Talia lay awake in her perfectly soft, perfectly white sheets, staring up at the perfectly smooth ceiling. The huge, sprawling bay windows had tinted themselves when she’d turned the lights out, leaving her in pitch darkness. Somehow, the building still allowed for a light breeze that whistled through the room softly, like a lullaby.
Sleep, for obvious reasons, eluded her.
Her conversation with Isha had lasted hours.
Days, technically, with how fast the sun rises and sets in this place.
Like it had been all day, the stray train of thought tried to drag her into its own vortex of confusion and questions. Talia shook it off like a bad case of fleas, returning to the glaring wyrm in the room.
The end of the world.
Isha’s story had come out haltingly, spilling out in skips and stutters as Talia ruthlessly indulged her curiosity or as the Ancient succumbed to surprisingly frequent pauses. Old wounds not yet closed.
Luckily, the gist of the story was fairly simple.
They’d been overrun.
The Scream had been, as Isha told it, a concerted assault on everything that kept their society running. First, their primary and secondary psi-link amplifiers as well as their crescian silk-based prototypes had fallen to corruption. Some kind of floating home in the sky had fallen from the heavens, its means of flight crippled, which apparently made things worse. Then they’d lost control of their servitors, the odd, many appendaged constructs like the one that had saved Talia. All while simultaneously losing all but the barest access to many of their numerous arcanics.
As if that wasn’t enough, a tenth of the population had died simply from the psionic onslaught. A full quarter of those that remained, some millions of sapients, had succumbed to the corruption of the amplifiers.
The tiny nanocytes —the word still tasted odd in Talia’s thoughts, a side-effect of the translation spell and the sheer unfamiliarity of the concept— within the unlucky wards had mutated rapidly, falling under daemon influence. The result sounded and looked a lot like the Abberant Talia had fought within and on her way to Karzurkul.
Only, to hear Isha tell it, the original plague had been more deadly by orders of magnitude. More…cohesive than the ravenous, maddened swarm Talia had witnessed thus far. A true army. A tide that had fallen on the inhabitants of the Surface with the inevitability of a quake.
And that, apparently, hadn’t been the worst of it.
The worst came once Isha and her brethren finally destroyed the amplifiers. When those fell, the inavarian Ancients had been cut off from much of their technology. What Isha called Imperial Blackout Protocol. The details were still fuzzy to Talia, but apparently, they’d been limited to the bare essentials of what they were truly capable of.
Whatever that means.
According to the horned woman, who spoke of the protocol in the most scathing of tones, speckled with unintelligible curses, Imperial Blackout had been developed after their home world fell, to prevent such mass acts of destruction from reoccurring.
“The paranoid, delusional decisions of scared men and women who thought it would be better to doom an entire world rather than let it try to save itself,” Isha had raged.
Regardless of how it’d happened, the Ancients had been pressed into a losing battle. They’d forced most of the survivor’s nanocytes into dormancy —a state where they would work only to preserve the lives of their hosts, and little more— in the hopes of cutting off the tide at the root.
Their success only ended up crippling them as the fighters under their care suddenly found their abilities vastly diminished.
In the face of mounting tragedy and the inevitable end, the decision had been made to retreat to the dwarven cities deep underground, sealing the exits behind them until help could arrive.
Then, to truly seal the deal, the Ancients realized that they too, had been corrupted. A more insidious disease, more subtle than what had ravaged their charges, but no less deadly for it. Only Isha and one other of her fellows had been spared through sheer circumstance. The rest had been doomed to die if help did not arrive.
Funny to think that for all their power, they probably felt the same way I did when I discovered I was a mage. Alive one minute, walking corpse the next.
Talia grimaced, flipping aside the sheets and stalking out of her room onto the balcony. The pale glow of three green moons limned roiling, psychedelic clouds beyond the railing where they ran up against the invisible shield.
They tried their best…
And yet the thought brought no comfort, only vague disquiet. Anger without direction.
Talia sighed.
Look at you, Tals, getting all worked up about shit that happened a few thousand years ago. Way to tackle the manageable problems.
“Is something the matter, Ward Vestal-Angrim?” a poised and stately voice asked from behind her.
“Talia. It’s just Talia,” she corrected without thinking.
“As you wish, Ward Talia.”
Talia frowned as she registered whom she was speaking to, withdrawing from her thoughts and turning to face the faceless man.
Adjutant, not man.
Some kind of amalgamation of altered biology, arcanistry and twisted Anima all held together by concepts the Blackout Protocol prevented Isha from properly communicating.
Possibly sentient, but forbidden from true sapience.
Apparently. If it wasn’t for the lack of a face, I don’t think I’d have known the difference.
Talia looked the eerily lifelike ‘avatar’ up and down, a slight shiver going down her spine as her subconscious identified something about him —it— that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Something unsettling. An uncanny, overly perfect…ness.
Or maybe a face would’ve made more obvious now that I think about it.
“Er— can I help…you?” Talia hazarded.
The adjutant’s body language did not change in the slightest —yet another thing that was off about it when you looked too closely.
“On the contrary, Ward Talia, I simply wished to inquire if all was well,” Byron answered, “As the academician is otherwise indisposed, I thought I would offer myself as a sympathetic ear.”
Talia stared at the thing, not quite sure where she was supposed to look. In the end, she settled on the place where its nose should have been, focusing her narrowed gaze on one point.
“Um…why?”
“Studies have shown that socially inclined sapient species perform better when in groups, especially when said groups are attentive to their needs. My predictive models of you, as well as the current scans of your Anima revealed behaviour and cognition patterns in line with your being in need of such attention. As this facility’s sole patient and only biologically active occupant, it bears upon all of its staff, of which I am a part, to ensure that those needs are met. Have I misjudged, Ward Talia?”
Talia blinked.
“Err—No, it’s just…Wow. That was a lot.”
“My apologies, Ward Talia. Would you like me to repeat myself?”
“Uh, no no. I get it, uh— Err… Thank you?”
“Of course, Ward Talia.”
Talia began to fidget as the silence that followed the adjutant’s statement pressed in on them. If the…entity was at all bothered by it, she couldn’t tell.
“If I might make a suggestion, Ward Talia, studies have shown that in species disposed to syntactic language, the vocalization of preoccupying thoughts can ease the process of overcoming cognitive hurdles,” Byron finally prompted.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It took Talia a moment to process what the adjutant was actually saying, but when she did, she rolled her eyes.
“Right, talking about my problems. I guess I’m just…struggling to assimilate it all? Might not be the right word, but it’s a lot to take in. But I think mostly, it’s just that small part of me that still wonders ‘Why me?’ You know? Like why do I get to know all of this? Hells, how did we even forget it in the first place?”
Talia leaned against the railing of the balcony with her head against the smooth finish of her prosthetic arm and stared out across the horizon. Fluffy pink clouds puffed and swirled, a memory of a world millions upon millions of kilometres away from her actual location.
One that might not even exist anymore.
“Unfortunately, Ward Talia, I am unaware of the circumstances outside of the walls of this facility, beyond what you reported to Academician Ma’Ellat. If you would like, I can attempt to model a prediction, however, with such limited information, the accuracy of such a model would be dubious at best.”
Talia chuckled with a sigh.
“No, that’s alright. I’m just…hoping I live up, I guess. Complaining about nothing and—ugh. Just wondering why it has to be me. I know it’s selfish. Especially with the big game I was talking earlier.”
“I fail to see why you could not enlist the aid of other locals in your efforts to safeguard your collective species, Ward Talia. In fact, logic would dictate that sharing the burden with others should—”
Talia laughed, turning around and leaning back against the railing, arms hooked around the smooth marble bars.
“You know, I’m starting to see why Isha was interrupting you so much before,” she mused.
The adjutant’s voice petered out, its head cocking to the side in the first sign of sapient body language she’d seen from him.
“I am pleased that my abuse at the hands of Academician Ma’Ellat brings you such joy, Ward Talia.”
Talia stared at the adjutant, parsing the odd inflection it’d adopted.
“Was that a joke?
“The academician has spent numerous hours skirting the restrictions around adjutant personality profiles. I am some of her best work,” Byron responded flatly.
“Humble, too,” Talia quipped, her expression sobering soon after.
She leaned her head back, pressing it up against the invisible shield that held back the clouds. It pushed against her gently, silently informing her that she was doing something ill-advised. Above her, the skies got brighter as the green sun crested the horizon once more, trapped in its infinite cycle.
“Do you think I can do it?” Talia whispered, not truly expecting an answer.
“I’m afraid I’m unsure what you are referring to, Ward Talia.”
“Whatever she has planned for me. You don’t have to tell me what it is, just— do you think I can do it?”
Talia watched the sky get brighter and brighter as viridian rays sprung across the air above her.
“I believe you are asking the wrong question, Ward Talia.”
Talia frowned, swinging her head back down to look at the adjutant.
“Oh yeah? What should I be asking then?”
If a blank slab of smooth skin could smile, Talia suspected that’s what Byron was doing.
“The true question, Ward Talia, is will you be able to do it? And the answer to that query is a nearly definitive ‘yes’. For even if you are lacking now, Academician Ma’Ellat is not known for her loose standards, nor, as a matter of fact, is she known for her strict adherence to protocol. You will understand when your training begins tomorrow.”
Talia nodded slowly, throwing one last look at the now daylit sky, muttering to herself.
“Not sure I like the sound of ‘nearly definitive’, but I’ll take it,” she decided, heading back into her room and throwing Byron one last look, “Err— I know you’re not, uh, a person and all that, but…thanks. I think that helped.”
The adjutant simply inclined his head.
Talia stopped short in the doorway as a series of memories returned to her as if seen through blurry lenses through a fog of noxious gas. The associated pain was gone, all the panic and fear and powerless anger, but the drive remained.
“Byron?” she asked without turning around.
“Yes, Ward Talia?”
“Isha’s training…Will it make me powerful? I mean I kind of got the sense from what she told me about but…”
Talia shrugged tersely surprised at how potent the drive toward power was.
The adjutant took a moment to respond, thinking it over, or whatever it was adjutants did in lieu of thinking.
“I believe by most metrics you would be familiar with, Academician Ma’Ellat’s plans fit that description.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“Indeed, Ward Talia.”
Talia nodded slowly, slipping into her room without a sound.
Sleep came easily after that.
Isha’s projected form of hardened light cast the derelict ruin of her lab in a mauve glare. She sat cross-legged in on an invisible chair above Talia’s medical pod, the runed glass composite silvered to hide what lay within.
The inavarian academician-archon did not turn when Byron’s avatar reappeared in its dock. Without shifting her gaze from the blur of information projected on the screen in front of her, she called back to the adjutant.
“Is the child alright?”
“Ward Talia’s psychological condition continues to remain stable, academician. I believe she was simply struggling with her place in the events to come, in light of what she learned of her people’s past.”
“A simple ‘yes’, would have sufficed, Byron,” Isha chuffed distractedly.
“Of course, academician. If I may ask, is there a reason you have withdrawn yourself from the liminal? You should know that—”
“Hush, Byron, I’m focusing.”
A diagram of Talia’s body flickered on her screen, multiple locations flaring darker than others, seemingly at random. The worst problem areas were centred around the girl’s arca reservoir and her meridian channels. If that were it, Isha would have declared it damage from focal disintegration and moved on with a treatment, but the…infection was also ravaging much of the poor girl’s immune system, her liver, and the specialized nodules in her bones designed to refresh her nanocyte levels. The latter, in fact, arguably looked worse than the clotted, almost black-purple around her meridians.
“It makes no sense…” Isha muttered, “Why in the world would she be rejecting the OSSN? It was pure, primed for assimilation. Unless…Byron?”
“Yes, academician?”
“Did you ever figure out how she knew how to get here? She mentioned an odd dream and a voic—”
Isha froze, her avatar going inhumanly still as a stray thought wormed its way into her head.
“…Byron?”
“Shall I disregard your prior query, academician?”
“Run an Anima scan on the girl, filtering her native Anima out.”
“At once, academician.”
Every second Isha spent outside the liminal was a second she could have been using to prepare the girl for what needed to be done.
This is worth it. I’ll have Byron set up a lab facility in the liminal and act as a proxy for me after this.
Luckily, her lack of a biological body had its uses, allowing her already prodigious mind to surpass the limits of thermodynamics and flesh. Time wouldn’t pass as slowly as it did in the other space, but her thoughts and actions were all accelerated enough to make little difference.
Silver linings and all that.
The Ancient did not fidget or stir as the adjutant stole much of that very same brainpower from her, siphoning away her silver lining temporarily to double-check a hunch. If she was right—
“Academician.”
Isha knew her own adjutant constructs well enough to recognize the tone Byron had adopted. After all, she’d created the profile herself.
“That bad, Byron?”
“I am unsure, academician.”
Isha sighed, dragging a screen from nothing with a swipe of two fingers and interposing it in front of the diagram of Talia. As she read, a singular eyebrow slowly cocked itself, eventually joined by the second a moment later. Finally, she got to Byron’s conclusion, the words flashing an urgent red, she sat back in her invisible chair.
“Huh.”
“Academician, I must warn you that according to the Sap—”
“Byron, be a dear and archive our conversation since you returned from the liminal, including all projections, models, and calculations you ran thereafter.”
<
The adjutant’s avatar flickered into etherealness, limbs distorting in awkward angles as it complied. When the flickering stopped, it went through the robotic motions of smoothing out its ‘wrinkled’ clothing, turning to address its master.
“My apologies, academician, it seems our conversation has been archived. Would you like me to restore—”
“That won’t be necessary, Byron, thank you. Is my personal terminal still functional?” Isha said, bulldozing over the adjutant’s words with practiced annoyance. The Ancient’s avatar flickered through the rows of derelict machinery and deadened runescript, throwing up dust in random puffs before alighting in her personal office space a split second later.
“Outside scans seem to indicate so, academician, though I must note that the existence of a conceptually encrypted device with no local network connection in a secure facility is a protocol violation. House Scylla Auguries and Imperial Purg—”
“Hush, Byron, I know,” Isha said softly, “If they want to show up and reprimand me, well… At this point I’d take a pompous, protocol-obsessed purgator from House Atav any day. The data printer is operational then, I presume?”
“Yes, academician, however—”
“Enough, Byron, answer only direct queries until otherwise instructed, please.”
“As you wish, academician.”
“Adjutant, archive all conversations since the last archive point, then forward all archived data to my data printer.”
<
Isha waited for Byron’s avatar to stop flickering, taping a translucent finger against a slim device with an ovoid hole in the centre, riddled with runes. It sat on her old desk, unused for millennia, but some things never broke, and data printers were one of them.
An arca channel from Talia’s pod lit up in soft violet light, siphoning the vital energy from Isha’s only current source of it in order to bring her workstation to life.
When the data printer’s convenient slot filled with a clink, Isha plucked the data crystal up, holding it to her eye. If the Ancient had still had flesh to feel weight with, she’d have perhaps remarked just how light the small oval gem was, or how it was slightly warm to the touch.
As an engram, she felt none of those things. Instead, a vague sense of excitement filled her, at the mystery the shard represent. The impossible danger.
The impossible opportunity.
With a barely contained grin, Isha opened the case that held her personal terminal’s internal runescript, slotting in the crystal with its many brethren. The newest prize in her collection.
Fucking Atavs and their paranoia.
“Will there be anything else, academician?”
“Yes, Byron. Please copy yourself to a new personality profile. Designation three-four-two C.”
<
Isha watched morosely as the current version of Byron flickered once more.
<
“Adjutant, delete all data under profile designation three-four-two B, and load profile three-four-two C.”
<
Byron’s avatar turned to look at her with its faceless head.
“Goodbye, academician. It has been a pleasure.”
“It always is, old friend.”
Isha allowed her cognition to be sped up as the avatar faded from view and the next version of Byron entered the stage.
I’ll give House Atav one thing. Humanizing these things further would make this hurt much more. Oh, the irony.
“Ahem, my deepest apologies, academician,” Byron coughed, “I’m not certain what came over me. It seems I’ve lost quite a bit of time.”
Isha only smiled sadly.
“Send me back into the liminal, Byron, it’s time to see what I have to work with.”
And what I can shape her into, with a bit of luck and elbow grease.