A Goddess, an Empress, a Queen, a Princess, A Handmaiden, An Apprentice. I never asked to become these in my lifetime and never expected it after even I had died and was reborn. My flesh was...my flesh was...no. To start at the beginning we need to talk about my family.
[Flesh. Only when I lost my flesh did I gain power. No. Not like this. I will not discuss my journey with you like this. My voice. I will use my own voice. This is me as well, a part of me but not for you. I will speak to you as the mortal. As the young one who progressed. Edit: Voice Function Set to Default.]
Me? I was a nameless villager. A peasant who dreamt of more, who learned half-remembered stories from a man who had fought as a soldier before he had escaped to our village and met my mother. I was ignorant then, not stupid, never stupid but ignorant of the truth of our world. Blind to magic and how we were all bound together in an eternal tug of war between...both of you
You will not learn how I look but I have become far more beautiful that I began. Nobility and finery adorn my dead frame and I am loved, appreciated and worshipped but you will learn of this later. I will not describe my appearance, not yet. Vanity will not become my downfall.
No, we need to start early on. Background, you need to know a little of my background. I want both of you to listen to the life of a mortal, an ant, a single flower, a blade of grass growing in your gardens which you both chose to destroy and rebuild.
To begin with we need to start with a man who raised me, who cared for me when I was sick and tried to keep me and my family safe from the true terrors of this world. You will never meet him, you will never hear his voice for although I have the necessary computing power and imagination to recreate his likeness there are exceptions and my parents will remain one of them. Sit there and listen. Optimise the algorithm to predefine loss function.
….Model Parameters Upgraded…
...Gradient Decent...Complete…
...Administrator Access Granted…
….Playback Initiated...
My Father was a good person. At least he tried to be so, he was as much scarred as anyone who had fought in eternal wars on a planet divided could be. This is how I remember him. This is how the system which preserved my soul and mind remembers him.
Quiet now and listen to my beginning. Resume Memory Playback. You will learn my story, here at the very end of your existence. You will stay there, both of you. Broken, powerless and weakened and you will listen to my story.
And if you choose not to? Then I will remake your very fabric of being into an artificial construct and use you for manual labour in my mines and play this very tale on an eternal looping cycle. No? You would prefer a different punishment? Perhaps put inside on the basic original half-functional Mining Drones?
Good. To learn of me, to learn of my power and how I gained it you must listen and learn. How I became like this, what the pair of you did to your world in your vanity, in your game of gods. Magic. You created magic, you built a Heaven and Hell and for all your power you played games with the lives of mortals.
I said. Resume Memory Playback. Administrator Level Authority Granted. Ignore all secondary systems and resume. All offline functions relegated to slave control systems. Activate my personal neural network and create substance from imagination, memory and raw emotion.
Please. You may sit yourselves or find a comfortable position. My story is long as we have only just begun. After all, we are all immortals here. We have time until this planet turns to dust and the suns above our heads transform into death incarnate. Both of you will listen.
...Warning: Emotional Feedback Detected…
...Continue Running Memory Playback...Confirm…
….Confirmation Provided through Administrator Authority…
….Warning: Fragmented of Original Memory has occurred…
...Override Confirmed…
...Damage to CAMPIN Host Controller ignored…
I was an apprentice. No. Too far forward. We must start further back, much further back. I was a villager, a sibling, a keen learner with a loving family and a man I calle-
….Memory Displacement Effected…
….Neural Network Displacement in Effect...
My Father was a stern man but always kind. Sometimes I think that he had all of his aggression to all of us knocked out during his time fighting for one of the sides. My mother had been a scavenger, one of those who entered the battlefield far below our village at the base of the mountain, during one of the empty periods to look for tools or anything that hadn’t been taken and we could use.
There had been similar stories of soldiers who woke from terrible injuries, dying as they woke to find someone taking their boots, valuables or even their clothing. The eternal wars forced soldiers to enter the battlefields once the fighting was over to take what they could, little was left and even those dying soldiers who remained conscious would be healed, used for materials or turned into abominations.
Nothing was wasted in the eternal wars of my world according to the legends, not even the dead. Bodies were reprocessed by specialist sorcerers or rendered down by angels into new forms to create fresh bodies. Good? Evil? You both created these concepts on our world, you both chose to forcefully stagnate our technological development and shut down the world from all outside influence.
There is more beyond our small planet, there are opportunities there, I will provide the people with work, to build, to create and….and...and...my Father. Forgive me. I am still growing used to these powers, hijacking the makeshift neural network and upgrading it is taking far too much of my personal power.
Quiet. You will not ask questions, neither of you will. We will find our way to my path to power in time but first we need to discuss my Father. The first man in my life who cared for me, the first to show me love and affection. He was a good person. A kind person, but not on that day. Not when he showed me that he was scared and a human being. A mortal.
I had never heard him raise his voice once, not towards my Mother, not to my younger brother or sister and never to me. He was close to screaming this time, his voice full of a mixture of fear and anger but not to us. To the invaders. The soldiers. Those who brought death down upon us.
….Correction made to Memory Structural Lattice…
...Warning: Emotional Dampener Engaged…
…..Resuming Memory Playback….
His words were directed towards all of us but mostly to me to take responsibility. In his spare time when he was hunting or on patrol for our village he had taught me a little of combat and survival, I was to be equipped with a knife and plain leather armour at all times but to rely on my speed and youth when a wild creature appeared.
Then another scream rang out. This one was further away but I knew the voice, it was that of the village healer. She was an old woman with a bent back from picking up herbs and mushrooms from the forest next to the village who had been most beautiful once according to my Mother. Then her children had died and she had aged rapidly.
The fire inside the village should have been an indication that something was wrong, deeply wrong. We were under attack, no monsters would have started a fire and fought with weapons. Not unless you counted the ones which walked on two legs, carried around tools of war and fought each other on the endless battlefields.
We lived on a planet of never-ending war. The war between a pair of Immortals who had fought for as long as anyone alive could remember. They no longer fought for a reason in my mind, I had questioned my Father, my Mother, even the Elders and the Village Healer and none of them had a satisfactory answer for me.
Our village was hidden, close to a forest and atop a mountain range with a ruined and abandoned castle rumoured to be haunted by the dead in the distance. At the base of the mountain was a battlefield which was either remained a killing zone between warring armies of the two opposite Immortals of a place of resources.
Years usually passed when battles had ended and for us villagers living up on the mountain it remained a valuable resource for those brave, foolhardy or stupid enough to risk heading down there taking what little remained and bringing it back.
My Father had been one of those who had ventured down there and had brought back swords, knives and tools made of either darkest or brightest metal. Those items made of magic or which glistened he stayed clear of to avoid curses or possession.
There were several other hidden villages on the far side of the forest although we would get the occasional wandering troubadour and a trader who visited twice a year to purchase our goods and supply us with farming equipment and other essentials. She was greedy, always trying to take advantage of us poor isolated villagers but her assistant was kinder. I believe my older brother had a soft spot for them, but you will not hear his name. Only learn our circumstances, repeated until both of you have learnt what you did.
We were fuel for a war economy, our freedom was a falsehood, an illusion of safety which would run out but...no. I can see from visual and internal scans that you are not listening, not truly. Angry? No, I don’t need to be angry. This is not punishment, I offer solutions, a clarification of your roles.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
A good trick, you look to coopt the magical fields and escape. But no, I am the immortal here, the one who controls all. Even with my mind backed up in multiple copies this shade of mine is more than capable of dealing with acts of minor rebellion.
[Control: Enable Data Manipulation. Force run High Performance Model.]
….Targets Identified: Accessing CAMPIN Virtual Reality Library….
….Back Ups Deleted….
….Back Ups Restored...
There. A small taste of what you put all the sentient humanoids on this planet through. Magic, technology, all work through my will. My descriptions are broken, my wording incorrect and my sense of time is non-linear but don’t all good stories take time to correct?
You would think that rebuilding my origins when so much was lost would be easier but carving into the soul space and magical aura of one who died and was corrupted and changed out of your realms of influence is harder than you think. The pair of you had thousands of years to rewrite reality and laws of this world to your whims, I took decades to achieve the same.
Ah, where was I. My Father. I had mentioned my Father. My brother, not my younger sister but my older brother. He had taken after my Mother, he had a thinner frame but a keen mind. Not weak though, he had a good work ethic and did his tasks when he was asked. Smarter than me but he died. No. Too far forward. The trader, the greedy trader, I mentioned her but the one who helped her to unload, count up wares and coins and passed out small presents for the children was far more important.
My older brother had a preference for an assistant of the trader, if it worked out? No, I never looked, they deserve their own privacy, their own space to grow inside. All I know is that back then before I had been educated and learnt the truth they had died. I did my best but in my early years so much was lost, far too much.
Even extrapolating their profiles from imported data and the essences of magic which was inherent in all sentient beings was a task. No matter, neither of you need to care. Only listen, when I am finished I will pass judgement on both of you. This story of mine will take time, and in truth I would only share it with the both of you.
Unless I choose to build more god-immortals I need an audience, the work has been long and difficult and I would express myself. My older brother, the trader and her assistant all exist but they would need to be developed for me to express. A waste of resources and forced development would hurt them.
They have their own stories to tell, perhaps I will even recreate them here, inside this space and allow them their own voices to talk. They have been blessed by me and exist within my domain. All do at this point. All work and all live.
The screams. The screams rang out and my Father had locked the door to our home. He had shouted at me then to bring my Mother, my younger brother and sister indoors, to protect them with my basic combat skills before he had left to join the village militia to fight back against the invaders.
I needed to keep them safe from harm. Harm. Safe from harm.
[The screams. There was more screams outside. Screamsscreamscreams...my...my...my...my...mymymymy...]
….Fractured Memory Error…
…Extensive physical damage to CAMPIN Construct…
…Supplemented Background Story…
-Warning: Personality Damaged…
….Corrections ongoing….corrected…
...Resume Memory Playback…
‘Mother? We need to be prepared to escape. Brother, sister? Prepare yourselves in case Father can’t return. He will find us and be safe but you all heard him. He needs us to stay inside here. No. We’re not waiting for flames to begin, follow me. I’m going to take us outside. The screams. Ignore the screams, please. Trust me.’
The face of my Mother was sad as tears dropped from her eyes. She knew as I did that Father would likely die. He had skills once but as a deserted soldier from one of the sides combined with his age he had slowed down. Even if he was the best hunter and once the top scavenger who had made multiple trips to the battlefield at the base of the mountain he was still an older man.
We worshipped both sides for good reason. Our village was a half-forgotten and largely ignored place. There had been dangers within the forest but we had build solid walls of metal and stone over time to protect us.
No. This memory is raw and you enjoy hearing my suffering. Scans of both of you can’t hide your hidden desires for conflict and suffering. I will choose a more suitable memory. Those who lived in my village deserve it. I will tell you when the wandering troubadour and trader came to our village.
We will return to this time when my memory is fully collected, my emotions are sufficiently dampened and you have learnt to fully listen.
[Enable: Autonomous Forced Feedback Loop. Allocate Designated Targets. Remove artificial scaffolding nodes. Suffer. Suffer for a time.]