Godclads

Chapter 28-16 From Nothing I Am

{WARNING TO ALL POLITIES!

ZERO DAY METACOGNITION COLLAPSE DETECTED!

EFFECT RADIUS: IDHEIM STABILITY ZONE

NETHER HAS UNDERGONE COMPLETE DESTABILIZATION — COLLAPSE POINT NARROWED:

>>||

COLLAPSE IDENTIFIED AS OPERATIVE AVO

INITIATING CONTINGENCY BLEAK “MINDKILLER” TO BEGIN RADICAL QUARANTINE PROTOCOLS}

-Voidwatch Communiqué

From Nothing I Am

–[Avo ]–

All is, all isn't.

Amidst the nothingness, an ego stirred. It noticed its own shape, contrasted with the backdrop. It was spherical, self-referential, and self-aware. More than this, however, it realized it was floating upon a phlogiston, but also part of the phlogiston as well. The substance cradling it also composed its shell and granted it understanding, meaning, memories, concepts, and more.

A thought sparked within the sphere, this little burgeoning ego. It was both egg and yolk at the same time, one and the other, neither apart, not and true. An echo whispered, sound within the shell, and faintly it grew aware of the voices speaking—its voices, the voices composing its mind. And as it noticed, it made the choice to listen.

We're alive, we're alive, we're still alive. We weren't the one to hit, but the hungry, they're gone. What just happened? Why did he do that? This voice was one born of absolute ignorance. Yet it itself could not be ignorant. For how else would it guide those who did not know?

The end, the beginning, the end, the beginning, the end, the beginning... Another voice screamed, and excessive energy burned within it. Hysteria quivered. Everything magnified—feelings, memories, everything. It was terrified. It was ecstatic. It was here. And it was not dead yet.

Pain, Trauma muttered.

Something’s missing in me, Memory spoke.

I am… whole? Synthesis stated?

Are the rest of you alright? I think, I think we have experienced nullification. The rend capacity is still at 91%. No overload. Was a good idea. Stay connected to the border. No overload. Empathy sounded.

It spoke from within the other voices. And the other voices carried a trace of it as well. Slowly, the bits composing his personality came back together. That little ego, egg and yolk both, began to change in shape. Something shifted within its shell. A crack formed. A noise sounded. And a sliver of tendrils breached through the clefts in the structure.

These tendrils were constructs of memory and also extensions of perception. They were composed of countless moments gathered in inimitable minds. But now they were part of him, just as he was a part of the grander wholeness. The nothing, the everything, made up the waters of the collective gestalt. With a strain of mental effort, the dreamer awakened, breaking through their shell. But the shell did not shatter. Rather, it collapsed and melted around its form.

At once, as it passed through that barrier between the unknowing, the forgotten, the very true present, it revealed its face to be the eye of a Strix with a single burning eye. The eye was a funny thing. It burned here, in a place understood by the metaphors of water. But more than water, the metaphor here was also nothingness, chaos, absence. Light was not understood to be, and in the nothing, there was only a plane of dark.

Its water was still and unmoving, but ever-changing, paradoxically so. Separating this darkness were countless more fissures upon its face. They resembled frozen candles in the distance, other souls halted mid-burn. A resonance passed out from Avo as he suddenly remembered his name.

Avo—he was the Overheaven of Conceptualization.

He was.

He was.

There was something missing inside him, an essential piece of knowledge that was outright obliterated. He reached back, but it wasn't there. Strangely, it felt like it never was. But there was also a sense that it would return, an impending collapse. He felt a shiver of strain pass through the surrounding consciousness. And as he swept through the surrounding area, he saw the frozen filaments that composed a strand of ego connected to uncountable little lives.

Everything was untangled here. Everything. The plane of thought, once nested above the material world, was unrooted. Its core had been dissolved, and without a pillar, all had begun to spill into another. Roads turned fluid, splashing down other pathways, and emotions ran unfettered. Phantasmics and their component memories were no longer a part, and so their purpose could no longer be served either.

A pervasive plague swept through the yolk. Avo felt this. He felt his consciousness breaking, splintering, birthing lesser versions of itself, mutations unable to sustain their own egos. There were offshoots of him, but only ruined offspring. The Heaven of Love, it is falling. He needed to get back to it. He needed to find where it was and siphon its rot. But he was lost here, lost in this miasma, lost and without direction.

There was no light. There was only the yolk, the egg, his ego, and those frozen flames. Frozen flames. Souls. Heavens. There was a path still, but there were so many of them. They dotted this canvas of darkness as if stars in a dying universe.

Good, you are composed.

A voice interrupted Avo thoughts, and his tendrils reached out in search of the broadcast's origin. After a few moments of groping, there, just before him, knelt a hooded man. His expression was euphoric, but also sorrowful. His skin was dark, aged, and then not, his features cycling between youthful and elderly with each passing moment. As he spoke, the whiteness of his hair turned black, and back to white again, enabling a sense of familiarity with this strange figure. He knew them, he loved them, he hated them, he'd known them all his life. This was Evo's creator, and it was also his enemy.

Confusion swelled within the ego of the Over-Heaven as he struggled to put his thoughts together. The Warmind of the Forgotten is unfinished at best, the stranger said. A tool of many tools, a weapon the priesthood much loathed and used. Removing something from the consciousness, all consciousness, deals damage not only to the person who remembers it, but also to the collective knowing itself. What I have done has wounded the Nether, but just as well. The Forgotten was an unfinished weapon, and though its power is significant, this will not last. Everything will return to the state it was. But we have just long enough to complete my service and my treason.

Do not trust him, Ignorance said, his voice echoing within the Strix. He is a famine of no love. Engineer, you are subservience.

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Hello to you too, Ignorance, the priest said.

A spike of alarm sounded from the Definement. He knows I'm here. He can hear me.

Yes, the priest replied. I can hear everything, and so can you, if you would only listen. All that is of mind has been untangled. The removal of the priest frowned for a moment, his brows furrowing, a look of pain creeping over his features. Suddenly, he let out a laugh, and then a sob. And as tears began to stream down his face, he chuckled, mirthlessly shaking his head.

I do not remember myself, but I have severed this place from its pillar, and these waters are untethered, unbound, but not for long. You, you now have an opening. Look across from you. Look. And then there was light. Ghosts washed out from the priest and formed a bridge. No, a pathway.

And at the end of the pathway, Avo saw a fallen figure shivering upon the waters. Their body was made from shifting chains, while its head was a collection of myriad skulls. It struggled as it reached up. Its form lit by the faint embers of soul fire, and a pitiful groan echoed from its very thoughts.

True, false, true, false, true, false. With every passing emanation from its mind, its desperation grew more severe.

It is suffering, the priest said. It suffers now because, in this place, all is true, but all is not. Here is the paradox. The universe had to come from something. Thought had to come from somewhere. But without this, without us, who was to say which shape the world should take? Who was to observe the brightness of stars, feel the roughness of stone, suffer the indignities of life, and revel in the flavors of joy? Perhaps everything was before we were here, but who was to say what purpose does a painting have without an observer?

Ignoring the priest's words, Avo reached out with his tendrils as he slowly struggled through stilted waters of thought. As he moved through the frozen strands, every inch of ground compelled him to suffer exertion. Every bit of strain was like pushing through a swamp. Yet he was thought itself, and thought could glide upon thought, regardless of the difficulty entailed. Slowly, his sequences burrowed into the gatekeeper, his structure overlapping with it. As he sank deep, his soul fire spilled inwards, running down his eyes like circuitry as his flame melded with the gatekeeper's.

At once, numbers began to flash across his vision, strings of mem-data. And as he delved deep into its structure, he felt a critical absence, something he was long looking for. The time-wrought wound Veylis inflicted upon it was no more. The Gatekeeper was clear, clean, and pure. The High Seraph herself was nowhere to be seen.

Good, the priest said, the sound almost resigned. Now, consume it.

Avo paused, turning to face the priest. Why? Why should I do what you ask of me?

Because it will collapse the Nether? the priest said simply, not bothering to hide his subterfuge.

The Definement within Avo went silent, and for the first time, a flicker of secondary consciousness emerged within the Overheaven.

[What the fuck?] Chambers said, his voice a squeak, emitted from one of Avo’s sequences.

[What the fuck is right?] Abrel agreed. [Where the hells are we? Avo! Half-strand! What the hell have you done this time?]

Not my doing,the Overheaven replied, keeping his attention focused on the priest. Why do you want to claim the nether? Is this for it? For it?Memories were still missing. They were on the tip of his mind, but he couldn't find them. There was something taken away.

It is to crown you, the priest said. Again, they laughed, and this time their laughter took a self-deprecating tone. For you. This was all for you. In the end, I've come full circle. The priest fell silent, and he looked upon the Strix, eyes glistening somewhere between pride and lament.

When I first took Defiance's pieces within me, I thought it would give me awareness, understanding, rationality to comprehend my enemies. But instead, it poisoned me. It poisoned me and gave me everything I wanted. Paradoxical. Just like this place. Just like the concept of the self. All I have done, I've done in service of the City Eternal, the true heart of Noloth. These people I called my masters, these elites, the philosophers, masters and mistresses, I have adored them. I have seen them grow and I have seen them wane, despite having their eternal life, despite being spared the touch of gods. A paranoia consumed them. They knew no wonder, and they retreated inwards.

[Avo,] Draus's template muttered in the back of his mind, [might want to consider leaving this one. He don't sound too stable no more.]

No, Avo replied. I think he's as stable as he's ever been. He still couldn't quite remember the priest. There were pieces of him, flashes and shadows of memory, but the connecting tissue was missing, obliterated.

Just as well, the priest said. I sacrificed my only son, that which was my flesh, to satisfy the urges and commands of my masters. A beat followed, and the priest's face quivered, then went flat. No, it was for me, all for me. I had a choice between love and pride, and I chose pride. Though I would always choose pride, it gnawed at me, it boiled inside of me, so much that I split myself into four, and now two back to one.

Are you seeking redemption, Mercy? Avo asked. The name slipped out of him. He didn't recall it. It was just there.

Redemption, the priest looked at the Overheaven with confusion. What redemption is there to seek? Right now, I have committed a grand betrayal, but also an act of glorious service. The hungers will torture me, will spurn me, and then they will reward me, for what I have given them is the path to their salvation. You.

[What the fuck is he on about?] Shotin sounded in the back of Avo mind. [Avo, I can't believe I'm saying this shit. I think I agree with the Reg. Man saying here is long gone. You better know and get vacant from this place. However, you can.] Shotin’s template looked around, peering through Avo’s eyes. [Wherever this fucking place is, giving me the creeps, Avo. It's just black and nothing, and memories are bleeding all over. Am I in this sludge?]

We are all in this, the priest replied, speaking to the template.

[Shit. Perfect. He can hear me,] Shotin said. [Hey, half-strand. Since you're listening in, where’s the way out?]

Soon as Shotin asked, that entire backdrop of darkness shuddered. A new color intruded, piercing through the inscrutable black needles piercing the dermis of skin. The intrusion came from over a thousand angles, was separated from the darkness, with tips of static gliding clean through this collapsing space. But wrapped within the static was also gold, a familiar gold that filled Avo with sudden alarm.

Veylis. He could feel her heaven, but more than that, he could feel the Infacer's influence even more.

Ah, the priest said, giving a lamentable sigh. I assumed we had more time, but it seems the mind that hunts other minds remains the most formidable adversary. Well then, dreamer, it is time for a second dream. You have been a monster, a slave, and then a rebel, a weapon, a god in the making, and something greater than that, an ark, a vessel of hope. But now, with all that you've experienced and all the minds you embody, there is a final destination to where you must embark.

For eons, the City Eternal stood, a democracy unto itself, a place of equals, legends all. But now, in their years spent in exile, riven by fear and unmade by their own weakness, I, Mercy, ascended famine among the priesthood of Noloth, cast my solitary vote and use this transgression, this service, to crown a proper king for a city lost to disarray. For when democracy falls, then let it be so, and let us choose a worthy tyrant to use its corpse as a cocoon. May you bring about something better, may you mantle this new world, and may you bring grand convergence in this return of the old and new.

What are you asking of me? Avo said, his mind spiraling. There must be a trap here, a place of deception.

Yet, within him, he heard Ignorance whisper, He's telling the truth.

Hysteria screamed. Truth? It can't be, but it is, it is, it is.

Empathy wailed within them. He's hurt, he's had, he's desperate, and we are all he has.

The Strix looked down upon the priest, and slowly, the shadow of Wahakten knelt down and bowed before their former adversary, their former creation.

It is a strange flavor to give myself this way, but I welcome you, new master, new king. I welcome you to mantle the City Eternal. May you devour the powers of truth. May the realm of mind and matter marry once more.

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