~~~
Glossary:
* Hosts
* Attunement
* Gifts
* Shards
//AKASHIC_REPO_FORK3.77//
~~~
My eyes bulged nearly out of their sockets.
For an instant I panicked, my head darting around nervously, despite knowing full well that I was alone and entirely shrouded from view. And that even if I hadn’t been, Blessed couldn’t see each others’ Grimoires.
How had this happened?
When had the list updated, and why? What changed? Was it my increasing Attunement? My own knowledge, my reading Gerbold’s tome and uncovering the hidden truths within? Were the updates perhaps temporal in nature, and I’d receive more entries as time went on?
Or was it completely random, my Grimoire simply deciding to plop what were doubtless forbidden secrets into my hands on nothing but a whim? Most of all, what in the High Priest’s holy name was that final sentence?
It was that same name, again, the one from the description of my primary Blessing.
Akashic.
Clearly, he was important. Or, she. Or, it. Honestly, given the things I’d seen since becoming Blessed, I’d more reason to believe this character to be another cosmic insect than an actual flesh-and-blood human being.
But whereas ADMINISTRATION’s passage at least mentioned Akashic in a normal enough manner, this phrase was just…completely incomprehensible. REPO? FORK3.77?? Why would a piece of cutlery be mentioned here? By all the Gods above and below, what on earth was going on?
I whispered curses fervently, feverishly, loathe to alert my teammates, yet furious at both my Grimoire and myself.
I’d simply…forgotten about the feature.
I’d assumed it to be nothing more than a meaningless quirk of an eldritch, unknowable power, and discounted it entirely. But now, since I hadn’t been checking it religiously, there was no way for me to determine what had driven its update. Or, how many times it’d done so. Biting my lip nervously, about to select the first entry, I paused.
Did I…truly even want to know?
Perhaps this glossary could give me answers, but it posed just as much a terrible risk. Already, I knew things, many things, things that I really, really shouldn’t know. Secrets that I strongly suspected could easily get me killed. Each further morsel I gleaned about the nature, the truth, of my world put both myself and those I cared about in greater danger of imprisonment, enslavement, or death.
Maybe, it’d be better to just leave well enough alone.
But I…couldn’t. I had to know. I’d been raised on stories, and I now I was living one. If I wanted to survive, I had to understand its rules.
So, with my heart hammering in my chest, I selected the glossary’s entries, one by one.
~~~
* Hosts
Hosts, or parahumans, are human beings that have undergone an instance of severe psychological trauma, known colloquially as a trigger event, ultimately resulting in their binding to a Pseudo Shard.
These Pseudo Shards grant their given Host restricted access to their parent Entity’s gestalt network, allowing them to shape Entropy and warp reality via the manifestation of so-called ‘powers.’
* Attunement
//ERR494e464f//
* Gifts
//ERR494e464f//
* Shards
Shards are the //CELL//SCALE//NODE//GESTALT_UNIT//s of the Entities.
A single Entity may be made up of trillions or more Shards depending on their power and age. Shard number alone does not necessarily confer strength, as Shards, themselves, vary vastly in capability and Entropy efficiency.
The word Shard is, in my opinion at least, something of a misnomer. In reality, every ‘Shard’ represents a complex gestalt network of subsidiary Shards, each with their own concrete tasks. More confoundingly, these subsidiaries can, and often are, made up of their very own corresponding subsidiary gestalts.
However, at their most basic, Shards do exist that are literal, individual, physical, multidimensional crystalline supercomputers about the size of a small house. For convenience’s sake, I have dubbed these Shards ‘Discrete.’ Discrete Shards are reliant on no subsidiaries, serve very limited purposes, and make up the building blocks of the gestalt. By contrast, I designate the more conventional Shard networks as ‘Parent’ Shards.
The more subsidiaries a given Parent Shard controls, the more intelligence it requires in order to function and, thereby, the more agency it commands within the overall collective. Some of the most powerful Parent Shards can be made up of trillions of Discrete Shards on their own, dwarfing Earth Bet’s largest landmasses by comparison. Again, though, network size does not necessarily correlate to offensive strength.
After all, not every Shard is combat-oriented.
Through cautious study of the gestalt network and interaction with those few Minor Shards I could coax into communicating with me, I have determined an internal hierarchical structure that exists within the Entity’s collective, bringing order to the chaos.
* Shard Distribution and Bonding
* Shard Budding and Heritage
* Shard Classification and Hierarchy
~~~
The otherwise absolute silence of the humid jungle night was disturbed only by the few dwindling crackles of a dying fire. My mouth was dry as I digested the barely comprehensible phrases and paragraphs inscribed in my Grimoire.
This glossary was written in a completely different manner to the descriptions of my Blessings, both primary and copied. It was less professional, more familiar, resembling the eclectic notes I remembered from Gerbold’s Grimoires. The writings of a scientist. Indeed, it was as if I read this Akashic fellow’s very own research diary.
Perhaps I did.
The entries under ‘Attunement’ and ‘Gifts’ were both empty save for a single indecipherable string of seemingly random numbers and characters, driving me to wonder why they’d been included at all. Did they indicate that I was close to unlocking their knowledge, but not quite there yet?
It didn’t matter.
The truths revealed to me by the glossary were earth-shattering, all the same. The Faith had lied to me. To the whole world. Or maybe, they just didn’t know any better. But Blessings weren’t Blessings at all. No, they were…they were curses. And Eidolon, the High Priest, wasn’t their source. He couldn’t be. He was just as much a victim, a Host, as any of us.
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Shards were parasites.
Cosmic maggots, otherworldly passengers, spawn of some massive, alien network larger than countries and peoples, commensurate to the size of worlds themselves. They, together, made up the body of some kind of antediluvian Entity.
It was both impossible and terrifying. And yet, in a way, it was no surprise.
After all, my trigger vision had shown me, hadn’t it? Two massive creatures, cosmic worms, that crawled across time and space towards our earth. To see such a thing written here, penned in arcane ink, didn’t feel like a revelation at all. No, it felt like a confirmation. It felt like something I’d already known.
Maybe, it felt like something I’d always known.
Even the part about Shards fitting within their own internal hierarchy was unsurprising. I’d guessed it already, before I even left for the Agoge’s exam. What remained a mystery to me were the specifics. And, conveniently, they were precisely what the subsequent entries offered.
So, with bated breath, I selected them.
~~~
* Shard Distribution and Bonding
//ERR494e464f//
* Shard Budding and Heritage
//ERR494e464f//
* Shard Classification and Hierarchy
According to my research, the gestalt’s internal hierarchy is divided into four principle castes of Shards; Minor, Major, Vital and Noble. I include, as a preface, my own invented four not recognized by the network; Discrete, Parent, Pseudo and Proto.
* Discrete
Discrete Shards are multidimensional crystals that make up the building blocks of an Entity’s gestalt. A Discrete Shard exists individually in physical space or spaces and does not command any subsidiary Shards.
* Parent
A Parent Shard refers to the principal hub that controls a subsidiary network of variable size. Parent Shards technically make up a minority of an Entity’s gestalt, and are the only Shard type that will bond to parahumans. All Minor, Major, Noble, and Vital Shards are Parent Shards.
While larger Parent Shards do display a remarkable degree of pseudo-sentience, it is important to note that they, much like Entities themselves, do not truly think in the same manner as conventional carbon-based lifeforms. Parent Shards do not cogitate individually, rather, they represent the collective consciousness of their entire subsidiary gestalt.
* Pseudo
Pseudo Shards do not genuinely exist within the gestalt network.
They are the artificial hubs created by Parent Shards of any type upon bonding to a Host. Pseudo Shards link a Host’s gemma to a specific location within the collective. As such, unlike Endbringers, Hosts do not truly possess their own Shards. Instead, Hosts use Pseudo Shards to piggyback off of the gestalt.
Pseudo Shards are the underpinnings of the Cycle, ingenious creations that well exemplify both the Entities’ sophistication in dimensional engineering and their paranoid nature. They allow the Entities to gather data without risking damage to or death of their own Shards, and allow parahumans the ability to shape Entropy without generating or storing it themselves.
This is why parahuman ‘Shards’ begin to fail the farther one travels from our home planet; a gemma’s transmission range is limited. It is why multiple parahumans may exhibit highly similar powers; a Parent Shard may create more than one Pseudo Shard.
Most of all, it is why a Host’s Shard may begin to empathize with its bearer and become invested in their success; Pseudo Shards are not bound by the same restrictions as proper Shards, predominantly concerned not with their parent Entity’s continued survival, but with gathering data by any means necessary.
Pseudo Shards are unrestricted in this way because, ultimately, they are doomed to die. Upon their Reaving, Pseudo Shards are recalled to and resorbed by the collective. Nevertheless, their genius architecture has served as endless inspiration for my experiments.
* Proto
//ERR494e464f//
* Minor
Minor Shards are the least powerful of their kind, simple neural networks that comprise numerous Discrete Shards. Minor Shards are far and away the most common type to bond with parahumans, and restrictions placed on these Shards will generally be minor, as well.
Over the course of my decades of research, I have dealt with a vast menagerie of Minor Shards, such that I’ve now even come to find the quasi-lifeforms strangely endearing. Their cognitive processes are not so advanced that circumventing their safeguards is an insurmountable task, and they are often swayed by what little Entropy I can offer.
As such, I can state with substantial authority that restrictions placed on these Shards will typically relate to Entropy usage; maximum draw and consumption over time. Of course, Minor Shards also include standard Host psyche/data collection mandates.
There are so many Minor Shards, too many, enough that I could spend a lifetime counting them and barely scratch the surface. My database already overflows with the mere fraction of their number that I’ve recorded.
Nevertheless, three examples of this Shard type are Personal Temporal Stasis, Arthropod Control, and Unidirectional Telekinesis.
* Major
The jump from Minor to Major Shards defies comprehension.
Major Shards are the cornerstones of the collective. The foremost of every category of power. They represent key nodes within the gestalt network, often necessary for many of the Entity’s higher functions.
Although Hosts may possess Pseudo Shards with the same or similar names to Major Shards, these powers are never distributed in their totality, and seldom bound to Hosts at all. In the rare cases that Major Shards do bond, they will carry massive restrictions.
Across the sum total of my studies, I have never once communicated directly with a Major Shard, as such an act would almost certainly result in my discovery and death. I have, however, on infrequent occasion, managed to catch fragments of their conversations within the gestalt.
Even these small snippets of speech revealed to me that Major Shards are fiercely intelligent, more so than all but the most premier Thinkers. I shudder to imagine what becoming bonded to such a potent alien mind would wreak upon even the most mentally stalwart parahuman.
I’ve recorded precious few examples of these Shards. Three of them are: Biokinesis, Interface, and Broadcast.
* Vital
Vital Shards are complicated, and it is difficult to place where exactly they fall with regard to the collective’s hierarchy.
Vital Shards are the few Shards without which an Entity’s survival is threatened.
As such, this classification does not correspond in any way to power or size, merely purpose within the gestalt. Indeed, most Vital Shards are less potent and command less internal authority than even Major Shards. In fact, Vital Shards are barely intelligent, more akin to massive machines than proto-sentients.
I know precious little about this Shard type as they are seldom used, seldom referenced, and, as far as I’m aware, incapable of bonding. Nor would most of them be much use to a parahuman even if they did, due to their exorbitant Entropy cost universally exceeding expenditure restrictions placed on all Host Shards.
Allow me to explain with three examples:
Reave is the Vital Shard that, upon the death of a Host, returns their Pseudo Shard to the collective for absorption. If used on a live Host, I presume this Shard would remove their power without killing them, but obviously I cannot verify such a hypothesis.
Stellar Collection Engine is the Vital Shard with which the Entities harvest and convert stellar bodies into Entropy, their primary energy source. Upon the beginning of a Cycle, this Shard is used to harvest the suns of lifeless dimensions parallel to the Chosen, recharging the Entities after a long journey through deep space.
Dimensional Detonation is the Vital Shard activated at the end of each Cycle that spatially compresses the overlapping dimensions parallel to the Chosen, eventually resulting in their explosive destruction and a massive burst of energy that propels the Entities towards their subsequent destination.
I have heard whispers of a so-called ‘Prime’ Vital Shard in the scattered interactions between Major Shards, which they refer to only as the ‘Heart of the Gestalt.’ My translation is likely imperfect, but I am drawn to it all the same.
For some reason, I believe it holds the answers I seek.
* Noble
Recalcitrant as I am to admit it, here is where my research turns me from robust academic to raving madman.
Noble shards are unique.
Even within the collective, they are not mentioned lightly. Minor Shards revere them as Gods, and Major Shards scarcely ever speak their name. Noble Shards are the most powerful of all their kind, lords paramount of the gestalt.
Second only to the Entity itself.
All other Shards are subservient to Noble Shards. All other Shards are descendents of Noble Shards. Noble Shards are not distributed, ever, neither to Hosts nor to Endbringers.
The number of Noble Shards an Entity possesses can be counted on one’s hands.
I have thus far only managed to learn the name of one Noble Shard. Some Shards refer to it as the Godhead. Others describe it as a forest-of-flesh. It is the power responsible for the Entity’s physical manifestation in our dimension, the Parent of all transfiguration, transformation, and mutation Shards.
Its name is AVATAR.