Chapter 31-8 Shapeshifters (II)
History is a blade that cuts both ways, no matter what lies we fill our autobiographies with. No matter what adjustments are made to the texts, a tangible effect has already shaped the world, deformed it, molded it. And the thing about lies?
They clash, they separate, they fragment. Because lies are born of man and gods, and of our many liars, they have one commonality. They disagree, because the lie serves one ego.
I tell you this now, sleeper. Yes, you are already found, sleeper. One that does not even recognize themselves for what they are, because there is no possibility of you hiding from me. None.
I do not hate you, nor scorn you. The actions you performed while posing as one of my authorities were true, in a sense. The best lie—a grand deception against oneself, against one's own ego. But you already exist in incongruity with your backstory, and I see you.
Across all your iterations, your reverberations, are the paths that have led you to the present, and progress on to the future. I see you, and I know you, better than even the lie-makers that created you.
For the greatest mistake of all is not that you've lied. It's not even that you have the audacity to try and assassinate me. It's because you think that you can overcome me with my own tools.
History was never yours to wield, and I'm going to carve that into you as a lesson. Be sure to remind your masters of the Inner Council of this truth.
Tell them I have seen their mirage dancing in your history. Tell them I know what they are. Tell them that the plural of humanity is war, and their dreams are fated for tragedy.
-Veylis Avandaer
31-8
Shapeshifters (II)
—[Draus]—
“What is this...” Mondelles muttered.
“Your High Seraph popping in to say high through her newest puppet, I’m guessin,” Draus said.
“Not quite,” Uthred—or what appeared to be Uthred—didn’t rebuke her said. Instead, he smiled uncharacteristically, his irises changing color, a ripple of Soulfire spreading out from his being. The Laws of Ontological Symmetry resonated. Not just between Draus and Uthred, but Shotin as well. A surprised look on the Seeker’s face betrayed his surprise.
“What the fuck?” Shotin said, looking at the quivering radiance shrouding him.
“None of us are quite who we used to be,” Uthred continued. “Even now... I feel traits from the Dreamer bleeding into me... memories not my own. By a bifurcating threshold are me and him separated, but slowly, like will become like, and a new being will be born from our inevitable resurrection. This embracement will bear fruit, but it remains unclear who will become the master, and who will serve as slave.”
And then Uthred flinched. A struggle played across his face as his brows furrowed and sweat began to run down his brow. “You... promised... Let me—”
The rippling flames emanating from Uthred’s body vanished altogether. He staggered forward, nearly toppling over the chair he once said, but with a sudden snapping motion, he reached out for Vator.
Draus got to him first—seizing him by the throat before he could grab his youngest son. A vicious snarl sounded from the former Authority as he glared hate into Draus’ eyes. “Unhand me, you bi—”
Draus headbutted Uthred. Her helmet slammed hard against Uthred’s nose, and though a snort of blood followed, his bones didn’t break. The former Authority recovered near instantly as well, shifting back to into a fighting posture instead of succumbing to pain or startlement. “Stop! Enough! I’m not here for you!”
The Regular didn’t go rushing after him. She had plenty of guns aimed through over a hundred reflections in the room; if Uthred did anything stupid, she’d do something final. She considered using a Redaction Round on him as well, but decided against it. If it worked, it would see a shard of the Stillborn permanently lost, and if it didn’t, that would probably be because using a miracle of Chronology against Veylis was a stupid idea to begin with.
“Vator,” Uthred said, his voice cracking. In an instant, he went from violent and combative to miserable. He sagged, and as his weakness showed through, Draus saw an echo of Jhred—an older, stronger version of the broken boy who died in the Warrens—standing before her. “My son... my boy...”
At his words, Vator scurried forward next to Draus, a bright grin on his face, utterly unaffected by proceedings. “Father! It gladdens me that you are alive! For a moment I was worried that you were no more. Just a vessel for the High Seraph to use.”
Draus was surprised when the young Greatling went no further. He stayed beyond arm distance of his father and lingered close to her. Uthred, meanwhile, had no such inhibitions. Slowly, he staggered forward, reaching out to Vator.
“Close enough,” Draus said.
“No,” Uthred replied. “I am not... this is what I was promised. Do not deny me this.”
Let him approach, Ignorance said in the back of Draus’ mind. Not a trap. Just a reward. Not a lie.
Everything inside Draus screamed for her to just cut Uthred down—but that might also be all the leftover hate she had toward his wife. Once more, the Regular acted in spite of herself, granting her old enemy a show of mercy. “Fine. Don’t do nothin’ strange. I’ll see. I’ll know. I’ll put you down.”
Uthred ignored Draus all but collapsed against his son. The violence in his motions made both Shotin and Mondelles flinch. “I’m sorry,” Uthred said, sinking down against Vator. He pressed his head against Vator’s chest as the first sobs came. Mondelles’ face went white with disbelief and horror. Shotin and Draus shared a mutual look of discomfort. And they weren’t alone there: A genuine look of worry awaited Draus as she turned back to Vator, and found the boy looking blankly at her, seeking guidance.
“He’s not usually like this,” Vator said, sounding ever the child. He patted his father on the head as the man wept, and he looked around the room, a mixture of embarrassment and uncertainty guiding his actions. “Father. Father, please, I’m happy to see you too, but we have a name to uphold. We have decorum to maintain. You told me this, remember?”
“Love exists here,” the Lovebringer murmured inside Chambers. “Very unnatural, very inhuman love. But a kind of love nonetheless.”
+And we can pull on it if we need to?+ Chambers asked.
“Yes.”
+Alright. All I wanted to know.+
***
—[Draus]—
“I...” Uthred ran a palm across his face and sighed. “You were more than what we could have asked for, Vator. I just wish you were more...”
“Human?” Vator said, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Uthred admitted, ashamed. “I wish you were human. I wish Jhred didn’t have my sorrow. I wish I could have offered Abrel kindness instead of kindling for her rage.” He grimaced. “I was trying to make you more than me. Clean you all weakness.”
“And that was why you kept putting Jhred in the sensory deprivation box when he cried too much and didn’t retaliate when Hessia Anchor’s of House Anchor insulted Abrel using Jhred’s failings at Axtraxis, lured her into an ambushed, maimed, tortured, and blinded her? Left her tied to a post as a nu-dog after. Recorded it all as a vicarity and tried to distribute the memories among the student body?” Vator blinked after he asked the question. It was genuine curiosity when he spoke, not outrage or condemnation.
“Yes, I...” Uthred swallowed. “You... I never had to punish. Because you were made to be... to be perfectly loyal before everything. There was never a chance for you to...”
“But you never hurt me, father,” Vator grinned. “And I was allowed to be what little of myself exists! You and mother wished to make a champion, you say. One that can maintain a specific disposition perpetually, one that possess intellect beyond conventional bounds.” He held out his arms. “In that, you succeeded. And afterward, I sought what you couldn’t fill in me with my own expression. My own art. This is, after all, the way of things. Imperfection cannot create perfection. As it is true for you, so too is it true for me. But still we grope, yes? For that impossibility beyond us?” But the young Greatling turned his joy on his Heaven. “But not the gods. Portrait! Come! Say your greetings to my father. Come! Come!”
The Heaven didn’t respond. Instead, it fluttered overhead, coating the ceiling light, its scroll becoming a lampshade. “I refuse. I see you now, Vator Greatling. You are mutilated. Mutilated beyond recognition—even to yourself. There are things in you missing since before the ink of your creation kissed the page.” And a feeling of scorn flooded Draus’ Metamind. A thin beam of perception poured out from the Portrait down upon Uthred. “And you are vermin for the harm you’ve done. Against your own children, no less. Vermin. I have guarded families from sickness and injury, and I have witnessed cycles of families... cycles... you shame the position of patriarch. Shame!”
“Portrait,” Vator said, sounding aghast. He shifted back to his father with a queasy smile. “Apologies, they—”
“Are right,” Uthred said, staring blankly at the Heaven.
“Oh, you didn’t do so much harm, father,” Vator said, waving Uthred off. “Why, I made sure of it. We all do our deeds for our family.”
Uthred blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Why, I made sure Jhred’s suicides were all unsuccessful. I stitched his wrists and gave him a transfusion of blood after his first attempt—lowered the dose to ensure he survived his second. Left a mem-sim for him to play with when you left him sealed inside the deprivation room for a week that one time. And Abrel—well, after she recovered from her ordeal and learned a bit about not letting rage overcome her good sense, I finished things out.”
The Greatling patriarch’s eyes widened. “I... you... Hessia didn’t murder her twin brother... try to kill her mother...It was you?”
And Vator’s expression turned absolutely exuberant. “Not so, father! I might have broken into the asylum in the aftermath to record a torture vicarity for Abrel’s namesday, but the murders were all Hessia’s doing. Ah, House Anchor is not nearly the rival you think they were, father. So much unease beneath the surface. Well, incest more than unease.” Vator smacked his lips together. “It helps that both her and her brother were competing for their mother’s affection in ways that were suboptimal for family cohesion. Why, of all your flaws, you were not mentally and—before the rash—physically intimate with your own children.”
A series of choking noises came from Uthred. And it was Draus’ turn to mutter: “Jaus, what the fuck...” She knew Chivalrics were a fuckin’ mess, but the details just made everything uglier.
“Anyway. I sent Hessia a series of memories revealing her brother to be her mother’s favorite, and all I needed to do after that was just... remind her. From time to time. She did the rest.”
The surrealism of the scene only grew with how earnest Vator sounded. By the end, his hands were clasped behind his back and he was rocking back and forth on his feet like an excited schoolboy. For all the wretchedness that was Uthred Greatling, there was a person there. Someone that saw and understood right and wrong on a human level.
But across from him, Vator was at once innocent and impossibly cruel. And that made Draus understand him more than ever before. There was something in him that never was, just like the Portrait said. It was that something which made Reg a Reg, which was shared by Dice, that perfectly mutilated ego possessed only by a few.
But Vator took it a step further. It was like he conceptualized the horror that was his life through a twisted filter. And a boy he remained, his weight of his actions forever a lightness on his flexible conscience, the only sin displeasing his parents, his only tantrums the denial of his arms and pleasures.
And Draus saw. Vator wasn’t a monster. He was just an ego shaped to suffer the mortality of a perfect and selfish child.
Never could have chosen, Ignorance hissed mournful. Just like the blind can’t see.
“Anyhow,” Vator said, continuing on, seeing no issue about his family history. “You should really have this talk with Abrel when you meet with her again. I am sure she would appreciate this very, very much. Far more than I.”
A beat followed. Taking Vator’s nonchalance, Uthred’s expression broke apart with pain once more, and he covered his face to hide tears to come. The young Greatling winced. “Father? Did I say something wrong?” He looked at Draus with blank, childlike terror. “What did I do wrong?”
“It’s...” Draus shook her head at the madness taking place before her. “It ain’t your fault. Not really. Never was.”