+You work way too much, you know that?+


    +Hm? Sorry, I was trying to match background details between the Painter of the Pale Morning to the Claimant of Dawn. You know what’s so interesting about them? They’re two different gods separated by two different cultures–thousands of kilometers apart! But their myths are so so so similar. It’s clear one group of nomads took inspiration from an existing entity in the Kosgan highlands and ventured into the heart of Burnside before activating another Soul using an interpretation of the mythos! I’m surprised there was no recorded instance of the faithful between these two–+


    [Dawton laughing]


    +What? What? It’s… it’s true! It’s very fascinating how–stop laughing! Stop!+


    +Alright. Alright. I didn’t… I’m not mocking you. I just enjoy it when you pout.+


    +...I’m not pouting.+


    +Oh. And I’m not peeking at you using the morning light.+


    +That’s good, Paladin. Such behavior would be highly inappropriate and extremely invasive to my privacy.+


    +Yeah. Glad I’m not doing it, then. Say, I think one of my canons isn’t manifesting the way it used to. Maybe you can have a look?+


    +That sounds impossible and very concerning. I’ll need to take a look… later. The Imitators… I wish you could see it. It’s… beyond my ability to express.+


    +Beyond your powers of speech? Truly, the dream is about to be realized… Ah. There’s the pout again.+


    +I’m serious! It’s… imagine if something as small as your cells could be part of a super-intelligent chain. Except it doesn’t think. It can’t think. But it can store memory. And it can hyper-adapt to any environment without fail. The surface of the sun… the void… the Sunderwilds. Almost anything.+


    +Like a living demiplane?+


    +It’s not disconnected from reality in any way. More like it bleeds over… And then whatever is in the environment is mirrored and memorized by it. People. Organisms. Ecosystems. Everything there it, it imitates but also splices in a certain way. Like… it mixes people with their location inside the field of false-cognition it generates. So a geographic destination can have a mixture of personalities while the individual people remain separate. The best way I can describe it is its a connected superstructure that is alive but not self-aware but it has a feedback loop with a bunch of self-aware beings its simulating… Agh! It’s… so hard to express, but after putting it in the room with some sacrifices, they ended up having each others memories. A few thought they were each other. But they could still remember themselves. And what’s more, they remember seeing people who were placed inside their deployment cells before. Years before. I’m talking thousands upon thousands of people in the location. It doesn’t seem to have any concept or limit of time or… or–+


    +...How does that work?+


    +I don’t know! That’s what makes it so… so… so special. With this… we carried it into a rupture several times. It’s like reality is hyper-contagious to all its cells. Like it just accepts and adapts into the local structure, chains and all. Some spatial heavens do damage to it though. If you suddenly cut a place in half… It… it starts getting confused. But the parted cell chain relinks!+


    +Jaus. That’s something.+


    +Yeah. I think… I think we can deploy it into the Rupture for the Rash. We can use it to peek inside and try to fix the damage. The Agnosi that made it might have been murdered and the lore destroyed, but using its properties…+


    +Holy hells…+


    +Yes! Yes! I know! I’m going to fix the Rash! The city… intimacy! Contact! Everything. And we won’t need to do things across the Nether anymore!+


    +I… ahem. Yeah.+


    [Kae giggling]


    +What?+


    +Nothing. I just enjoy it when you blush, Dawton.+


    -Intercept of a private conversation between Paladin Dawton Morrow and Agnos Kae Kusanade


    13-1


    What Was Lost (I)


    “Avo,” Kae said while swiping tears from her face, “can you do me a favor and kill yourself?”


    Three sets of eyes just stared at the Agnos. Chambers’ in particular glanced between the woman and the ghoul. “Well, that’s a helluva way to thank someone after they fixed your mind…”


    “Want to see my Frame?” Avo asked.


    “I need to see it.” Kae swallowed. Rage bubbled over her mind like gathering stratocumulus ascending into the shape of a storm. She held a distracted gaze as she spoke, eyes distant as the past once denied weighed on her like an anvil. “I need to see if they were used to make your Frame. When I went in the last time, everything felt like a dream–everything was a haze. But not anymore. I can remember what they did. They used me to kill him and they burned all my friends. I can’t… Avo, please…”


    “Kae. Kae. Take a breath,” Draus said as the Agnos began to ramble faster and faster.


    Kae spun on the Regular, frustration spilling forth from her like a dam. “No! I will not fucking take a breath! I’ve taken enough breaths! I’ve spent enough time as… as an invalid. I want to see the Frame. I want to work. Let me work so I can think–I want to think.”


    The Reg looked away. It took much for Draus to give ground, and fittingly, there was something seismic in the Agnos’ outpouring of grief.


    Denying herself the release of tears, she instead channeled into a need for labor and rose from her chair – locked eyes with Avo as she held the pain crawling her from chest in place. “I need to be useful now. I need to study your Frame. We can go over everything inside after I make certain…” She inhaled mid-rant. “...if they put the Imitators inside you. I think I know what you’re made of, but I have to see and know. I have to!”


    At her state, the Woundshaper uncharacteristically shuffled with discomfort. “Mercy, master. Let the builder indulge her efforts. Let her architect and be away from pain. Do not let her linger in misery so. Such would be so wasteful. Pointlessly wasteful!”


    Surprise sounded from the Galeslither. “You are capable of compassion?”“I am capable of recognizing proper use, you blind-eyed, simple mule,” the Woundshaper snapped back. “She seeks to enter our Domain. To install the steps leading up the tapestry’s ladder. If it is your want to watch her cringe and whimper under the weight of her own emotional fragility then imagine such nonsense on your time. I simply yearn see that she lives up to proper use.”


    “Forgive me,” the Galeslither’s voice rumbled with scorn and judgment, “I thought I felt a breath of nobility dormant inside you. I was wrong.”


    A scoff was the final reply it earned.


    “Fine,” Avo said, opening his claws in a placating gesture. “Let me empty Rend first. Need to talk with you about new canons anyway.”


    And certain other things. She didn’t fully know Walton’s involvement with the wrongs inflicted on her. Avo sought to settle such revelations as soon as he was able to avoid letting the trauma fester.


    She was to find out sooner or later. Best she be treated as her own individual rather than a broken doll to be denied the truth.


    “Do you need to see my Frame too?” Draus asked, stepping forward. She stood with her foot pointed between Kae and Avo, unsure if she should help calm the Agnos down or just let her be. Another uncharacteristic moment in Draus’ life as indecision seized her.


    “No,” Kae said. “Yes.” She immediately changed her answer, letting out an incomprehensible groan. “I mean, later. I want to deal with him first. I need to see the Stillborn. And you too… Chambers?”


    Chambers, for his part, cocked his head back and smiled. “Hells yeah! You remember. We beat the fire.”


    The words made Avo reach out and interface with the near dozen other flames he saved along with the dormant entity frozen in the back of Kae’s mind.


    Chambers’ reply made Kae pause for a beat as well. She let out a soft breath. “Yeah. Winning.” She jolted up. “And… and Essus too. Don’t leave him out. I need to check his Frame as well. Everyone that was grafted by Avo. We can… I''ll think about that when I’m done with him.”


    Draus cast a thought over to Avo. +I don’t think she’s in the right state of mind for this work.+


    +Don’t think she can take not working right now,+ Avo replied.


    The mental affirmation that came from the Regular wasn’t a happy one.


    Collapsing the glass encasing the room, Kae was the first to depart from the doorway. She bumped nose-first into Cas’ chest and shook it off with a muted apology. “Sorry. Don’t talk to me right now. Don’t. I need to do something else. Same thing for you.” Her eyes lingered on all the Silver Denton wore and her face twitched with rage.


    “I know,” Denton said. “Glaive, but not really. I have things to tell you. And memories to give. Do what you need to do first.”


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Kae pressed her lips together and, through immense will, walked past the supposed Silver among them.


    “Kae,” Avo said, “going to vent Rend down the stairs. Can do check there too.”


    She didn’t respond, choosing instead to march past him, a miasma of leaking memories rising from her accretion like steam. He caught flashes her smile pointed at another, the faint feeling of warmth she recalled thrumming in her chest. More details followed – casts exchanged across the Nether. Some of them were conversations while others belonged to a more intimate category.


    Avo didn’t react to the spillover as he stood aside from Kae. The beast wondered how she might taste with all that adrenaline-infused bitterness staining her muscles. Considering how sour her mind was, he doubted he would find her a very special meal.


    As she marched past him to head down the stairs, another conversation caught his attention. Above, on the stairs leading down from the dormitory level, Chambers was kneeling on the steps behind Essus, who had spent much of his time hugging his knees on the landing.


    “...Look, consang, I ain’t got nothing to say that might make you feel better, but if its worth anything, you were plenty nova when you stuck that Guilder-fuck with your wings,” Chambers said. “I mean, that counts for a lot of gleam where I’m from. Guys like us aren’t supposed to be able to kill the FATED.”


    Turning, Avo watched as Chambers’ thoughtstuff pulsed with excitement while Essus wrestled with a fog choked with despair.


    “Why does she need me to die?” Essus asked.


    Chambers clearly had taken it upon himself to deliver the news to the other man. Avo had caught them mid-conversation.


    Draus appeared next to him as she jutted her chin out at the twosome. “What’s happenin’ there?”


    “Chambers. Trying to be charming. Preparing Essus for death later.”


    “Mighty nice of him,” Draus added, though her tone with thick with suspicion. “You tell him to do it?”


    “Went straight for Essus himself.” Chambers was patting the distraught man as he struggled to express himself.


    “You see me. You see how I am now. I am useless to you all. We killed Mirrorhead. I killed…” He held up his hands as his mind brought back flashes of blood intermixed with the budding trauma. Avo considered cutting the memories out from the man’s mind but decided to make the offer later, if only to let him choose.


    He had already been made a Godclad against his will. That was another thing that needed to be settled thereafter.


    Instead of continuing to pat Essus from above, Chambers sat down next to him. “You might’ve been. You were. Hells. We were. But we got Frames now. We’re Godclads. We can finally hold the leash to our own lives–if just a little. You can’t tell me that''s not nova, you gotta want that.”


    “What I want can’t be given,” Essus said. He lowered his head into his hands before closing himself off from the world. Not taking a hint very well, Chambers bent over next to him and kept chattering away, undeterred in his attempts to psyche the other man into “being a ‘Clad.”


    “Getting tired of this,” Avo muttered, studying Essus.


    “What?” Draus replied.


    “Him. Being sad. Need to talk with him later. Ask him if he wants Frame.” A beat passed. Avo turned to face Draus. “You too. We should all make decisions soon. Gave Kae her choices back. Need you all to have the same say. Chambers is certain yes. You and Essus I’m not sure. Didn’t get a chance to accept Frame. Giving you a chance now to reject.”


    For a long moment, she just stared at – and through him.


    Draus shook her head. “Go down. Kae’s waiting. I’ll wrangle the other two and be with you in a bit.”


    Avo grunted. He considered pressing her further, but Draus made her own decisions and he didn’t possess much in the way of verbal persuasion.


    In some ways, she remained as much an enigma to him as he did her.


    As he descended the steps down the level below after Kae, he found the two Columners in a cell off to the side discussing how and when they could approach the Agnos. There was little secrecy in their exchange, being more an open consideration of what topics and memories to offer first for the fullness of detail.


    Sunrise, however, hummed past Avo and followed in his shadow.


    “We would like to observe your demise and return if you would deem it polite.”


    He made his Echoheads chitter and the traveling waves from his additional appendages placed the moving mess of bees behind him. “Fine. Up to Kae though. She’s volatile now. Might not want distraction.”


    “We will be circumspect. We wish to make an offer as well.”


    A dim glow spilled in from the bottom of the steps. On the other side, he could see the faint ripples of Kae’s accretion. Her restored shape still jarred him in the Nether. For too long had he associated her as something burned and broken.


    Things changed. People changed. He changed.


    Taking his silence as acceptance, Sunrise elaborated on the details of its offer. “We wish to accompany you for a time. Assist you. Work with you.”


    That made Avo look over his shoulder at the swarm. “Why?”


    “Interest,” Sunrise said. It sounded entirely honest, but Necrojacks operated in a place just a bit deeper than the surface of things. “And because we wish to compose a proper character report on your behalf toward the Aegis, under Voidwatch. They have official and effective liquidation order on your creators. Considering your capabilities, they will be wary of you as well. But with proper evidence and a witness, I can keep you spared from their attention.”


    The second part interested him more than it did worry. “Voidwatch. There was a war between them and Noloth, yes?”


    “Not a true war,” Sunrise said. “But the Low Masters have inflicted harm and full-cessations on several cores. They remain classified as a major threat. As will you by the broader polities if not registered.”


    He let out a low growl in consideration.


    “I don’t need an answer immediately. Just keep this in mind. In the meantime, I will offer you what insight and services I can.”


    It dissolved past him in scattered streams of insects, but from the wake of the swarm was cast a specific sequence of memories. Avo drew it into his Metamind and found it to be pre-arranged for his Auto-Seance.


    He would use a separate locus to connect. He didn’t trust the bioform. Not yet. But things were getting increasingly interesting.


    Emerging out the fourth level of the demiplane, he found an outcropping of rock flanking the stairs leading to a near-mile-long pocket of space once filled with mud, sand, soil, and stone. Now a pond of blood he connected to for his dives, earlier converting the matter that remained after expelling his Rend,, he found Kae standing over the crimson waters staring at her own reflection.


    To both sides of her were the jutting heads of Rendsinks still quivering the ground about with spatial-distorting Rend. Avo had uncovered them earlier during his preparations, and here he left them untouched and unearthed.


    Casting out his entropy as a barrage, he smote a two-hundred-foot-long gouge out from the soil to his left as his Rend drained away to nothing. He hadn’t been operating on much earlier to begin with. Eighteen percent, now nothing.


    Turning, Kae regarded him with a harrowed gaze. “Good. Here. Let’s see.” She began patting at her coat. He guessed she was looking for manticore–the agent she used to snuff him the first time she entered his death using her False-Hev.


    “Don’t bother,” Avo said. “I’ll just use my Echoheads. Or fuse a spike through my skull.”


    She immediately stopped rubbing through her pockets and spat out a shaky breath. “Okay. Good. Thanks.”


    He came to a stop ten feet away from her. The ground beneath their feet was nothing but unevenly sheared sediment caked in smears of grainy mud. She folded her arms and fidgeted while he just stared at her.


    She was too tense to offer him words. He didn’t know what to say–if anything–that could make her feel better.


    So he didn’t. “Kae. Might need to hurt you more before I kill myself. Don’t want to hide this from you.”


    She closed her eyes and opened them again. With a muted frown, she reached up and brushed the veil covering her clan mark back. The character of her line looked like a severed spring. “Talk.” She choked the words out.


    He nearly held himself back from speaking. But spoke anyway. She needed to know. She deserved to know.


    There was no point in denying someone the architect of their torment.


    “My father revealed what you were doing to Ori-Thaum.” She lifted her head and her mouth slackened in a soft expression of alarm. “Is also the one who sent Draus to save you. Don’t know why he did it. Have a guess. Think it was all for me. As a distraction. Something like that.”


    Another silence stretched, and she weathered the moment of quietude most poorly. “What the fuck,” she whispered. “Why? Just… why? What did I do? I was just trying to help people and use what I was making to fix the Rash. Why? Why was I burned for that.” She chortled back a sob that threatened to break through her walls. “Why did they have to kill Dawton for that.”


    Avo winced as she spoke the man’s name. The sheer hurt that radiated from her rattled his wards.


    COG-CAP: 11%


    “I’m sorry,” Avo said.


    Kae fixed him with a blank look. “Are you, Avo? Are you really?”


    A beat passed. “No,” Avo admitted “Didn’t do anything wrong. Fixed your mind. Feel I’m getting hungry with how most of your eyes are. Can take away some memories if you want. Reduce the pain.”


    She coughed out a laugh. The genuine but pain-stained bloom of her smile was a welcome return. It fit her expression far better than the anger or sorrow that still loomed within her so. “Thanks. But no. I… appreciate your honesty but I just don’t have enough in me to think about that right now. One more request: Can I kill you?”


    Avo blinked. “You… want to kill me.”


    She nodded. “I’m going to pretend that you’re someone else. It’s selfish and I know it’s not right and I’m equating you to the Incubi and Walton and… and…” Her voice trailed off as he constructed a mono-tipped spear in the air before her. “Oh.” She sniffed. “I–uh, never actually stabbed anyone before.”


    He shrugged. “Grab shaft. Angle point at victim. Move point into victim as fast as possible.”


    She took the weapon he made for her in shaking hands. “So. I just…” She mimed spearing into him.


    “The head,” Avo said. “Body won’t be that useful.” He let out a hiss of annoyance. “Here. I’ll help.” Directing the spear with his Sanguinity, he pushed it into her shaking hands and unhinged his jaw before crouching in close so she could stab up through the roof of his mouth. From his sides, he expelled a breath of entropy into the ground and carved another section of matter away.


    His Rend vanished again.


    Kae drew in a few quick breaths and let her hate build. Securing her grip on the weapon, she leaned back and pushed forward.


    His Phys-Sim flashed with indications. She didn’t have the mass, the weight, or the right vector. At best, she was going to pop one of his fangs off and then tumble over.


    Making a snap-decision, he decided the expression of her will mattered more than the execution of it.


    He caught the haemokinetic spear and drew it into proper position before gifting her a pull.


    It was a strange thing, to be assisting in one’s own murder.


    But seeing how the ire finally burst free from her thoughtstuff as the tip of the spear slipped through his inner flesh and tunneled into his brain, he decided that the demand for a death or two really didn’t matter when supply was essentially limitless.


    The world spiked and flashed as his thoughts came to an abrupt pause. Something occupied the space of his cerebellum. That something levered up and the world smeared into flashing lights and drooping color.


    Then, everything went out of focus.


    RESURRECTION - 1%