Honestly, sir, I’m struggling to describe the sheer amount of damage we sustained.
Let’s begin with the worst of it. Oversec-C1 is finished. The lobby’s dead. No point in ducking around that. A good percentage of superstructure one is completely hollow–sequences, memories, phantasmics just missing – all of it! I can’t even begin to put the damage into words.
Traumas break things by fragmenting ghosts. There are still pieces and artifacts thrown free into the Nether. Debris! They don’t just get eradicated or burned away…
And yeah, I don’t know what that thing was. I… I’ve never seen a phantasmic like that. Like a fire, but… the way it moved and just swallowed our patterns was impossible. It defies everything I know about Necrotheurgy.
It’s telling that how compromised our systems were is now considered a secondary matter. We have assets digging around. Last we heard the “blaze” was spotted moving through the Unwhere, and some of the people managed to trap it by ejecting a prisoner out into the void.
…Uh, yeah, they ejected Abrel Greatling–but she’s alive. And her mind’s fine. Voidwatch has made contact with her. She seems to have been minimally affected by the ordeal. They’re currently transporting her to one of their logistics orbitals for temporary detention so we can send someone up to dive through her mind for any damages or points of subversion.
Yes… yes, she was severely nulled earlier. We believe that her implants might have been affected by her disconnection from Unwhere transit causing her death and resurrection.
No, she has been compliant. No attempts at escape. She just wants more meat, weirdly. They said she ate an entire cloned pig-head and spent a lot of time suckling on the eye sockets.
At least she’s not trying to get away. That’s one thing I guess we can be glad about.
Recommendations? Well, most the Oversecs are going into deep lockdown, so expect our administrative powers to take a plunge. We’re going to have to spin this for the press and Guilds too. Tone down how bad things were so none of the colors decide to get stupid right now.
The half-strands are already gearing up to fight a silent war. Stormtree, Ori-Thaum, Highflame… We got their usual suspects squaring up again. We’re just not going to be any condition respond as reactively as we used to. We might need to put out direct monitoring platforms to deal with any Wombrash outbreaks.
As for the Fallwalker problem we were facing… with our systems gutted, it’s going to be hell tracking them, so I got an idea, but you’re not going to like it.
We use them. We use them against each other. We keep them mired in their own little dispute by provoking a false flag of our own. Nothing too severe. Just enough to spook them. That way, they’ll be too busy glaring at each other instead of setting up their cults in the Warrens.
-Exorcist-Executor Jaemander Mause to Paladin Maru Sandrupal
14-2
In the Skin of My Victims
When the session opened, four Incubi came. Four to ensure the mind of a rival Godclad belonged to them for the wars to come. Four to seek out and remedy any unknown egos still festering in their domain.
Four came through the tunnel of conjoined memories.
Four burned away without ever comprehending what killed them.
In the end, all they knew was fire, and so too did the fire know of them.
[Mental templates collected. New designations Shadow-1, Shadow-2, Shadow-3, Shadow-4. Proxy-protected–no direct link to personal minds. But still connected to their bodies.]
Abrel was practice.
As Avo internalized the new knowledge seized from his disgested enemies, he cultivated new components within his base mind, things to help him sequence faster, identify emotional resonances faster, and additional techniques to better seed memories with his influence.
Much of what he gained wasn’t quite as useful now that he existed as an out-and-loud entity in the Nether, but they still offered him a better understanding of his enemies. Mastery over their weaknesses and operational shortcomings.
Shortcomings he was going to exploit to learn the limits of his new state of being.
While Abrel embarked on her return to life, he was going to make proper use of his time. He was going to tear away a mind belonging to someone within the inner echelons of Ori-Thaum. A Mirror-Concave running one of their operational cells, to be exact.
Such a template would be most useful for both him and Kae for future plans he was still in the process of conceiving. To see them come to fruition demanded a deeper understanding on his part of Ori-Thaum’s functional structure and culture. That, and his subminds told him it would be a nice gesture on his part to locate and secure all the players involved in the disruption of Kae’s life.
Regardless, using Shadow-1 was the easiest way of getting to Concave. As the leader of the cell, he held unique clearances and sequences that the others didn’t. Among these privileges was a direct session with the dive commander himself, Mirror-Concave.
Avo didn’t know this Concave was the same one that ran the overall operation for what happened moments earlier in Oversec-C1, but such inquiries would be known to him soon.
All it took was the right repetition of memories channeled into his Auto-Seance.
***
A cast came through for Benhata Veloso through his Auto-Seance, and Shadow-1’s Meta-ident splashed across his cog-feed. Squinting in confusion, Benhata Veloso filtered through his near-term memories of when he gave the green light for the dive to secure Abrel Greatling.
The mem-data told him the operation began just two minutes ago.
Why was Shadow-1 calling him now?
Rubbing at his tired eyes, he let the memories repeat in his Auto-Seance for a moment, something in him reluctant to connect with the session. From the whispers leaking through the inner office, a shitshow of epic proportions was brewing. Rumors about another Concave losing over twenty Incubi in a single dive to some unknown Ad-Necs.
Anxiety and apprehension filled his insides like simmering steam.
He didn’t really want any part of that mess. His promotion had been recent, and up till three hours ago, he thought he was about perform another easy hop into the position of Mirror-Convex and get his own dive-circle to command.
Now? Now he was fighting the urge to just hang up for fear of getting any bad news at all.
Just losing a few Incubi destroyed some careers, and he gave far too much to get out of the “slaughterhouse” with all the years he sacrificed serving as a Glaive.
Letting out a sigh, he looked across his desk at the flechette pointed upward at the ceiling. He stared at it for a long moment, and along its facets, scenes from the Fourth Guild War began to play.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
He really should have died when that went into his heart. But he didn’t. His sister managed to cut it out of him and keep him alive.
He remembered the way she smiled as she pulled the glinting metal out from his chest. He also remembered the way her skull burst apart like a wet sack filled with viscera as one of her chipped teeth buried itself in his eye.
He should die then. Nothing would be worse than those days.
Nothing.
“I survived it,” Benhata breathed. He reached out and ran his thumb along its length. “I survived.” He swallowed. His session was still sounding. His sister would have called him a coward for letting it go for so long. “Yeah,” he laughed. “What was that you said? ‘My brother is always brave eventually.’”
He nodded. “Well, you were never wrong, Letta.”
Benhata accepted Shadow-1’s call.
Fire erupted through and consumed him.
The last coherent thought he had before his self-awareness withered into nothing was of how the flames seemed to crackle with mocking laughter.
***
[This one is a new Concave. Low-quality catch.]
[Still a Concave. Good enough.]
[Maybe. Maybe not. Use him and see.
[Compiling template. Installing mind into Benhata’s vessel.]
[DeepNav has us at Yumatori, Undercroft. Back. Back in the Tiers again.]
[No. Never been here. Remember. Those aren’t our memories. Not really. We might not have been alive then.]
Squeezing himself into the hollow wound he left in place of a mind, he adapted himself to fit the vacancy perfectly. Connecting to the body’s systems and senses was like welding metaphysical structures back together using his thoughts.
The flesh woke first with a blink, and then with a shudder. A cog-feed different from his own loaded over Benhata’s already augmented perception. The man’s optical implants filtered everything in perfect visual detail, and Avo found there were three more vision modes for him to toggle through alongside a [X50] vision magnification option.
Before he could indulge himself, however, he let out an involuntary gasp as a foul scent hit him, the taste almost making him gag. He wasn’t used to flavors funneled through baseline nostrils. It all felt so… raw. Simple. Just bad and foul, missing all the other intimate little details.
Still, it wasn’t hard to discover what he was smelling. The warmth caked against his flesh around his hips and the sudden wetness about his groin told him that the Concave experienced a final act of relief before coming undone, unknowing avenging themselves upon Avo via this indignity.
He grunted. He shifted in the chair. His expensive suit squelched with slippery excrement as something hot slid down his leg.
“Godsdammit,” Avo said, channeling Benhata more than he did himself. “I haven''t shit myself like that since the war.” He gave a weak chuckle and reduced the existential dread climbing in the template as he slowly considered the indignity of his final fate.
Wait. Not his. He was Avo. Not Benhata.
[Careful. Don’t want to burrow too deep. Might forget who we are for a while. Need to keep some base mind in place.]
[Needs more balancing.]
Avo felt some of the strain lift off his mind and he shook his head and pushed himself up using his soft leather chair. The room around him was decorated with ivory and raw vivianite–the foundational structure of every locus in its most unmodified form.
Some shit tumbled out of his pant leg and settled next to his ankle, but he ignored that. Instead, he constructed a dozen Whispers and spread his perception wide in all directions, scouting the structure he resided in.
He resisted the urge to expand his Sanguinity for now. Using his Woundshaper would give him a more tactile understanding of the building itself, but a pulsing field of blood was somewhat less than subtle.
As was a burning Metamind for that matter, but from afar, his accretion looked much the same as any other, if the size and brightness of his halo were to be discounted.
[Counting 3,412 other minds across five floors. This place is already ten times the size of Conflux’s block. Think we’re actually in a demiplane too.]
[Yes. Had to adjust routes for Whispers multiple times. Used template’s memories to avoid patrols. Local N-Def runs modified Specters. Call them Skimmers. Dangerous. Hard to notice. There are loci embedded in the walls as well.]
His ghosts infused additional detail into the DeepNav-generated layout of the block. Presently, Benhata’s recollections told him the Javelin of Orsoso was an interesting structure. Instead of being at the top of its five hundred stories of height, he was instead dwelling in the reflection of the pond spread out around it.
The physical structure itself was a smokescreen, much like many things were in Ori society. A pearlescent tower lined with silvery decals and decorated with grand whorls containing flowing mercury along its side, the interior of the edifice was maze-like in its own way, with walls solidifying and vanishing based on one’s clearance level.
As Concave, he could walk through approximately sixty-six percent of the building that was open to him, with another fifteen made available should he make Convex.
Of course, walking out this office and exposing himself to the loci would bring about questions. Questions like: “Why is your Metamind on fire, Benhata? Say, that looks like one of our Conflagrations. How’d that happen.”
If that was to happen, things would be troublesome.
Thankfully, Avo had another few experiments he wished to conduct.
Should they be successful, the Ori might just be none the wiser about his presence.
Drawing his fiery tendrils of thoughtstuff back into himself, he braced himself as he manifested his Incog phantasmic. An opalescent sun ignited at the center of his mindscape, and from it grew a special skin of writhing ghosts burning with perception-ablative sequences.
The question that followed was simple: Before, when he was running his Incog, all his other phantasmics needed to be dormant to avoid disrupting its functions.
Now, however, he could consume things using his thoughtstuff alone, with all his ghosts being flammable, and all that burned within him spreading his ego like a plague.
He reached out and brushed a dual-faceted security locus just twenty feet outside his office door. His approach came gingerly, with Benhata’s inherent nervousness amplifying his own exponentially.
Avo’s translucent ghosts inched over into the beam of perception projected by the ghosts within the locus. He slid through the field of notice unseen, but sparks of trauma flecked free from his external shell like sparking embers with each passing instant. The act felt like someone was pressing a glowing brand into the depths of his skull. Hissing, he pulled his thoughtstuff back and caught himself against the table before he could collapse from the spiking migraine.
[Seems we’re as much of our phantasmics as we are the memories.]
[Makes sense.]
The pain dissolved with a thought as the Eaters forming the sinews of his cognition cauterized the damage. Another downside to his phantasmal transcendence, but not a displeasing one. If he adapted his template to be more resistant to pain or focused on mending himself to sustain against external attention, perhaps he could endure better.
Just as he prepared to make his second attempt, one of his subminds chimed in.
[Abrel’s alive again.]
[Mem-data seems to indicate that she’s stable.]
[Peeking through our compromised Exorcists too. No reports of note. Voiders picked her up. Moving her to orbital for now. Can jack back into her when she’s alone and unnoticed again. We will keep watch.]
“Alright,” Avo said, “and good work.” He nodded and clicked his tongue.
He paused. That felt at once all too natural and also entirely unbecoming of him.
[Don’t like Benhata. His template’s too nice. Likes to compliment people too much.]
[Clicking your tongue makes me hungry for tongues.]
[Yes. Tongues. Soft. Cartilage.]
[Goes well with eyes.]
Avo had to manually tone down his urges before he got hungry enough to bite down and eat his own flesh. The last thing he needed was to develop an autosarcophagy habit while adapted to someone else’s body. The additional dose of disgust he got from “being” Benhata helped ward against the bloodlust as well.
Making his second attempt to interface with the security locus, he shifted more of his mind using sequences adapted from Talon-4 and Shadow-3 as he entered the field of notice again. Perception gnawed against his skin of impermeability, but this time the pain was far easier to push through, with its intensity fading into the backdrop as he speared up into the locus.
And subsumed it.
[Yes!]
[Yes!]
Yes.
Even with the Incog active, he could still affect other people and cognitive constructs. The new drawback suddenly didn’t seem so severe anymore.
Rising up from behind his desk, Avo drew in a deep breath and brushed back his shoulder-length head of hair. He paused mid-action. Hair. Another thing he wasn’t used to having.
Shaking free from his distracted thoughts, he made for the door and decided to take a stroll around his new workplace, uncaring of the trail of filth he left behind him.
It’s a shame that Benhata Veloso would end the day by slitting his own throat open and detonating his own mind after a disastrous dive under his command, thus ensuring that not even a phylactery would bring him back to life. But such things weren’t unheard of.
In the meantime, he decided to put his newfound memories to better use.
It was time to see if he could get anything out of Ori-Thaum’s hidden echelons.