Chapter 13-9 The Enemies of My Enemy (II)

Chapter 13-9 The Enemies of My Enemy (II)

+Why is my mind still whole? I know what you are, Priest. Mercy is not in your nature. Take your retribution. Strip me of my personhood. I do not fear you. I do not fear this. The great work will continue+

+Hold on, Im not here for that. Ive seen your measure too, you know. Youre not a very good person, Mwaba, but you are loyalGuild before life and all that. A real good Massist. Well, I got something to tell you that might offend those sensibilities. But Ill trade that warning for something.+

+...Youre mad. You you kill my personal guard, you breach the walls of my mind, and now you you wish to strike a bargain?+

+Yes. Now, hold on: You havent heard my pitchThe Saintists have something that can cripple you Godclads entirely. Your Heavens. You will be very concerned when you hear this+

+Do not mock me. You come into my+ [TRANSFERRING MEM-DATA] +Oh oh, gods.+

+I know. I dont want this. And neither do you.+

+You could have created this as a rusea deception. No Agnos would accept such a commissionit is against the Articles!+

+Then follow the leads I gave you. Send cells to check. I dont want to be right about this, but I am. So face it. And yeah, I am manipulating you, but Im not lying. Sorry, Mwaba. Not exactly my dream either. +

+Do not use his words, slave+Ñ00v€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.

+Apologies to Jaus. Now, I have more concise details on the whos, whats, wheres, and whens, but I need something from you first.+

+What What do you want in return? If this is trueif you have more to oh, gods.+

+I understand that Ori-Thaum managed to sequence a mostly stable ego construct. I want to know how. In detail. A little in-house knowledge for salvation. Im giving you a very good arrangement+

-Elder DRongo and Walton (The Famine of Defiance)

13-9

The Enemies of My Enemy (II)

An uncharacteristic gasp of confusion came from Denton and Avo felt his paranoia spike.

+Another?+ Avo asked her. From the spillover thoughts she leaked, he already knew he wasnt going to be getting an answer, but he had to ask. Simultaneously, his Whisper was accelerating across the crevices of DRongos memories.

He remembered what happened at Ox-Three with the Low Masters. He remembered how they almost entrapped him in that neighborhood of half-nulled minds. He remembered the ethereal weight of the Hungers and the countless multitudes of his fathers forks.

Cords of tension drew taut in his mind as he primed Secondhand Fatality for delivery, feeling the ghosts writhing upon the tip of his Ghostjack as he swept his perception across all the surrounding sequences.

Fast did self-perception shift in the fathoms of the Nether. Hours prior, he was an apex predator hidden within the flesh of memories unnoticed, spreading his touch like a plague.

Now, he cast his ghosts out with tentative apprehension, feeling for the fangs of hunters unseen, trying to guess if he lingered between the jaws of a trap.

+I dont know anything about this,+ Denton said frankly. Directing her own Ghostjack she used him as a conduit. He scanned her trauma-pattern as the chain emerged from the obfuscating veil that was her thoughtstuff and slid through him like a conduit. He found it an instrument of feeble harm compared to the ego-breaking ruination which he bore.

Avo took them within the panoply of over a thousand exquisite phantasmics forming a serried crown-shaped city at the core of DRongos mind. He watched as her sequences slid over one another, his ghosts casting light on their mem-data and artifacts while weaving shapes from scenes in motion and comparing wavelengths of emotion.

Denton tried to assist him but she wasted effort against blockades of intense emotion and high-capacity memories while he compiled and cleared recollections by the measure of hours and days.

Her lacking efficiencyportrayed the depths of her skill; Denton was a middling necro at best, but her worth was not constrained by her limitations of Necrotheurgy. The impenetrability of her mind itself painted her presence with merit. If they were to be beset upon, such an attribute would preserve her security far longer than her lacking abilities.

He considered fleeing then, but decided against it. He had escaped from the Low Masters before, and of the present, they all needed details and answers only the Elder could provide, and the opportunity provided by her vulnerability would not come easy again.

With the only consequence being mind-deaths that were curable through resurrection, they held to the course.

DRongo spoke again, her voice lit with heavy derision and scorn, cast from a clear throat strengthened by years of oration though high in note and soft in tone. +Why so quiet now, Priest of Defiance? You had the bigger tongue when last you came. Does something trouble you? Have you been consumed by shame or failureunable to use my gift to create the perfect mind you so desired?+

Again, ignorance rang like a hollow bell from the core of Dentons mind, but he found his orientation cured, if but slightly.

Defiance. Elder DRongo thought he was Walton. Such an outcome felt as if a rhyme, for though it was the second time another had assumed him to be his father, it again served his ends to maintain the facade.

As if he were to accentuate her words, he felt groping tendrils sprout from the borders of his sanguinity before he curtailed their advance.

No, Avo said. We experiment later.

A faint pulse of acquiescent disappointment followed. So be it.

The instances of his existence stretched as haemokinetic cords fused into place between his ceramite-plated flesh and the pool on the four-level from ebbing particulates dancing through the air.

Around him, the winds murmured with a laughing neigh. It is not so freeing to be rooted in anothers will sister. You have my empathy.

The Woundshaper coiled inward like a compressed spring. And you will see the skies clenched in iron and blood if you persist in this mockery, mule. What pattern did you sup from to find such steel in your words? Do you wish to imitate the domains of a proper god now?

I only want to watch a fallen goddess spit hollow appreciations to the tyrant that encompasses her, deluding herself into thinking they are of a union, of a league.

The Heaven of Blood responded by constructing a blood-made puppet of the Galeslither and a strangely underdressed man and proceeded to mime an act that would undoubtedly trigger an outbreak in the real.

A low chuff of disdain entered the Galeslithers response. Now I see the caliber of your sacrificessavages and brutes all.

The argument escalated from there. Avo gritted his focus and turned his attention to scanning through DRongos intelligence. Upon sinking a second stream of ghosts into his new locus, he found her phantasmal carriers surprisingly bare of defense and offering little but pure and unsequenced memories.

He made a few major adjustments to the structures of her ghosts, and when no hidden artifacts or data was exposed, he wondered if she truly surrendered to him because of acceptant futility or if there was a greater game at play here.

Apprehensively, he dissolved his cord, and time resumed its pace. With a thought, he cast the details of her scry over to Dentonand kept the information limited this time.

+No protections,+ he responded. +No encryptions either. Very compliant.+

A spike whipped the yolk of her thoughts high. +Speak what you have to say and lets be finished. Push harder, and Ill see myself nulled. Youre vermin, priest. Everything you are, everything you do, everything you have made, are making, and will make is an insult to all that was sacrificed and the deeds of Jaus. You piercing my mind like this? Shameful. But I will not be toyed with.+

There was no lie in her words. Her threat of suicide wasnt idle speech but a promise.

The beast cackled beneath his skin, whispering at him from the basest parts of his mind, wondering how many indignities it would take for her to solve her own equation, and if such harm could be carried over to Abrel to further develop the cocktail of torment that was her mind.

Avo shook himself free. For the first time in what felt like a lasting eternity, he triggered a long-dormant phantasmic nested in his own mind and reinforced it with a deposit of ghosts.

The Morality-Injector plunged down into the ethereal fabric of his manifested cognition and both his Metamind and the physical organ it was anchored to shuddered. Shame, disgust, and self-revilement blasted down against the screaming beast as each of its impulses rose and shattered against an equal but opposite counter emotion.

He thought the abandonment of the phantasmic after his nulling of Waltons node in the Deep Bazaar an act of self-emancipation. If so, then this was an expression of enforced discipline.

The tinted instincts pulling him toward brutality and violence softened. With amplified clarity, he spoke to DRongo anew.

+Im sorry,+ he began. +I didnt meant to insult you. It was just astonishment. Can you do me a favor?+

The Elder slowed in thought as she considered his words. +Speak.+

+I want to hear from you our arrangements. What I had you dowhat you did to Kae Kusanade and what you know about Project Godshaper. I want to you tell me why you felt compelled to do all these things, and I want you to say them in your own words. I need data filtered through your cognition to compare with the memories you gave.+

Her face tightened into an uncertain sneer. +Is this a trick?+

+Yes,+ he admitted, speaking while cycling old memories of Walton through his mind to refresh himself on how the man acted. Lessons on Necrotheurgy mixed with lessons about the city and life in general. He had no idea to know how much of this was real, but to uncover the acts of his father and why the Ori were so willing to attack Kae, the memories served as guidance and fuel both.

+Start with Godshaper,+ he prompted. +I want to know why it mattered so much to you. Ignore what I told you before. Just give the details over to me from your understanding.+

A long pause followed. DRongo swallowed.

+You breached my mind nearly a year ago. You breached my mind and showed me such terrible things.+

+Tell me what I showed you.+

+Godshaper,+ she answered. +You showed me how Highflame was going to use the Rash to eradicate us by altering its lore. And you showed me the one who was going to help them make it all possibleKae Kusanade.+

And just as she finished that word, Kae cleared her Metamind and hissed out a seething thought. +You lying, murderous fucking sow! I plannedI was trying to heal the Heaven!+