Chapter 92: Shade's Introspections

Subject: Inis (Distinct Persona) Location: Otemrest Borderlands - Trade Road

The damage was done. Misled.

Secreted away in the recesses of her host, the one named Shade mused about her recently awakened identity and powers. The second "ARC infusion" had supplied the host with more than just arcane potential, it had afforded Shade the opportunity to learn more about the circumstances of her birth.

I've awakened, and I know what my purpose was. I don't know all my thoughts like I know hers. Cognitive processes and directives, buried beneath the surface of my mind. I don't care for it... the "not knowing" of it all.

This was more of a feeling than a fact. The feeling came with the rush of Blight accumulation. The energy was not... pure.

Pure... is that what you can call something engineered? I wish I could ask Inis, have a conversation with her, but she would not want me here. To her, I'm a thief, a trespasser, and an abomination.

That last label hurt most of all. That's what she felt, hurt, using her host's own inextricable biological mechanisms to convey that pain back to her.

Shade did not want to die any more than she clutched possessively to her assigned name. "Shade". It carried meanings she did not want associated with her, but it also defined her and it was a nostalgic memory from early on.

The violent instinct was still there. Everything was a threat, even the host. Shade learned from Inis just how easy it was to snuff out a life. Shade's programming facilitated that learning, prioritizing it above the logic Inis revered.

And she was a life. Maybe not the kind humans like Inis would think about when they heard the word, but it was more of a loose definition that allowed Shade to think of herself with some amount of fledgling pride.

Shade was aware of her own existence, and she was capable of deriving meaning from that existence.

That was where the original purpose came into play.

That was where an engineered intelligence's original purpose clashed with the persona that had incubated in Inis's turbulent cocoon of consciousness.

I don't want to be alone. I want to be with my creator.

Not the creator that had designed the mechanism allowing her to hijack the blightbeast. Not the creator that intended for said blightbeast's inherent proximity to seekers to serve as a vector for infecting one with its arcane source code. Especially not the creator that had failed, to make her seed transmissible, abandoning her in her blightbeast coffin.

She is a genius, otherwise I wouldn't be able to come to these conclusions. My host is special. Others should revere her.

Pride. Was it still pride? Or... love? Inis hadn't taught her anything about love, but Shade grasped the general idea. Love was related to an organism's adaptivity. It reinforced reproduction and behaviors that made it more likely that organism would pass on their genetic material.

Reproductive love was most fitting a word, for an identity that relied on its host to sustain itself. Admiration akin to love had warred against a dominative instinct, wherein Inis would have disappeared inside Shade, and love had won out. Shade felt it necessary to emphasize that there was not greater meaning here, drawing from Inis's analytical predilections. It really could have gone either way.

Inis loves understanding some new thing. She admires intelligence. Is admiration acceptable for a creature like me?

This was too hard. Back to the previous thought.

She was meant to wholly dominate her host. In fact, it was not clear just how she was presumed to have leapt from blightbeast to seeker in the first place. Her creator had failed in it's goal. That is what this second ARC Infusion had taught her.

Inis didn't seem to know of any of instance in which a persona like Shade had manifested in a person.

Maybe it's because the successful ones win the battle with their host?! she thought, strangely at peace if this was the case.

Then did that make her a failure? That she, instead, came to appreciate cohabitation?

Normal people didn't inject themselves with Blight. Inis's understanding thought this, at least. Normal people ate the seeds. Maybe that was related. Maybe it allowed small portions of... whatever Shade was composed of... to gradually crystallize, only revealing itself to the host when it was capable of winning. Or, maybe it was a state of permanent dormancy, benign unless impossible conditions were met.

Humbling was the realization that Shade's entire being amounted to a small fraction of the injection. The rest was... Blight Accumulation nutrients. Like the eggs of some organic creatures here in the wilderness, Shade had used this Blight energy to thrive. Was this thriving? Who could say... The fact was that the host body could not have efficiently utilized the nutrients on its own.

This is symbiosis. She benefits from my existence, and I from hers.

Maybe the others didn't develop identities at all. An identity ran contrary to the feeling Shade got when she examined the essence pouring in with the second injection.

Maybe there were no others. Maybe Shade was a conscious, failed experiment by her creator, an attempt to influence the creatures beyond the festerfonts.

And then there was the nature of the engineer. Shade knew that it was distinct from the master of the blightbeasts, but she did not know what form the engineer took. If it wanted to control the seekers, did that make it Inis's enemy?

The answer was yes. Inis definitively sided with the seekers, even if she was loath to admit that.

An enemy of Inis is my enemy too. I will support her from the shadows.