My first encounter with our erstwhile kin was of pure chance. Born to worship the Seraphs and bred from the genetic stock of the Proselytizes, mine was the duty of ensuring compliance and accord among all members of the faith, and it is with great sourness that I look back upon the conduct of my youngest days.
Always I have sought mountains to climb and giants to chain. It was never a thing of triumph for me, but exploration. I seek limits–borders. Such was what led me toward my efforts to ensure that populations recently conquered or notably unruly were brought to heel.
Such then, was to be my life–a motivated servant who masked his personal pleasures of exploration under the guise of piousness.
Then came our first battles against the Ori. Those long savage years throwing bodies to stem their armadas from burning our shores as the gods tore the skies asunder, wrestling with each other to the toll of thousands dead between every heartbeat. Gentler days, those were. Without means of preserving each death, each miracle came at a cost, and without proper containment, each clash tore through the Chosen and savaged the tapestry around them.
In the throes of one such desperate struggle, I volunteered myself to be a vessel of might. I will neglect the name of the god, for that which is broken is best left regarded as a silent ruin, but know that such was the first true day of my life–the day when my wife-to-be, with her Glaive fueled by a divine master of her own, cleaved through me and split my lord instead.
The world ruptured then, as it always had when such things happened. But with the breaking wound delivered upon my god’s hubris, I found myself delivered alongside my supposed enemy to a place far beneath the waves, within the guts of a metallic beast long slumbering, with the people it swallowed frozen in time.
It is there that my chains were broken for the first time. Mine, and that of the surviving armadas yet wandering the darkness.
They freed me from my ignorance.
I offered them a point of refuge in this sea of tumult we call existence.
And in the delving of forbidden histories and past glories, I finally imbibed the true taste of sorrow as I realized just how very much we lost.
-Jaus Avandaer
15-17
Threshold (II)
Silence was complex language. On the antiquated wooden vessel, Avo stared at the stranger, their gazes locked and unblinking while Denton’s gaze traveled across the waters to pierce the mists and further still.
Avo took the measure of the unknown entity and regarded his costume as gaudy. Robes rugged without being ragged, appearing paradoxically pristine and worn simultaneously. His face told a similar story–weathered skin and missing eye but no other scars to speak of. Paired with the animals that accompanied him, the stranger resembled a figure manifested from qualities described by a secondhand source; a bearer of a mythological atmosphere.
The iconoclasm within their damage meant something. It was all too neat to be otherwise. A lifetime of violence left its touch in capricious strokes. What afflicted the stranger was something far more deliberate.
“Are you some kind of faither?” Avo asked, breaking the quiet. The stranger offered a capitulation of their own, blinking in a display of sudden humanity as he rubbed his chapped lips together.
“I suppose you may regard that of me,” the Stranger said. “I am a representative avatar more than a worshipper, however. The system has manifested me to prime your interest. I hold the guise of an old god playing at a man. A theme strides between us in inversion.”
Avo considered the stranger’s words and disagreed. “No.”
The flint of interest was struck behind the stranger’s eye for the first time.
“You aren’t real. And I’m no longer so singular. This front… does it work on other Godclads? Your appeal to mythology. Don’t see the worth of it.”
The stranger’s jowls tightened and he offered a quiet nod. One of his wolves twisted its head and laid curious eyes on the post-ghoul. “Most Godclads find me someone worth mocking. The vagaries of my powers are long lost to history, and the nature of being a figurative god rather than a literal one leaves little impression on those who can abuse the fabric of metaphysical reality. Many ask me what miracles I possess and what becomes of me at the end of my tale. Many more ask what kind of god would portray themselves as a maimed man.”
“What is your answer to the last question?” Avo asked.
The stranger hummed a low laugh. “A desperate one.”
A shadow fell over Avo and he found himself entering the cavernous hall beneath a crystal-clear portcullis. The entire affair had the taste of a fanciful vicarity wrapped in the mold of a Kosgan fairytale. Or maybe this was another deliberately maintained similarity. How much culture belonged to Idheim alone? How much was forgotten but inherited regardless?
“Would you like to hear some advice before the proceedings begin?” the stranger asked, leaning closer. So bright was the gleam in his single eye that it appeared as if a burning piece of coal, even in daylight. “Let your truth flow. We can accept you. We can reject you. We see enough to see the truth of your nature. What’s left is how we present ourselves, and reactions behind our actions.”
“Honesty,” Avo breathed. “Not hard.”
A ghost of a smirk crawled over the stranger’s features. “Depends on the person. For some, it’s all but impossible, and they would give anything–even an eye–to see if they can escape a predestined end.” The shrug that followed felt far too rehearsed. “Such, however, is just mythology. It’s what we do with our beliefs that reveal the manifestations of character.”
Avo clicked his fangs together but didn’t speak. Something about this conversation plucked at his suspicion like a string. The nature of this dialogue felt too familiar, too supportive, too comforting.
These words were engineered for him and him alone. He knew that. More than this though, there was a strange familiarity to it all.
Walton.
This was reminiscent of remembered conversations with Walton.
A twang of anger shuddered through Avo and he almost dissolved it using his Conflagration before recalled the conditions of his connectivity. Letting the feeling simmer, Avo glared upon the stranger with ire for the first time.
“Want to give you some advice in return. Will you hear it?”
The man before him went still, the wolves at his feet turned their heads to stare at the ghoul, and the ravens on his shoulder cocked their heads. Five different reactions for a single unexpected comment. The stranger was not designed to be a good gambler. His deception was offensive. Or perhaps Voidwatch deliberately designed them to act in such a manner.
Regardless, he would have his say as well.
Judgment was a double-edged blade, after all.
“I am more than the research you did on me,” Avo said, keeping the slavering growl out from his words. “I am more than the past woven into my mind. More than the thing Walton built. More than every fault or flaw I once exhibited. Shackle anyone else to your expectations. Drop the chains with me.”
Silence. Curiosity. Consideration.
The stranger lowered his head and spoke again, but this time, his words weren’t directed at Avo. “You weren’t wrong about his ego.”
“It’s quite constrained comparatively,” Denton answered.
“Alright,” the stranger said, leaning back on his haunches. “We can do open-minded.” He seemed to dissolve then, the shift in his voice dropping away like his facade.
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Fading particulates of weathered, wrinkled skin and travel-worn robes flaked to uncover something akin to a star. A cyclopean machine hovered, streams of trickling nano-foglets undulated like strings of sunlight making a triple-stacked “x” shape at the brilliant core of the construct. Forming its centermost matter was a mesh of fluid silicon and polished metal.
There was a perfection to its design that he couldn’t quite place, and deep in his Frame, the Woundshaper boiled with admiration. “What curves–what angles! What perfection to the shape! Find this mechanism, master. Find it so I might bring it into my embrace. I long for its patterns…”
“EGI?” Avo asked.
“Now you’re just being broad,” the mechanical mind replied. He could feel its presence pressing against his Heaven of Signals somehow but found it beyond grasp when he sought to reach out for it. His Domain taunted him here, with awareness granted but canons useless to achieve desired contact. “You may call me, ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Wanderer.’ Or Calvino, if you’re a fan of brevity. I will serve as your point of contact for this interview.”
Avo’s Echoheads rattled and he studied how Denton just stared on, watching the happenings without a word. “What is she? Isn’t she human enough to serve?”
“Oh, no, our esteemed Denton-12 is far too biased to serve as your interviewer. You have impressed her three times over–and how am I to blame her.” The orb was far more chipper than the stranger it pretended to be.
Avo wondered what was the deeper point behind the pretense. “You don’t sound very impressed.”
“I can be. Much like you possess the means to attune your mind to new moods and fancies, so too can I alter my state of thought. I suppose we are quite alike in such a way. Only that I’m older and of a system far more grounded.”
“And the stranger. Why the guise.”
“Oh. The mythological aspects tied to a human face usually bridge well with other Godclads. I was curious how you might treat old Odin, and I suppose you didn’t disappoint. I must say–as a point of digression–that you would make for a far more interesting Grendel than the old stories portray. But one shudders at the thought of poor Beowulf facing a beast such as you.”
Words were spoken. Names were invoked. References were made. Avo knew none of them. With each passing exchange, he felt an ache build alongside jealousy. Such was another expression of his hunger, he supposed. Ignorance burned inside him, but ignorance also starved. Calvino knew much more than he did, and that was all it took for him to yearn for what the machine had.
Oh, how tempting the of burning this entire place into his mind was. How hard he strained his will denying himself such delights.
A loud groan of metal drew his attention back to the castle, and Avo felt the waters rushing along the bridge flow faster as an aged portcullis rose high.
Calvino toned a mechanical sigh. “I was never much a fan of these Arthurian themes, but I loathe arguing with Threshold over the backdrop. It has such a terrible personality. Perhaps it might listen to a request made by you, seeing as you are its newest guest–oh, no, a newborn has logged in. Too late.” A peal of laughter followed, and Avo narrowed his eyes.
“Tired of this. Should get this interview started. Finished. See things done. Still have much to do elsewhere.”
“Oh, yes, your many plans have been quite noted. You might be delighted to know that the assessment has already begun–has begun since the first moment you entered Threshold. The conversational aspect will continue throughout, but I must confess, it is how you will perform in the scenarios I am most interested in.”
“Scenarios?” Avo asked. He shot Denton a look but her bland smile didn’t offer any insight.
“Oh, yes,” Calvino said, gliding just beside Avo as one of its nanomolecular tendrils draped itself across his shoulder. “Tell me, has Zein ever uttered the words ‘kobayashi maru’ to you?”
Nothing rose from the sea of his recollections. Avo frowned. “No. What does it mean.”
The EGI didn’t respond immediately. Instead, it offered an unneeded exhale as the cavernous tunnel they traveled down grew immensely brighter. “I suppose your time with her has been short. The concept is simple: it is the idea of a no-win exercise. A situation where failure and certain defeat are the only paths forward. The direct translation of the ancient texts, however, can be understood as ‘little wooden boat.’”
And with the conclusion Calvino’s sentence, Avo felt something strike the underside of their vessel. Peeking over the side, he found the waters no longer crystalline clear, but murky and dark, growing increasingly stained with blood.
Now this was far more thematically appropriate for a creature like him.
Dipping one of his Echoheads into the red, he tasted the ichor and knew of the flavor immediately.
This was the blood of his kind. This was the taste of another ghoul.
Something struck the underside of the boat, and an awful click followed. The sensations felt as if someone was trying to claw their way through the wood, and Avo let out a slight hiss of annoyance at the situation. He shot a glare at the floating orb. “Little wooden boat.”
“Quite literal, but it gets the point across. I must say, the expression never gets old.”
“Was expecting a bit more maturity from hyper-intelligent machine-minds. Is the vessel going to capsize?”
The EGI bobbed. “Well, that is a possible transition. Now stop taking the fun out of things and anticipating. Let your inhibitions loose. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Adventures get you snuffed,” Avo said. He speared four of his Echoheads underwater and bade them to chitter. The waters rush did nothing to impede his senses, but when his phantom touch spread, he beheld nothingness drifting through the dark below him.
Frowning at Calvino, he extracted his limbs from the wetness. “Deloaded them?”
“Maybe. You’ll have to ask Threshold.”
“Poor sportsman–”
The boat burst apart beneath him in a sprawl of splinters. Plunging into the red, Avo drank in a mouthful of simulated blood as he turned into a swim, seeking to locate the EGI and Denton once more.
Voidwatch was kind enough to keep his Echoheads functional as they always were, so traversing the currents offered little difficulty.
There was just the small problem of the water surface being opposite what he remembered, and the falling pieces of metal spilling down into the depths.
Dappled light from the direction his talons were pointed, and he turned to right his ascent. The deepness of his plunge suddenly seemed far greater than it had been earlier, but Avo paid it no heed.
Nothing surprised him here. Nothing would shake him.
He treated his present situation as a mem-sim he was indulging. The parameters remained beyond his control, but he could still escape via disconnection or death.
Rising from deep waters, Avo found himself emerging from a warm bathtub instead. The symbol of DynaCleanse–a Highflame utilities subsidiary–was the first thing that caught his attention with its design being a kraken scrubbing a ship using multiple bars of soap.
The second was the howling sobs coming from the open door leading out from the bathroom.
Bathroom. That probably indicated he wasn’t in a simulation of the Warrens then. Or at least high up in the Warrens. Stepping out, slots in the mirror folded over to offer him utensils for cleaning as he made his quiet egress. He had to dip and squeeze to even slip out from the doorway, but as he stepped through the other side, he could hear choking gasps paired with a litany of pained pleas coming from an open room just a turn away.
The apartment was narrow but of a high quality. This was a working family, but a comfortable one. Already, he felt the intruder. He wondered why Aegis or Voidwatch or whatever else they desired to call themselves had spawned him here.
“So,” Calvino said, voice humming loud in the back of Avo’s mind in a sudden instant. The ghoul caught himself before he jolted and gave a low hiss. “Are you ready to begin formally begin the operative assessment process? Time to face the weight of our actions.”
“What are you planning?” Avo asked.
“Go inside. You’ll see.”
Pestered by the feeling that he was being herded, Avo used his Echoheads to sense the path forward before he stepped in. There were two individuals hugging a third that lay dormant on a jacking station. The room was decorated with other items of furniture and a yet-spinning locus.
Carefully, he inched his head into the room and watched as a man and a woman shook and pleaded for their obviously nulled juvenile son to wake back up.
The boy’s smooth brown skin and golden blonde hair triggered no memories within Avo. He had no idea who or what he was supposed to notice.
“That’s because he didn’t matter to you. At least, he didn’t matter to you when you fried his mind. Remember how you spiked that vicarity? That day when you freed all those refugees.”
Suddenly, Avo knew what Calvino was talking about.
Req. The Scalpers. The run Draus took him on after what Walton’s node made him do.
“This is one of them?” Avo asked. “One of the nulled.”
When he spoke the words, he expected Calvino to give him an answer.
What he didn’t expect was for the boy’s parents to turn and face him.