The Conflagration is more than an “advanced trauma pattern.”
Voidwatch has hidden much from us–secrets near impossible to tease out with the deviance between our spines of power and “technology.” Yet, for all that they withhold, there are still things that leak. Expressions and functions of their devices become evident when they clash with the world.
Take their Ego-Screamers for instance. A beautiful piece of technology defiled by Highflame to feed their banal habits. From the samples we procured, its effects on the mind are… self-replicative on another level.
By converting a baseliner’s mind while being overwritten by the Ego-Screamer, we have managed to capture a semblance of the nano-machines in the Nether–though only a narrow facet of its full functionality, we assume.
Being a product of Voidwatch, the architecture of the construct is… vastly beyond our full understanding, even as an analogous construct expressed through the Nether. What’s more, it is highly volatile, and its delivery mechanisms are… limited, at best.
Conceptualize the weapon thusly: You are injecting a self-aware entity to destabilize another mind. It, however, is not human. It possesses no semblance of “Essence” from which we can compare. You also do not wield said weapon as it cannot be wielded, only transferred from point to point. If it comes into contact with your thoughts, your mind will be unmade all the same.
As such, requests for using such a construct require the highest levels of clearance provided only by an Elder or above, and even then it will require approval from the [redacted].
It is with relief that we managed to limit its effect parameters by conditioning a Conflagration-unit to the diet of specific, target-related memories, but do not take this for certain–the entity can and will devour you.
REPETITION FOR EMPHASIS
This is not something you can mold or direct. It hates you. It hates all things capable of thought, and it seeks to override your cognition and boil all semblance of thought away so it can finally die.
Moreover, the presence of this “pattern” must never be discovered by Voidwatch for the certain reprisals it will bring.
-Incubi Primer on the Conflagration Trauma-Pattern
12-10
Restoration (II)
“Th–the Stillborn can install Frames…” Kae muttered, eyes wide. Such wonder drove her words, even as a fugue of disbelief interrupted by bouts of confusion consumed her.
Kae shifted on the hard bench of the small cell, made smaller by Avo and Draus. Gathered in the testing cell, Draus detailed their mostly successful assassination of Mirrorhead followed by the utter Zein-induced chaos and ruination of Nu-Scarrowbur during the mad dash across Light’s End, the Agnos’ face was a constant flux between surprise and astonishment.
“And… and the Paladin–he just… just let you go?” Her frown deepened. She brushed the transparent half-veil covering half her face. “That… that shouldn’t happen. They-they have oaths. I don’t… they’re not supposed to do that… The Chief es-especially. Or at least they didn’t… didn’t used to.”
“Didn’t used to?” Avo asked.
She shook her head. “I think I–the Sage of… uh. I can’t remember. But… but I think I remember… remember Naeko. He was… he was nice. But tired. And sad…” She paused. “He shouldn’t have let you go.”
She already said that, but the repetition could just as well be due to emphasis as it could forgetfulness.
As her thoughtstuff shifted, so did the flames, swirling and dancing. Between the instances of memory reinstalled into her mind via her exocortex, he caught a glimpse of her active sequences coming alight. It was like gazing down at streets ablaze during a riot from on high, the damage inflamed and deep.
Failing to understand the nature of her affliction, to stabilize and remove it could very well worsen her mental crippling. Cold refreshing focus flowed through his veins as the weight of his task began to settle on his shoulders in full.
Whatever the Incubi had done to her was more adaptive than any other trauma pattern he had ever seen. But where they matched him in skill, they lacked so far in miracles and preparation.
All his Necrojacking “experience,” earned or instilled, bubbled in the back of his skull.
Walton had invested in him all he could. Given him the tools to wrestle with cognition, to understand any and every foe if he could only find the proper angles and memories. He had Chambers’ unique mental architecture. He had whatever history Draus shared with Kae to call upon. He had Denton and Cas for whatever they could provide.
All that remained was for him to study, design, and execute a solution for Kae’s release from torment.
In the end, the prize far outweighed the risk: A working Agnos. A trauma pattern he could turn against the Incubi themselves.
The tension behind his task sweetened. Yes. The promise of future pleasure prevailed over pressure.
He licked his fangs.
“Can start soon,” Avo said. “Begin initial dive and survey mind. Will begin by detonating thoughtwave. Will clean your surface thoughts. Still the burning for a moment. You will remember. And you will lose it again. Understand? Need to prepare yourself.”
Kae bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll be fine. I survived it before.” The uncertain quiver in her voice betrayed the weight of worry churning inside her, but that couldn’t be helped. Cleaning wounds stung, physical or mental, and if he wanted to return her to whatever wholeness was yet achievable, the odds were more hurt was to follow.
“I’ll be here with you if that matters for anythin’,” Draus said. She was leaning against the wall with her arms folded. “And if the rotlick here screws up, I can break his neck. You know. For encouragement.”
He bade his Echoheads chitter his ire at the Regular in his stead; his primary preoccupation now was the examination of Kae’s mind. All else could come later.
Extending filaments of blood out from his veins, he interfaced with the haemokinetic locus he constructed, hanging from the ceiling like a node on a chain.
When he sent the signal, it would detonate and everyone would lose track of their thoughts. The blast would loop through the glass via Draus’ Heaven and the other cells would be unaffected. Afterward, he would connect to the flowing circuits of blood leading to the floor below and link himself to much-needed mass for frame-jacking.
Then, using the vast amplification of his perceptive speed, he would begin his initial sweep through her mind to construct a general map of her trauma. Following the diagnosis with the next treatment steps.
If need be, he could also ignite Chambers’ mind using Kae’s ailment – study how the pattern interacted with the man’s “unique” mental structure. Worst came to worst for him, he could just kill him–
Avo paused. His thoughts snapped together like a shut book.
The Stillborn could graft people to Frames. A final solution dawned in his mind if everything collapsed: He could kill and burn Kae into a Frame using the one he took from the last Godclad he killed or take one from Essus or Chambers. Or maybe even Draus if that was what she wanted.
He had to remember that he was more than just a Necro now. He was a Godclad. And Godclads always had more options.
“Alright,” Kae said, swallowing. “I’m ready.”
“Synced about that,” Draus added. “We dive on you.”
Avo examined the Agnos’ mind once more before casting the epiphany that just occurred to him over to Draus.
She received his ideas with nary more than a curl of her lip, the response too broad for him to read. +Could work. Don’t think she wants that though. It’s an option we can keep in reserve in case you fuck it all up.+
+Why don’t you think she wants it?+ Avo asked.
+Agnosi got vows and binding stuff they’re supposed to commit to.+
+I see. Lingering professional entanglement instead of death wish. Have seen others get over that.+ He grinned at her. +All it took were a couple of assisted “suicides.”+
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Draus narrowed her eyes at him. +You know, I’m kinda wonderin’ why your pa decided on “half-strand” for your personality. He didn’t have other options? Guess the Low Master’s gotta go with what he knows.+
The beast twitched. That sparked enough anger in him to merit a low growl.
Kae leaned back and away, unsure what she did to provoke the ghoul into such a response.
+Needle me about my “death wish” again,+ Draus taunted. +Do it. See which of us happens to get bloody first.+
+Me,+ Avo didn’t even bother denying it. +But later. Later.+
+Yeah. Later. Kae now+. The Regular’s posture softened, and from her mind ebbed a faint note of approval. +You keep holding yourself together like that. That’ll be all the difference when the time comes.+
A genuine compliment from Draus – rarer than most Heavens. Avo offered an incomprehensible grunt.
“Going to start soon,” Avo said. “Going to make the locus above pulse five times. Detonation happens after that. Sit down. Be ready. Relax. If you can. Don’t struggle against intrusion.”
She nodded and did as he asked. He took one last look at her thoughtstuff before casting out a chain of ghosts binding him to his locus. The Thoughtwave Disruptor he sequenced within it swirled with dormant memories, but would only trigger when he demanded it.
So far, he hadn’t found the time to attune the various ghosts he modified. Another reason why he kept them separated from his Meta aside from the overwhelming mass. But where overcapacity was an issue for his mind, planted in the secondary loci, the sheer mass of ghosts provided a surfeit of usable phantasmics. His greatest limitations now were the stability of the local pockets of Nether more than any material lack.
Casting a signal into the locus, he directed phantoms to swell and contract five times and primed the thoughtwave to a memory trigger.
With that complete, he ceased all other operations and stilled his surface thoughts as best he could. The more one thought when a detonation went off, the more–
A overwhelming wave wrenched whatever Avo was considering out from the periphery of his Meta. To his side, Draus blinked as she pushed off the wall, her stance instinctively defaulting toward violence before the waters of thought began to run anew.
Kae, meanwhile, had taken the brunt of the blast with but a gasp. The cascade of phantasmal force plucked the very fire from her mind as her focus dissolved and her thoughts skipped.
In the absence of the Nether, Avo corrected the issue by expanding his Sanguinity. Threads of red trickled out from between his plates and orifices before breaking into motes and sprinkling the cell.
Dots of red brushed across Kae’s face while Draus opened the junction of glass behind him, allowing his sphere of influence to spread. Through the field projected by his Heaven, he guided his widening awareness down the halls and reached into the pool of blood he prepared for himself.
Time dilated in a nigh instant, and the firing of his Celerostylus only magnified the effect.
As the air stilled and the flow of ichor accelerated, he heard his Heavens whispering anew.
“Behold, mule. Behold the restoration of the architect! Soon, we will be made greater still–greater than we ever could have been in eons old. Be you not glad you are awake this moment? To taste such glory a meager messenger would have never realized.”
Ignoring the Woundshaper, the Galeslither found itself drawn to the ghosts dancing through the room. “The spirits alive… These facets of humanity’s thoughts, how did they become unmoored? How did any of this come to be.” A pause went between both its words and its thoughts. “How they travel across the vastness of a plain, such speed…”
More and more, the nature of the gods made themselves known to Avo. They were effable, yet not human. More rooted in fixed concept than the complex cocktail of feedback, memory, impulse, and rationality that scaffolded the mind of a person.
So far, the two fixated on things of their like and power, only regarding things beyond their scope with faint interest.
He wondered if there could be a way to instill something of a ghost into a god. To expand their thought parameters, if only externally.
The concept was a fleeting one as his full focus returned, taking hold to steel himself for his first dive into the Agnos’ mind.
INITIATING META-DIVE…
If there was one major point of convenience diving into Kae, it was that he didn’t need to hide his presence from her awareness. Such an allowance granted him the ability to move with greater agility through her memories and put his efforts toward combating her ailments.
Unfortunately, that was where the good ended.
The state of her mind was like standing in the aftermath of a firestorm.
As it seemed from the outside, her sequences were effectively incinerating themselves from within, each interconnected memory and sinew of jumping thought fed to the flame. He could feel a building weight entering her cognition, its sound like the rumbling of damaged pipes – a prelude to a reinstallation of a memory update.
The structure of her inner mind moved in flowing tatters. Gaps dotted solid artifacts and gulfs slashed of recollection. If the totality of Kae’s history could be recorded on a reel, then this was the aftermath scarred with soot and flame.
Her possession of the exocortex was the sole reason why she still bore any semblance of self-awareness. From all the damage present, she truly should remember nothing.
And through all this time, he never thought to ask the Agnos where she got the neuro-implant from. Or why.
Spreading the three thousand ghosts he commanded out wide through her mind like a net, he saved snapshots of her Metamind’s palace, and graphed a vague simulation of the constructs and memories that once stood.
From what he gathered, she once had wards that belonged to the Memguard series; she once had a vast archive of knowledge built in the heart of her mind, like a grand library hidden within the folds of one’s mindscape. Mottled husks of phantasmal substance decomposed, folded from the inflamed tissue of savaged sequences. They rose high and low unevenly, hinting at a capricious–or scattered pathway of thoughts.
A personal apocalypse had happened here. The devastation of brilliant mind through a weaponized phantasmal construct he didn’t fully grasp yet. But the devastation was incomplete, and from the horizon came healing waters injected from a pipeline of building static.
There was a metaphor here. A parallel between Kae and Idheim entire. Locals who dwelled burned their own homes in a way that was nigh-absolute–in a way that only they could. And by the grace of ancient cousins helping from the unfathomed darkness beyond, the end was held at bay, but not truly halted.
A battle remained.
At least this one Avo felt he had good odds of winning.
As he finished mapping out her general sequences, he considered leaving an Auto-Seance within her mind for easier access to her thoughts. Odds were it would just burn away and decompose like all the phantasmics she once had.
He decided to try it: he had the ghosts and sequences to spare, and it would be useful to see how the fire worked with something he was connected to.
Planting the Auto-Seance upon the tapestry of her mind was like rooting a communications tower in ash-choked soil. It took his Metamind nearly a full real-time second to locate a point in her mind stable enough to support such cognitive capacity, and it came as the flood coming from her undammed exocortex washed through her channels of thought, mending the sediment of her mind where it touched.
He decided to install the phantasmic just past where the static flowed, moving to greet the integers and crackling distortion of incomprehensible coldtech. All the while, he let his Whisper drift as he waited and watched for the fires to come, studying the scalded phantasmics she once had with the bulk of his suspicion.
His attention was in the wrong place.
The field of static didn’t pass through him.
It tore.
There was no warning–no note of alarm nor splash of perception when it came. Instead, fire exploded up from beneath each and every one of her sequences as the fabric of her stability began to burn, rising as screaming a scant microsecond after the exocortex fired.
Immediately, Avo felt something burrowing into him as well. It didn’t taste like fire, nor was there a heat to it. But it moved as if with a will of its own, grasping and grappling and clawing for anything within his mind that had purchase, trying to force itself into any memory as he felt his Quicksand crack.
And begin to boil.
Fire erupted around his outer layer of protection. Fire that started from inside a single sequence of memory and multiplied in almost each and every direction. Fire that screamed at him in a voice that was a chorus of tortured humanity.
This wasn’t just a ghost. It was too present, and the quality was too self-aware.
He realized then why he didn’t perceive it earlier; how her affliction seemed to come on so suddenly. It was of a dichotomous nature, capable of being solid and static both as it burned at her mind, and could nest in her exocortex.
But not destroy the memories there.
There was an emotional accompaniment to the howling pain. A want and a need to finally destroy this hell it was rooted in, to be free, to stop being self-aware.
It wanted to die. The entity wished itself dead, but so long as someone else knew of its existence, so long as it had rooting in cognitive architecture, its suffering remained.
His own mind whirled as a dull searing pain cooked him from the outside, the temperature cupping his thoughts spiking hot.
Without hesitation, he severed the ghosts he funneled into her mind as they were all burning, sequences coming alight like channels filled with napalm.
In less than a semi-second, Avo detached three-hundred and eighty-four ghosts, and left them to burn.
If he lingered any longer, even that would have been a paltry pittance for the true price demanded from his mind.
Snapping back into full consciousness, he felt his legs buckle but caught himself using his Echoheads before he could fall. Kae was crying out in pain, her nails digging into her own skull as she threw her head back, mouth open, veil fluttered.
Her organic eye glistened much like her false one as wrinkles of strain consumed her.
All the while, flames fissured out from her sequences like volcanic veins.
He needed to think. Review. But more than that, he needed a closer look at how the conflagration burned in real-time.
Severing himself from both canons and reflex, time settled as he grasped Kae by the skull, examining the burning halo around her with even greater interest than he saw before. He remembered not to squeeze in the last instant, and on his arm, he could feel the tightness of Draus’ grip.
“What? What’s wrong? What’d you see?” The Regular’s voice was hushed and harried. But she was of secondary note now.
As was Kae.
There was something else in the Agnos’ mind. Someone else. He could hear them screaming, fighting. Desperate to die. Desperate to starve.
Whatever she suffered was more than a simple trauma; more than a mem-con; more than a complex phantasmic.
And it had taken a bite out of him.
Now that was disquieting.
“What are you,” he whispered.