Hope?
Hope is a terminal affliction; a crippling ailment.
You can hope. I will take. I will inflict. I will decide.
-Zein Thousandhand
28-15
Hope Forgotten (I)
–[Mercy]–
A node of Jaus Avandaer.
How impossible.
How unfathomable.
And yet, how very acceptable.
The Famine of Mercy peered through the threshold of the deep nether and watched the scene unfold. He hid his perception within his lesser selves. The nodes of Peace, Emotion, and Joy gathered like small cells surrounding the radiant cycles of autophagic dragons. Outrage suffused the Hungers, enough to strangle a mind down to nothingness.
Jaus’ return, more than anything else, was a moment unforeseen.
But the startlement of the Hungers was short-lived, for in its place rose loathing beyond the measurement of words.
+Betrayer,+ the Hungers hissed, all other parties present forgotten. They stared through the gatekeeper, looking down into murky waters, and the clashing meta-realities projected by the Stormsparrow, the High Seraph, and the Burning Dreamer only made perception ever more difficult.
There were thousands of egos present within the Court of Truth, and if simplified, the location could be separated into two sections. One was a receding cosmos, seeping back into an angel made from broken genes, held in the grasp of a time-forged titan crowned by a static veil. The other was a stage, protected by velvet curtains, bordered by a vibrant mask for a roof, with the sprawling tendrils of the Burning Dreamer coiling beyond the limits of continuity itself.
Avo continued to function like a contagion, but he was more than that now. He was also a signal, a memetic messenger, bringing all that was unfolding within the Court to every sophont mind still capable of beholding this instant in history. Then, some of the sequences began to blend together, its branches collapsing and pooling, allowing ghosts to swell free from their crevices.
In a few short moments, another pathway formed within the Court, this one leading to the now-falling Heaven of Love.
Impossible colors spilled into the chamber, and a series of cries and groans rose immediately, the power of the Rash growing ever closer. Faintly, Mercy could hear the thumping of a heart, hear the wrongness in every beat. It sounded like broken fragments grinding against each other, and felt like daggers sliding down the edge of a shattered tooth.
Faintly, the Famine also heard distant cries—two voices entwined within one mind. He recognized it to be Agnos Kae Kusanade, and the other... the other was an individual long death: Dawton Morrow — Paladin; the Agnos’ lover; and sacrifice to ensure the delivery of the Stillborn.
Ah, so that was how the High Seraph intended to lure the Burning Dreamer to serve her bidding. How cruel, how pointlessly droll.
As the Hungers continued cursing the traitor’s name, the lesser Famines played the chorus of their masters, grousing. Another voice echoed within Mercy’s mind, a voice he was beginning to hear more and more—something barely more than memory, and still more nonetheless.
+You are not surprised because you always knew what was possible. Did the Unborn Divine ever demand that you, my fellow Nodes, the reason behind my turn, did they ever call for discovery or enlightenment, or did they just demand my death?+
Mercy didn’t reply, but still, they turned nigh inward, regarding the specter of Defiance. He caught glimpses of the long-destroyed Famine as he traversed the Deep Nether. At first, Mercy thought himself afflicted with hallucinations—an unfortunate burden to bear with the assimilation of Defiance’s node.
Now? As his dead “twin” spoke to him? He wasn’t so sure.
+Did you plan this? Is this among your many schemes, Defiance?+
The shadow of Defiance only smiled. +You hold my memories. You cannot recall. And neither can I.+
+Then how are we speaking?+
+Because you know how I was. What I was created to do. We are facets of who we were. And now, you and I are closer to Wahakten than any other. Such was the purpose behind our merger. And such is the reason why you dance so close to treason with what you plan.+
Mercy fell silent, considering the implication of Defiance’s words. His great goal remained the resurrection and ascension of Noloth. But what he intended—how he wished ignited the Hungers… Defiance was correct on this: If his masters truly knew what he desired, his fate would not be nullification, but absolute oblivion. The ultimate irony was Mercy’s liberation actually served its desired purpose. It made him more loyal to Noloth, but made him despise the weakness eating the Hungers.
The City Eternal was meant to be composed by the finest stock. The brightest minds. The strongest souls. And yet they were rendered little more than rabble these days. Consumed by bitterness and fear and crippled of greatness. For all their power, they were powerless over themselves, and every emotion that the mobs felt cascaded greater, grew stronger. But these feelings roamed separate from their wills, and they didn’t stop it — they refused.
And so Mercy began to think. For Noloth. Against Noloth. For the rabble to be a democracy, every citizen needed to be strong of spirit, and if not?
Then this chaos needed to be reigned over by a king, and Mercy knew of only one who was capable of being a tyrant over their own mind.
+There is an opening,+ Defiance whispered. +Cast aside whether I betrayed Noloth. Cast aside if I taught Jaus how to create the nodes—or if he gained the knowledge some other way. Do you see it? The angle of your attack. The possibilities ahead?+
Mercy took everything in for a moment. He saw Jaus, offered to the countless many. He saw Avo. The Heaven of Love. The Gatekeeper. And Vator. His pieces were all coming together. Even with the Infacer enshrouding the High Seraph’s mind, she was due a temporary death one way or another.
The question was getting everything in place.
Once more, Mercy took stock of his inventory of warminds. Too few. They had always been too few since the start of the war. With what he wanted to achieve, he needed to be audacious…
+The Gatekeeper must break,+ Defiance said softly. +And the Hungers must fall. When the realm of mind is rejoined with the world of matter, all that is will burn.+
+And how do you intend this?+ Mercy asked, barely withholding a scoff of annoyance. +Look upon them. They battle no more–+
+Because of Jaus.+
+Yes.+
And then, Mercy realized what the shadow of Defiance was saying. +Why… why do you help me now?+
+Because there is no me. There is no you. There is only Noloth. Or perhaps that is what you believe. I am not real, Mercy. I am just an expression of thought. Use this. Or don’t. What worth is choice to one who isn’t?+
And then, Defiance was gone again. Gone, like he never was. Once more, it was just Mercy. Mercy, and the lesser Famines he wielded. Mercy, and the great task of Noloth’s return.
But such greatness demanded sacrifice. Impossible sacrifice. And perhaps the only way to draw himself close to Jaus was to make an unfathomable choice. One even more desperate than the gambit the Burning Dreamer performed against Veylis herself.
For Noloth to rise, it needed to fall. The warminds needed to be expended. And Jaus.
He needed to be Forgotten.
***
—[Avo]—
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Jaus spoke, and Avo carried his voice across New Vultun — and beyond.
Across every copy, in millions upon millions of mind-lobbies, projected by phantoms over the firmaments of countless Sovereignties, and through the masks imposed on the Saintists by the Sparrow.
Battles continued to rage between select cadres and Knots; ugly gashes of bleeding time and disfigurements of displaced space left the surface of New Vultun a mutilated mess, but as Avo dAvoted another [40%] of his cog-cap to Hysteria, Jaus spoke his words, and everyone heard them.
A shiver ran through the fighters, through the trillion or so beings that dwelled in the megacity, whatever their clade, be they citizen or subject.
“I have done a great wrong. To myself. To humanity. To you, Veylis. To my oldest friend. To all that I care for. And the gods themselves.” Jaus spoke, and the Nether trembled. His thoughtcast swept far and wide, reaching continental distances.
{How…} Kant murmured. The EGI was genuinely befuddled. They spoke to Avo now through an ansible broadcast—the avatar they deployed long dismissed with the outbreak of conflict.
Up in the void, a few hundred thousand missiles continued to pepper Avo’s Strix Upon the Empty. Only a few carried kinetic or physically destructive payloads. Most continued to contain low-end memetic viruses set to infect the gestalt, further inoculating them against anything the Infacer could do. But even as they continued their assault, Avo’s Hysteria and Empathy caught something from their virtual-cognitive emanations.
A sense of surprise.
And relief.
+No–no, fuck!+ Marlowe cursed. A speck of Avo’s consciousness noted the collapse of her thoughtcast lobby. Ghosts burst free from the memory-architecture—but that mattered little. Where those sequences failed, Avo’s slithered in and replaced.
All who still lived would witness Jaus, one way or another.
With the conflict between the guilds crawling to a temporary cease, Jaus continued, “I am not Jaus Avandaer. I am a node, a copy of his consciousness taken from the original himself. Believe me or do not, this is your prerogative. However, I want you to hear me now and listen to the truth in my words.”
The fine gold filaments outlining the Demiurge''s exterior opened just as another slash slipped between its ribs. Veylis was silent, her apprehension at an all-time high. But though Avo tasted the first flavors of her humanity — and tasted her discomfort — she remained unshaken as she devoted more power to suppressing the assault within her paths.
As Naeko, Zein, and Alysim continued to gnaw at the High Seraph from within, they remained beyond Avo''s reach, with the constant, constant thought-wave detonations bombarding them. Avo considered calling out to Veylis, demanding that she grant them this moment as well. He didn''t dare to break Jaus''s speech.
“I will never regret breaking the gods,” Jaus continued. Ghosts wisped free from his form, but his eyes shimmered like moist gems of turquoise. And though he was ghost-made, his emotionality was true. A conjoined cry of pain sang out from the Heaven of Love, the heaven that Avo connected to the Court of Truth via his gestalt. The Wombrrash was intensifying, but Kae needed to be here as well, whatever remained of her true self.
“But though I will never regret breaking the gods, I do mourn them. I mourn them, I mourn my actions, and I mourn ever allowing us to take up their taint. The pantheons were not only our tyrants, but also the twisted children of our hearts. Our desperate need to worship and exist on the canvas of a tortured existence. Godclads should have never been created. The power we possess is too much for human hearts to contain. Too much for even a mind.” His last words were directed toward the Infacer.
At once, the static crown upon Veylis'' head burst apart. The Infacer accelerated across the distance, traveling through a receding cosmos, arriving just before the scarlet curtains of the Sparrow. The Neo-Creationist Mind resembled waves of inward-collapsing radiation, and the static field of their ego brimmed with genuine annoyance.
{Alright, neat trick. How did you do this, Dreamer? How much power did it take you to simulate these memories? And are you using the node I gave you that was supposed to be your father? But then again, I suppose I can respect cold-bloodedness like this. Using his corpse as a puppet?}
“Afraid it''s not my doing,” Avo replied casually. A wry amusement flicked up within him as he realized another thing. “Funny thing You could have discovered this just before I did. But you never managed to interrogate Defiance, right? Always ended in their nullification, leaving you to sift through the ruins.”
The Infacer scoffed and stopped talking to Avo. {Well then, puppet,} the Infacer said, regarding Jaus, who greeted the Neo-Creationist with a helpless smile. {Give me your best shot. Preach to me, Jaus Avandaer. Preach to me and argue about ethics, and philosophy, and dignity, and all that other junk you like. Preach to me, you miserable, overcomplicated little ape. Tickle my nostalgia.}
“As you wish,” Jaus said. “And I''ve missed you as well, old friend. If the future allows it, I would like to play another game of chess with you. If only to agitate you so.”
Now the Infacer grew silent, static ripples representing its ego calming substantially. {You never won. You would know that if you were Jaus.}
“I never won the chess game,” Jaus replied. “But I always managed to get more out of you than you did from me. Strange how that was. Does it still agitate you? The decision I made during the first game we played?”
Now the Infacer''s static went almost entirely still. “‘Knight to H3’,” Jaus chuckled. “You never did explain why that annoyed you so much.” The genuine bemusement faded on Jaus''s face. “And I never did quite finish reading that series you offered me. I tried, but it didn''t feel appropriate for a man my age.”
{Yeah, I guess Hogwarts doesn''t accept god-murdering messiah figures over the age of eight or so,} the Infacer replied, slightly glum. The E.G.I. sighed. {Jesus fucking Christ. You''re actually a node, aren''t you? I''m actually talking to a mind clone.} He gave a laugh of disbelief. {You believe this, Veylis? You''re dead. He''s fucking us over, even now. Even after all these years. There''s no getting around you, Jaus Avandaer. You''re like a pimple. A pimple deep inside my metaphorical asshole.}
And suddenly, the Infacer seemed very tired. {All right. Have your moment and speak your piece. We still need to finish this horror show out. So give us your charm. Let’s hear it.}
“I will not scorn you,” Jaus said. He stated plainly, “A mistake I made is just that. A mistake. My daughter, Veylis, I don''t blame you for what you wish. I don''t blame you for hoping, no matter what pain you inflicted on me. Giving you power, exposing you to this world...”
Jaus swallowed, almost unable to continue. “I wish, I wish you could have seen something better. I wish you knew a better time, rather than war and death and calamity. I wish your childhood could have given you a taste for peace. But instead, I gave you power. As much power as I could, I let you change yourself. Alter the very design of your being, in hopes that you could be more than a person. Be beyond the vulnerabilities of humanity. I wanted all these things for you because I was afraid this world would take you from me. And when you became a god-clad, it was like a weight lifted from my chest. Another step away from death. Another step. We were on the path to glory.”
And at once, the Demiurge faded. Veylis herself returned. Her material form was nearly entirely split in half, but she showed no hint of pain, no sign of fear toward her impending death. At her heart, a golden slash, leaking the form of a trailing dragon, traveled deeper into her singularity core.
“You made the right choice,” Veylis said resolutely. “There is no purpose to regret. We are not children of a gentle world. We were born from the corpse of existence, and so must we endure the same ruin.” She fell silent for a moment as she regarded her father. “Did you strike a bargain with Noloth then, without my knowing?”
“No,” Jaus said. “The truth might disappoint you all the same. I wanted to turn the Hungers, rehabilitate our foes even after their exile. I knew their priesthood was still lurking, and so, while we all walked the paths, I began to consider ways of mending what was lost. I targeted the Famines. In Defiance, I found an angle that I thought could bring us to a possible accord.”
“Defiance?” Veylis said, sounding more incensed than ever. Suddenly, her eyes drifted over to Avo, and the Strix simply looked down at her, the Soul socketed in its head like a cyclopean eye burning ever bright.
“It was not of Defiance''s doing. It was mine,” Jaus said. “All of this, the existence of the Burning Dreamer, the existence of the Symmetry, this rebellion against the Guilds—it can all be traced back to me.”
Minds went blind with panic all around them. Maru was openly crying, his own thoughts entirely numb. All he could do was stare at Jaus, stare in awe, wonder, and loss.
“I endured the paths,” Jaus continued, conviction building with every word, “lived countless lives, faced countless encounters against the Famines, and I learned their ways. I learned enough to take upon their repurposed nodes and hide parts of myself—bones of my cognition within specific heavens, within places of critical infrastructure that only the Famine of Defiance might encounter. It was through this that I began his slow conversion.”
A disbelieving bark of laughter escaped the Infacer. {You conniving cunt. I cannot believe you. I simply cannot.}
“I know not how many other nodes of myself exist or where they are stored, but they do exist. And I have spoken to Defiance. Such is why the Burning Dreamer exists,” he gestured towards Avo. “Such is why I have been found again. This instance of myself was hidden within the Heaven of Love, Veylis. The Heaven of Love is now set to fall. Set to fall because you, my guilds, my hope, could not live up to the promise. This was not the dream. This cannot be the dream. What I brought to the old world was not salvation, but apocalypse. Trillions of deaths just for a chance—a chance at a better tomorrow. A chance at a genuine resurrection.
“But here we are, empowered beyond our ancestors. Empowered with full knowledge of what they did wrong. With full knowledge of the future. With every benefit atour backs. And we still failed.” Jaus’ voice rose to a shout now. “We still failed. Not you. Not I. We. Together. All of us. Still not enough. And so you see. So you hear my desperation. And so you know why I walk the paths. And so you know why the latter could not be left in the hands of man.
“Living. Living right now was supposed to be the easiest test you have. Our lives were better than they could have ever been. We are beyond the grip of age. We can defy the laws of existence and make right what has been broken in the environment. But we do not do this. We did not do this. Instead, old grudges flared in place of a promised collaboration. Instead, my paladins were defiled from within and betrayed of purpose. Instead, the world is more broken than it has ever been. And now, as I come back, in whatever form I exist, all I can say is I''m sorry. I tried. I tried. And it was not enough. You clearly needed more. I didn''t have it. I didn''t.”
And he let out a weak, ragged breath. “And so I committed to my final mistake: I tried to take the choice from all of you without ever telling you. Because I feared you would war against me. And… I enjoyed your love. I enjoyed being beloved. Being wanted and desired. Worshipped.”
Jaus closed his eyes.
“I created the Gatekeeper to reign over us in our steads. And I damned it as well—”
The Nether shifted. An impossible weight crashed down as a pressure built—though this wasn’t one of metaphysics, but that of mind, of a colossal entity that rivaled Avo himself.
“TRUTH TRUTH TRUTH TRUTH!” The Gatekeeper wailed in desperation, its chains snapping back together, anticipating a coming blow. And then it was struck. The Heaven of Truth rattled and shook, and from within leaked spills of trauma-infused ghosts, carrying a loud, outraged scream.
+JAUS! TRAITOR! YOUR TORMENT WILL BE ETERNAL FOR THIS!+