Chapter 10-2 Death of the Ideal

Chapter 10-2 Death of the Ideal

+Treaties. Always with the treaties and the posturing and begging. And for what?

Peace? Peace is a lie! We all know there will be blood in the end, sisters to be, we all know! But our allies seem to have lost their cocks prematurely.Ñ00v€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.

Remind me again, because old Pragma gets to forgetting sometimes: Who won the last war? Who won? Was it the Massists or Saintists?

Dont give me that rust-shit about damages or lives lost. That doesnt matter. Im talking about Souls claimed. Im talking about Frames takenSovereignties captured.

Who won?

Did Highflame win? Did I misremember that half-ont Greatling sow screaming her lungs out for half the city to hear? Like she didnt have it cominglike the Golds werent peacocking like a godsdamned pack of gleamers when they let the fucking Sang detonate their Fleshweaver plagues into our districts, pour their rash-cursed spores into the air.

Nine billion stillbirths. Nine billion. Not even the vatborn spared. And then the rash. The rash sisters.

Think of this: Aside from the castrates from the Thousand Plains, who else has the means to bend blood and flesh into abominations? Who else!

II know Im rambling but I cannot stomach this. I cannot bear this!

Peace? Fuck peace. Were not finished here. Were never going to be finished. Not till every last Saintist fuck is dead! Dead! Dead!

The Ori are glassjaws. Fine. I get it. Old Pragma gets it. Their lives were nice. They got to live on sunny, happy little Uuvakotheir pretty island chain undisturbed. Got to mine their corpse crystals and trade them to outsiders. Messing with their minds to get better deals and avoid wars.

But while they were having a fun ol time in the sun, some of us had to fight, and bleed, and struggle to stand. Even steel broke in the Skuldvast. Even steel.

So, Ambassador Kitzuhada says peace? I say war! War! Fucking war! Leave peace for transcendence, because right now, there isnt an existence big enough for all us+

-Pragma das Ench, The Moons Edge, Stormtree Extremist Propaganda Thoughtcast

10-2

Death of the Ideal

Drooling, hunger, and delight blended within Avo. A quick command to his Metamind was required to contain any spillover of emotion.

Thirty-two golems. Thirty-two Heavens. Thirty-two new branches to expand his apotheosis.

A scoff sounded from the Woundshaper, its attention fixed on but a select class of golem. The focus, to me at least, is clear master. We must build strength upon strength. Raise the tower already risen. The others are acceptable, perhaps, but it is unwise to trade the reach of a branch for the hairs of a new root.

Like Kae said. Tower or sea: The divide of Ontological builds. Of course, with the uniqueness of his Frame, Avo just might find himself able to walk both paths.

As the initial rush of gluttony faded, confusion joined his elation.

Conflux was sparse of golems. Sparse of numerous resourceseven for a gutter crime Syndicate. Meanwhile, Mirrorhead had well over a dozen in his personal inventory.

Lessening the tonnage of blood, Avo felt the flow of time increase as Mirrorhead began his slow trek across the boardwalk. The water here bubbled and swirled with eye-catching oddness, the waves sloshing back and forth as if this placeor planewas tilting in random directions.

Details came through via Phys-Sim. Numbers and movement vectors charted impossible paths for baseline reality to manifest; the water was circling the island, the trajectories painting a new simulation into Avos mind.

Dimensionally, this location was more a sphere than a flat plane. In function it worked similarly to Zeins demiplane, wrapping in on itself. Only without any visible temporally altering miracles at play.

Slithering into Mirrorheads outer cognition again, Avo surveyed the island before him.

On first glance, it seemed real enough. The first thing to break the masquerade was the sun. A phantasmal, shape-shifting sun that went from being a perfectly normal imitation of the daystar, to the shape of a cartoonish duck.

Connected to a central locus buried beneath the sand, the star morphed several more times, each to the form of an animal. Nu-dog; nu-cat; hippo; duck. After repeating the sequence, it would default to being a normal sun again for a few moments and start over.

Through it all, there was a juvenile quality to its design, with the eyes of the animals far too big to be natural, and their cuteness exaggerated to a level of edible unpalatability.

Such was quite a featit took a lot to confuse a ghouls instincts so much it was no longer sure if it wanted to eat you.

Patchworks of tall ivory-white palm trees glittered with crystalline enamel under skies of false-blue. Beneath them, small mechanical crabs played jingling lullabies as they skittered to welcome Mirrorhead. Overhead, more traditional drones circled the sky, their bodies diamond shaped and armedwith single-shot gauss harpoons installed at their core and micro-missiles at the side.

Scrying at the mem-data they were transmitting, Avo felt his mind lurch to a halt. He had his Metamind play back a line of information.

A-12 MINIATURIZED NUCLEAR WARHEAD DETECTED

Well. Those were priority targets for spoofing. Zein had taught Avo about all the fun that came with nuclear explosives. Aside from diving into the subreality of wind using his Galeslither, his means of avoidance were few. Prevention was the better method anyway.

The sand of the island shone like gold. It might actually be gold. Before he could study it further, Mirrorhead halted at the edge of the walkway, gaze drifting past the neat arrangement of trees to stare at what looked to be a marble figurine of two individuals frozen in a moment of play.

The statues were human-sized, with the larger lifting the smaller beneath the arms in a motherly embrace. For seven heartbeats that followed, Mirrorhead just stared, his forlorn heart hollowing his mind of stray thought. Within the Metamind, ghosts caught fire, sparked by the intensity of his melancholy.

A response sang out from the ghosts tethered to Jhreds Metamind. A stored sequence of memories summoned wisping whorls of ethereal wind, coalescing ghosts activating phantom functionality.

The ghosts stretched and phantasmal representation of the current environment around them overlapped their present reality

At once, scenes from days of yonder youth played. Phantasmal coconuts swung where none remained in the present. The sands were fuller then, like an hourglass yet to be turned. Through the tallness of the trees, a series of echoing giggles pealed as a tiny Jhred Greatling toddled on the beach.

Behind him, a distorted shadow of a woman followed, the outline of her form a mass of hollow scar stuff on his memory. A simulation of the person themselves was missing. If these moments were to be put to paper, it would be as if someone had cut her loose from every page.

A mind-stinging noise tore through the air. The ghosts wailed, unable to load what was spoken.

Run, Jhred, the Guilder muttered, playing the role of his own mother. He didnt even seem to know what voice he wanted to fake. Im coming to get you.

Avo had to look away from the memory of the child. The plumpness of the flesh was phantasmal, but needled at his hunger all the same.

Again, Jhreds younger self laughed and hid behind the tree. If he was trying to hide, he was doing an exceptionally poor job at it. +Not gonna find me, mommy.+

Fascinating to see how the Greatlings intellect had barely developed since then. Predictably, the miasma of unsimulated paleness suddenly teleported next to Jhredwho squealed in delightand picked him up.

The pose in that instant was the same as that of the sculpture.

Digging through Jhreds memories, Avo discovered the man had the moment recreated via an architecture drone repurposed toward the task of marble sculpting. Countless hours of work went into digging up how tall the mother was, her apparel, and her general morphology.

What remained missing was her voice, her face, her touch, her personhood.

To be forcibly withheld from the mind of someone you loved was a punishment most severe, and a torment most sublime.

All the other Greatlings had the last traces of her pruned. Only Jhred held on, even to her absence.

Only Jhred.

The simulation froze. Looking between the boy, face bright with joy with his marble copy made of stone, and the blank look of defeat on Jhred Greatling, now grown, it seemed a degeneration had taken shape.

Instead of rising with his apotheosis, Jhred clung to the past, stuck to what was lost. He did not grow. He refused.

And so he will meet true death, the Woundshaper whispered. Gods ascend, and in ascension, widen. Bloom. Stillness is the path to fated demise. Know this, master. Know this.

Im not afraid, he said, lying. Stripped of his reflective shield, there was a softness to his baritone, like he hesitated to project force without the mask of his Mirrorhead identity protecting him. I do not feel anything for this. I do not Theres no more time. Abrel she broke my h-heart

The first sob escaped from him then. He wrapped his hands around himself as he heaved, trying to keep himself together. I wont I wont believe that she betrayed me. I cant. Shes family. Shes the only one that cared besides me The only one.

He turned to his mothers absence. Please dont hate her. Please. She held on for as long as she could. But it got too hard. Everyone was so cruel. The blankness of her memory self was too much, so he turned to the marble instead. I just want to know what your voice sounds like again. I just

Jhred Greatling sank down into the sand and wept. Deep as his voice was, he wept like a child, shaking with each coughing sob that escaped from him. He wept openly, kneeling by the statue as Avo watched.

Im sorry Im so sorry. I tried. I burned everything I had left. I triedtried so hard. I c-can do it. I can kill him for you. I can still make this hurt. Anger flared. And sizzled away into hissing nothingness as it came into contact with the ocean of his sorrow and was swallowed. Oh, gods

Peering at Jhred Greatlings weakness from the inside, a strange dread settled on Avo. A twist of something caught his attention, the shadow cast by the statues reaching out to him, forming the shape of a man in a long coat.

The scent of citrus stung at his memories. For a flickering instant, he saw him there: Walton stood, towering over the faceless form of Mirrorheads mother. Avo watched as his smiling father ran his fingertips down the missing face of the statue and then, using the same few fingers, repeated the action on his own skin.

The apparition vanished.

Avo shuddered.

Jhred sobbed, unaware of the second turmoil hatching inside him.

When Avo had been forced to null his fathers image, a break had opened within him.

Like no typical trauma, the hurt indelible and strange, it plagued the corners of Avos mind. And with each subsequent encounter, he felt himself being pushed further and further away.

Until now.

The epiphany came to him then. The death of idealization. This was freedom. Perhaps not absolute freedom, but freedom enough to decide his own path, his own destiny. In destroying the imagethe idealization of his fatherWalton had shattered one of the only fixations Avo had.

Unchained through mutilation, the path ahead belonged to Avo, and in beholding the nature of the Low Masters, the Hungers, control they had was atrophied at best. The wound had already been made on his spirit, and would not be struck twice to effect.

In destroying the anchor of his own perfection, his idealized self, Walton granted Avo a gift few would ever come to know.

Choice. Choice untethered. Choice unfettered.

And so, the ghoul stood while the Guilder succumbed.

Once again, Avo looked upon the shadow where he once saw his father. This time, there was no dread, only lightness. Only anticipation for what was to come.

Thank you, Avo said, offering words to someone long absent. But unlike Jhred Greatling, what dwelt in him was gratefulness and not pain.