Without thaumaturgy—and with the Silver-cocksucks hunting us, we had to be calculated. And so we found ways to bridge the gap. Joy—miserable shit that he is, was meant to serve as our equivalent of a sacrifice. Every material needed from a mind, he provided, and he did it by being the perfect little fuck-puppet of misery.]

Avo recalled how the Famines of Joy functioned. Yes. Sacrifices. He should have realized before. Noloth was operating closer to the old rules, back when the gods still were and the Godclads were but a shadow on the horizon.

The Agnos continued her observations, and her attention fell upon another detail. [Avo… the ghosts… are they filling with… thaums.] Her mind whirled with startlement and disbelief.

“Yes. Weight building. Think they’ll be capped at a thaum each. The Nether’s collapse caused this. My theory at least. Mind and will are merging back together.”

[Then… what does that mean?]

He considered that. “You might become a self-moving ghost soon. Something with capacity to make choice all your own. Maybe. Not sure. Templates were developing accretions with Hysteria before. Missing that now so… so you’re not consciousness on your own. Too many unknowns. Even for me. Even right now. But…” His voice trailed off as he felt a part of himself drip into the deepest structures of the warmind, and there, he felt something connect to a part of him, connect to Ignorance.

What’s this?

INCOMPLETE ONTOLOGIC FRAGMENT DETECTED

->[FORGOTTEN] DOMAIN (ERROR/ERROR/ERROR/MEMORY/AWARENESS/PERCEPTION)

[Error?] a Kae muttered. [Oh, dead gods. That means the structure of this warmind—well, it can be recognized by your Frame, so it’s close enough in structure to a Heaven, but… it must be extremely unstable. This… this isn’t actually a Hell, Avo! This is an unfinished Heaven a single use away from collapse.] She wheeled on Peace. [You—did you even know what you were making here?]

The priest only sneered. [The fuck do you think? How did we escape earlier? Who managed to get this thing to fucking work you dumb sow? How the fuck are you an Agnos with these obvious questions? I wouldn’t have you breed with my dogs—the litter would be too stupid to breed—]

Whatever else that version of Peace had to say turned into a shrill scream as Draus—slowly creeping behind him—drove a frequency blade up someplace deep and sensitive. A shudder ran through the other templates of Peace while the Kae’s clapped and cheered. Meanwhile, Avo continued watching on with amusement.

[FUCKING! FUCK!] Peace roared in agony. Draus levered the frequency blade lodged in his rectal cavity higher as she looked up at the warmind.

[Shit, Avo, what are you doin’ now,] the Regular looked on, studying limbs of flame slowly drilling deeper and deeper into the warmind.

“Was trying to figure out the basics of warmind creation? Now. Now might have the potential to do something more. Much more.”

GENERATING COMPLETED DESIGN FOR [FORGOTTEN]...

ADD FORGOTTEN TO EXISTING HEAVEN?

Avo considered that, and a thought occurred to him. An experiment that would see him pleased, but also train in him a new habit of sharing his boons and powers. “Woundmother.”

The Heaven of Blood stirred in the parallel timeline. “Yes, master?”

“I want to see if I can integrate the Forgotten into your structure. After that… Want to see if I can have you carry the Deep One across space and time using the temporal bridge and memetic matter. Without anyone remembering anything.”

The Heaven of Blood quivered in delight. “Oh, master. I have missed you so, so very much.”