+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, I’m not here for that. I’ve seen your measure too, you know. You’re not a very good person, Mwaba, but you are loyal–Guild before life and all that. A real good Massist. Well, I got something to tell you that might offend those sensibilities. But I’ll trade that warning for something.+
+...You’re 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 haven’t heard my pitch–The 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 don’t want this. And neither do you.+
+You could have… created this… as a ruse–a deception. No Agnos would accept such a commission–it is against the Articles!+
+Then follow the leads I gave you. Send cells to check. I don’t want to be right about this, but I am. So face it. And yeah, I am manipulating you, but I’m not lying. Sorry, Mwaba. Not exactly my dream either. +
+Do not use his words, slave…+
+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 true–if 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. I’m giving you a very good arrangement…+
-Elder D’Rongo 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 wasn’t going to be getting an answer, but he had to ask. Simultaneously, his Whisper was accelerating across the crevices of D’Rongo’s 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 father’s 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 don’t 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 D’Rongo’s 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 efficiency portrayed 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.
D’Rongo 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 failure–unable to use my gift to create the perfect mind you so desired?+
Again, ignorance rang like a hollow bell from the core of Denton’s mind, but he found his orientation cured, if but slightly.
Defiance. Elder D’Rongo 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.
More to his attention was the perfect mind she mentioned. Intuition told Avo it had something to do with him, for what else did Walton sacrifice his lives and efforts for? For who else did he leave what remained of his accumulated resources?
Drawing mem-data from her sequences, Avo constructed a replica of her facial features. The dimensions of D’Rongo’s skull resembled that of a tear-drop, and her eyes and lips flicked upward, her brows and hair sharpened. Her skin bore a more light hue than most Ori, making her seem more beige than olive, and her hair glinted auburn at the tips. Another intake of data told him these were all ancestral features she inherited and augmented instead of aesthetic modifications installed post-birth.
That, combined with her flat emotional affect and humming scorn told him threats and phantasmally-inflicted harm held no sway over her will. He could twist her. He could break her. He could even warp her mind until nothing of her current self remained.
But as she was now, Mwaba D’Rongo was a pillar within, if not a pillar without, undaunted by unspoken threats and uninflicted harm.
+There are several things I want to talk about–+ he began.
+More schemes, priest?+ She said, cutting his thoughts off with her own. With words cut out with rapier-sharp precision, the ghosts carrying them bubbling with hatred. +You are the one who pointed me to the Agnos and her team–gave me the memories to ensure her capture was made simple. Why these questions? You already know what I did–you know better than I! Is this just to taunt me now? Is that what this is?+
With each word, Avo felt Walton’s culpability grow and the path to the conspiracy surrounding Project Godshaper narrow.
A building tensity followed Denton’s thoughts. +I didn’t know he was the one who–these are new details. Let me talk to her–+
+No,+ Avo said. +You help. You advise. I talk. Don’t know things about Walton. Didn’t know he was called Defiance. I talk. Not letting our avatars leak over anyway. Can keep things flexible if we need to.+
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
And she responded with a cast of quick acceptance. No arguments. No debate. Valerie Denton wasn’t much a Necro, but with each passing interaction, he found himself evermore certain she was quite the accomplished fixer.
+New details have transpired,+ Avo said. +Changes. I need to see if you’re up to date. Compare memories.+
+Break up your words more,+ Denton said. +You sound too much like yourself.+
He growled in annoyance. She didn’t respond. Didn’t matter–she was right.
As he was about to continue, he felt Kae’s Meta connect to his and he passed a packet of mem-data over to her ghosts.
Just then, a new chain of ghosts connected to Avo, and a string of data flowing across his cog-feed told him Kae was entering the dive with them. She rode forth on waves of gut-shredding anxiety as her thoughtstuff dripped leaking litanies of self-assurance over into his inner mind. +Okay… okay. I can do this. Come on, Kae. We survived–we lived through–+
He cast a package of mem-data bearing all she needed to know thus far, but didn’t expect her to crash against his ghosts with a choking halt, lurching to a stop as her mind overflowed with details from his. Instantly, he felt the weight of her focus dissipate.
+Cognitive overload,+ Denton said, her voice trailing off with a hint of a sigh. +You keep talking. I’m going to help her. The data’s filling her mind.+
He offered her a single grunt before expanding his wavelength to encompass D’Rongo again. Kae would survive. And if she didn’t, she would resurrect. Among the greatest virtues of being a Godclads was the impermanence of harm.
+The Paladins… know about your involvement,+ Avo said, trying to work a punctuated pause between the cadence of his speech. It felt unnatural to his mind. Hard, like dragging his instincts against gravel. He kept trying. +Arrested you because the information was leaked. I want to know–+
+If I mentioned you?+ D’Rongo replied, an indignant scoff forming the end of her sentence. +And how would that serve? You are a worm, and each time we sever you, the pieces grow. Only fire can cure your like.+ His simulation of her face bore a smile now. +Fire.+
He couldn’t help but mirror her expression–he knew what she hinted at, but she remained ignorant to his seizure of the Conflagration.
Avo had never been one for poetry, but there was a delectability to karmic harm.
+Here, then,+ D’Rongo said. In the distant shadow of her simulated mindscape, her Ghostjack pulsed and a dozen sequences ignited across her mind. Ghosts flowed through the roots of her foundational memories and concentrated the mem-data he requested within the confines of a dozen ghosts.
As he drew the data in, he constructed a new locus from his blood to serve as their housing module. He couldn’t trust her mind, so he wouldn’t. If this was to be venom, he would not be the one to suffer its effects.
+Bold. You’re not even using your Specters to scan the contents this time. I cannot tell if you’re truly this arrogant or so skilled in the art of the dreaming that you think so lowly of the Ori.+ Her face flattened to a cold glare. +It could be filled with traumas. Fifty ghosts are enough to dint a ward. Or contain an Auto-Seance.+
Her taunts were ineffectual at best, but between her words hid deliberate intent. She wanted him to mistrust her. She wanted him paranoid. She wanted him off-balance.
D’Rongo was a fool. If it wouldn’t work on him, it would be less than effective on Walton. Even past the halcyon days of idealization, the skill of his father stood more testament than tall tale.
He reached out with his Heaven as he grasped down into the pool of blood, and this time, he felt the Woundshaper surge through his veins as she sobered fully from the changes made to her canoncity, her being exhaling with bone-shuddering laughter.
“Ah, master… My mind clears… What wondrous change to the foundations of my structure you have made. Know that you and the architect are beloved for this.”
At the mention of her title, he felt Kae’s perception flicker for an instant before she went back to wrestling the cache of memories in order.
“Perhaps we should reach further. Remake these walls from shape to particle and remold something from its wanting layout to our own liking? I feel the expanse of your fire yawn wide. Let the mule free. Grant the space to me. I intend to stretch my reach far.”
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 another’s 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 Galeslither’s response. “Now I see the caliber of your sacrifices–savages and brutes all.”
The argument escalated from there. Avo gritted his focus and turned his attention to scanning through D’Rongo’s 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 Denton–and 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 let’s be finished. Push harder, and I’ll see myself nulled. You’re 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 wasn’t 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 Walton’s 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 D’Rongo anew.
+I’m sorry,+ he began. +I didn’t 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 do–what 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. D’Rongo 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 possible–Kae Kusanade.+
And just as she finished that word, Kae cleared her Metamind and hissed out a seething thought. +You… lying, murderous fucking sow! I planned–I was trying to heal the Heaven!+