It was standard for structures in the cities of the Gentes to contain biological elements, but never before had Oralie been inside one so alien. She squeezed Rosabella's hand.

Rosabella squeezed back.

At every step, Oralie expected her bare feet to slip against the wet porcelain of a molar, but the staircase was mercifully dry. Not so with the dank air that drifted up and down the stairwell as if a gigantic pair of lungs were slowly exhaling and inhaling.

At the bottom of the esophagus, a pair of holes wide enough for Oralie to fit through if she were willing to crawl pulsed open and closed on opposite sides of the walls in rhythm with the dank exhalations. A larger iris opened in the flesh before Oralie and Rosabella as their feet touched the smooth muscle that was the floor of the stairwell.

The chamber beyond was well lit. Forgebone girders ran up the muscular walls in order to uphold the massive dome that loomed above their heads. The bone floor was flat except in the center of the room, where it dropped away, forming a bowl of softly-glowing blue water that rippled gently though there was no wind. An odd half-spherical shape no larger than a melon bulged up from the water at the far edge of the bowl.

"What is this place?" Oralie asked, stepping past Rosabella. A number of stone alcoves were set into the wall on the far side of the chamber. Oralie enhanced her senses and realized fluid was dribbling from a central hole in each of the alcoves into small pools set into the floor.

A soft moan, too quiet for natural human hearing to have caught, emanated from the melon-like object near the edge of the bowl. Oralie turned her attention to it. Two eyes, black as night, stared out of a pale face.

It wasn't a melon. It was a human head.

Two bright balls of light hung motionless above a silver desert.

The force of the alien image cascaded from the top of her head down Oralie's spine, leaving her breathless and setting her heart to hammering forcefully within her breast.

"What is it?" Rosabella whispered. "What do you see?"

"I saw it," Oralie said. "The desert."

Her curiosity was overwhelming. Oralie crept toward the pool. Rosabella squeezed Oralie's hand ever so slightly. The two women came to the edge of the pool and peered down into it.

Bone flooring gave way to pale flesh that hugged the bottom of the bowl like a carpet. Following the curvature of it with her eyes, Oralie noted four tumorous lumps spaced halfway up the bowl at relatively even intervals around the circumference of its lip, testaments to vestigial limbs that had long since lost their use. And on the far side, that grotesque head lolled half-in, half-out of the glowing blue fluid.

"Blood, bones, and bile," Oralie cursed. "It's a man."

"A Tool," Rosabella said, her voice filled with wonder. "It was a man once. And now it is Ascending."

Oralie had interfaced with Tools before, but their kernels were always hidden behind outer shells. This twisted once-human body nauseated her, and not just because it was so grotesque. The sight of it worried at her mind, threatening to dislodge a long-forgotten memory. It was somehow familiar, and that familiarity carried with it fear and disgust.

The High weren’t present, but still Oralie only whispered. "If this is Ascension, I'd rather keep my feet on the ground."

"Most Generosi would. Otherwise, they would be Sodalitatis."

A series of splashes from the pools beneath the alcoves interrupted the conversation. Streams of water flowed from the holes into the lesser bowls, then again became trickles. Seven small bodies of water quivered; liquid built upon itself, growing upward into seven humanoid forms, becoming opaque and finally coalescing into the seven masked High, each one wearing the appearance of the robes that he had worn in the audience chamber above.

Oralie's breath caught within her. Was this the true power of the SOPHIOS? To be water, to be nothing, and then to be something solid again? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

The High stepped forward out of their pools as one. Oralie stepped back. The High had invited her down to this Tool for a reason. What would they think to see her leaning over it, studying its contours and grimacing at its grotesque, inside-out inhabitant?

The High came to the edge of the Tool-pool and raised their hands. A deep, vibrant humming began to emanate from them; Oralie couldn't tell if it was one of them or all of them that made the noise. The even melody diverged slowly into a set of harmonies, and as it did so, the glowing blue water within the inverted belly of the Tool rippled.

"Behold, Maga," intoned broken-triangle. "The Hope of our Apotheosis, the Model of our Ascension, the Source of our Wisdom, the Most High."

The lolling head on the other side of the pool groaned and tilted to the other side.

"There is no life without death. There is no peace without war. There is no Wisdom without Stupidity."

The head let out a wordless shout of affirmation.

Broken-triangle fixed his eternal gaze on Oralie. "Come, Seer, and commune with the Most High."

"Seer?" Oralie had no intentions of communing with anyone or anything without an explanation. She stepped forward and inclined her head magnanimously to Broken-triangles. "I would, if I understood what it was you asked of me, Ascending. Please help me to understand."

The masked man swept his hand down toward the glowing pool of water. "Behold the half-father of all of us here. All of us except for you."

"Half-father?"

Rosabella's voice carried frantic urgency as she whispered, "This Tool produces the Wisdom!" She had to be truly troubled to speak out of turn so.

"Silence, Ambassatrix," broken-triangle intoned. Even these harsh words harmonized perfectly with the unending humming of the other High, a fact that Oralie noted as Rosabella bowed her head in submission.

"Is Rosabella right?" Oralie asked. "This is where the Symbiont comes from?"

"Xenovallus Symbiosus," broken-triangle responded. "The blessing from heaven, the Wisdom that guides our hands. Behold its father. The half-father of all of us. All except for you."

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"I have a Symbiont."

Broken-triangles nodded slowly. "And perhaps more besides."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me of Synapsis, Uxor Principis," broken-triangle said. "Have you known it?"

"Yes," Oralie said. "I have known it."

"You knew it without a Tool."

"Yes."

"You knew it without a Wisdom."

"Yes."

The Tool barked. It was a horrid sound, half-human, half-bestial, and it echoed unpleasantly in the low-ceilinged room.

Broken-triangle nodded. "Then commune with your three-quarters father, and let us taste of this truth." Immediately, two of the Most High fell out of line and came around the side of the pool to her. They held out their hands. "You will not defile the sacred waters with foreign life. Your clothes."

Rosabella looked miserable. Under normal circumstances, the Ambassatrix would never have allowed an invitation to disrobe to go by without an inappropriate comment. Perhaps she hadn't meant for all this to happen.

"And if I refuse?" Oralie asked.

"The answers you seek lie within," said Broken-triangles.

The answers. Answers for her, and answers for Rosabella. Moreover, Oralie suspected the High would not let her leave if she did refuse. She could see no way out of the situation, so she did as the High insisted. Even naked, she could still stand like an uxor principis, chin held high.

"Into the waters."

Sparing one final glance for Rosabella, Oralie slipped into the bright blue pool. The Symbiont within her sprang to life as soon as her toe was submerged.

By the time she was in the water up to her neck, the SOPHIOS was gibbering madly within her. With a wordless psychic shriek of triumph, it lunged for her genes.

There was air, and then there was water, and Oralie fought madly both to remain herself and to reach the surface as her Wisdom assaulted the basis of her very nature.

She was a mole in the sky, a bird in the ocean, a fish being crushed beneath ten thousands tons of rock. Her feet were suctioned flippers, and the strands of her hair, the muscles of wings and fins that she didn't know she had, forced her down, down, down to the bottom of the pool, and only the gills on her neck prevented Oralie from drowning.

The flesh of the Tool rose up in the water to meet her. It wrapped around her ankles, tugged her to it until her feet sank into the warm, sickening mud of it. It climbed her twisted form, or perhaps her twisted form fell into its embrace; Oralie was too busy wrestling with her SOPHIOS to know the truth.

The Symbiont was strong, so strong; she had never felt it so wide awake, so completely freed to follow its own inclinations. It was all she could do to catch it unawares here and there and reverse the mutations while it wasn't paying attention. But for every one she fixed, three more took its place. She was wrestling with a mental hydra. And if she didn't stop it, it would turn her into a biological hydra.

The skin of the Tool crawled over every inch of her flesh, relentlessly subsuming her. Was it crawling into her nose, her mouth, her ears, or was she imagining this? These lights, these creatures, that flitted in and out of her vision, tormenting her with their impossibility-- were these real, or figments? Were there others in the water with her, watching her, speaking to her, or was she falling into delusions? Was this what Chimerization felt like?

No. This was what Synapsis felt like.

There was a humming, a resonance that harmonized with the mad Symbiont living within her. Or was that her memory of the canting of the High, when she was still above water? Had she ever been above water?

She had been, once. She knew it. She was certain of it.

But she was just as certain, trapped as she was within her own mind, locked in a death-embrace with a Wisdom that chittered gleefully throughout her neurons at the sound or the memory of it, that she had once wandered through endless caves and found a small shimmering pool of viscous blue fluid and had fallen into it.

She knew eras and eras of ecstatic communion, when time had held no meaning for her. She knew hundreds of thousands of children hidden within the sacks of flesh that walked the world, and a few very special children whose coming had been so long. She knew that one such child was here now.

She felt seven of her offspring around her, among her, and she reached for them.

Glory be to the Most High, they knew at her. Their knowing was so strong, their faith so unshakable, so unmistakable. The prodigal returns at last.

What have you done with me? Oralie thought back as she drifted through a black sea of blue and green and silver stars.

Hail the Maiden of the Ascension, they knew back. Hail her faithfulness to the Most High. May the hours of the Suns approach ever more swiftly.

Oralie turned from their knowings, pushing them to the back of her mind, the back of her soul. If the Adonists were right about their Hell, then she was drifting there. She flung out hands that she did not have to the most familiar droplet nearby in the sea of darkness. I love you, Rosabella. I do not blame you, not for anything, not for this. Tell Dorsin I will always be his. Dreaming or not, she had to make the attempt.

The Rosabella-thing in her mind leapt to its feet and stared down into a pool of bright-blue water. Her vision was swimming, and not because of the fluid in the pool. Oralie? it sobbed. Oralie, is that you?

Dreams, nightmares. She might already be dead. She might be Chimerizing; who knew what sort of mental transformations a Chimera might go through? She might be dreaming this dreary, murky moment as her erstwhile body tore Rosabella to shreds. And if this was no dream, then what did it matter? She knew only the vast, black ocean and the absolute impossibility of escape. Whoever she was, whatever she was now, there would be no return for her. Tell Dorsin.

As the certainty of her doom overtook her, Oralie summoned up all of her magnanimity. And then be with him, if you want.

Oralie felt the Rosabella-thing open its mouth and scream at the seven figures that stood, motionless, in the pool. "Let her go!"

The harmony never ceased. There was no response.

"Let Oralie go!" the Rosabella thing screamed again.

It was pointless to watch farther. As with any nightmare, there was no escape from this prison. Oralie dreamed herself away from Rosabella and toward a droplet of intense emotion, inhaling it and becoming one with it.

The azure-skinned Princess-thing soared through spore-hazed air on a boat of heaving breath. And now she flew above the jungle, having crossed the mossy cairns of the Unspoken Frontier, Nethress lands that she defiled with her very presence. She ought to fall for her arrogance and her violence.

She ought to fall!

The Princess-thing lurched in her seat, jamming the controls, and the boat twisted and fell from the sky. Oralie left her there and fled to the joys of her heart, the best things that she had ever created. Love and adoration filled her spirit as she touched a beloved mind.

The Senrii-reflection was almost as damp as Oralie. Senrii staggered as if struck, her hands slapping dewy, leafy fronds as she tried to steady herself. "Mom?"

My darling.

"Mom? Is that you?"

I love you, Senrii. Never forget that.

"The Amber City," somebody said in the background as Oralie spiraled away from her daughter. "So it's true."

Her sons... she would speak to Jorn and Norman. Where were they?

Nowhere. Nowhere in the ocean of black.

Oralie felt silver-star intelligences seeking her in the dark ocean. The ripples of their minds told her that they were distant but enormous; they were curious, but with a curiosity indistinguishable from rage.

Or hunger.

Oralie fled their approach--straight into the center of her world and the cause of all her grief.

Dorsin, my love, she knew at him. Dorsin, help. Please help.

Stars, green and blue and silver, drifted toward Oralie, slowly choking off the black ocean. Oralie thought desperately toward Dorsin, willing him to hear her.

It has me...