“What about the children?” This is a dilemma that all purveyors of virtue propose, yet few offer worthwhile solutions. This is the question you have cast at me in cowardice, faither, seeking to strike at my decency.


    Let us talk, then. Let me speak now. Often, when this question is asked, the presiding intent is to harm the esteem of the listener rather than guide them along a path towards satisfying resolution. The purveyor inflicts false virtue on the listener, outright ascribing morals to them they might not possess.


    Of course, I must be kinder to you, my enemy, now in the moment of my triumph. Though you deemed me heretic, monster, butcher, and so many more things. Would you be so kind if you had won? No. I’ve seen your blades. I know your rituals. You would have tortured my young and made me listen as a final dirge before I am offered to the fiery embrace of your fetid gods.


    You are no philosopher. Just a complicated, thinking animal at wit’s end, disarmed of all but words and sophistry. Now I stand before you more man than monster of myth, you think you can reach me by empathy. The same you wielded to control your slaves and sacrifices.


    But I am not they, little faither. And I am not you.


    There is a reason you used this question on me instead of my love. Because you already know her answer, her choice. And she will kill some of your children. Those who choose to fight. Those who are warriors. She will kill them. Because she recognizes them. Because my duty is not to your children, but my own. And I will not see her fighting a war I can see done right here, right now.


    But rejoice. Breath. Know that some of your children might yet be spared. So long as they stop being your children. So long as they are devoid of anything left of you. Understand I came here to murder the your gods, and thereby your civilization and culture. For the young I will grant mercy, I will take from them their memories of language, their memories of you. Nothing will remain of you. Not even a shadow.


    Your question was “What about the children?” Hoping my answer is softness and mercy.


    The answer is that they cannot be your children. They cannot. For if they are, still will your gods burn. And still will the war continue. You were wrong to call to me instead my wife, faither. I read the pain on your face. Perhaps now you will beg for your children to die instead.


    What indignity. Seeing legacy severed.


    -Jaus Avandaer


    29-7


    Child of the Enemy (I)


    “Well… why haven’t you?” Vator Greatling asked. The question was one of genuine childlike wonder, and the instrument''s piercing blue eyes glowed upon the canvas of splattered red that was his face.


    Draus had heard about the things that were done, playing whispers traveling through select lobbies frequented by squires, rumors about the youngest Greatling’s predilections, read by curators as proof. Glaives had gone missing and been found as grotesque art pieces left to taunt their allies. And then there were the tutorials he made on the Nether.


    The boy experienced a brief stint in which he tried to be like a vicarity star, seeking to educate people on the wonders of human biology and all the things the flesh could still become. He was, in a word, misshapen—cognitively, physically, and, Draus was willing to guess, even ontologically.


    It was as Ignorance said, she could shoot him. She had every right, and this kid wasn’t clean, not by a long shot. Despite this, however, the Regular stayed her hand. Mercy was so uncharacteristic of her. A few months ago, she would’ve emptied her gun into him, left a Rendbomb for him, anything to see him snuffed and ceased.


    Now, now she had a ghoul in the back of her mind, being a bad influence. Faintly, she could hear Ignorance laughing, going along with this insane plan of his to spite Veylis. Or whatever it is he wanted Vator for. “Yeah, hiss it up, half-strand.” And as the sound faded, so too vanished her memories, but her annoyance lingered still, never fading, not even a little.


    Vator rose to his feet as extensions of flesh shot out from his exposed neck and through the fabric of his suit. He was still wearing the formal attire he''d brought to the Court of Truth. Draus was surprised about the pristine state until she realized there was a colony of chameleonlike silkworms zipping up and down his body, pushing torn seams of his suit back together as easily as they knitted his own flesh.


    The regular brought her head to bear, forming a layer of glass over herself and materializing a smaller version of the Simulacra. She might not be about to shoot the Greatling, but she was also not fool enough to offer him the opportunity to twist her biology. Moving into her Liminal Paracosmos, Draus fully manifested her Arsenalist within as well, creating an additional layer of ontological separation from anything resembling flesh.


    At once, Vator shot her a brief glance before shrugging, and from his face emerged a mix of strange mutations. Part of his scalp extended out from his forehead and curved into the shape of a comb. Slowly, absurdly, his scalp comb began tidying up his hair, while tongues and other sponge-like appendages emerged from his cheek, lapping away at the blood that once coated Vator’s face. Guilders were known for their vanity. Half-strands had a habit of preening themselves like a prized new cat, but Vator really took that to a whole other level.


    “What do you remember?” Draus asked.


    The young Greatling shot her a blank look. “About?”


    “How you got here. How you managed to survive.”


    He opened his mouth, as if suddenly realizing the point behind her meaningless question. “I was swept away,” Vator began simply. He held out his hands, and the tongues, now finished bathing his face, receded from the open sores where they’d sprung.


    “When the High Seraph called, and the great battle began between the Saintists and the Cemetery, I was there.” A rapturous smile developed on Vator’s face. “Oh, I was there, bearing witness, a first-hand connoisseur of this delectable moment in history.” His eyes glistened, and he drew in a shuddering breath.


    Draus couldn’t believe it, but she actually preferred Abrel more than this one. At least, the girl was just a sow. Draus couldn’t begin to describe how many things were wrong with Vator. The vat-grown boy continued. “Time against mind, conceptualization against chronology. And then there was the Sparrow, her theater, her song, inflicting a narrative rule upon this world, defying the power of truth with a stage made from living story.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Vator let out a satisfied exhalation. “I was born during the right age. I was… I was happy, so happy to be a part of such artistry, to witness the embrace of these rivaled flames.”


    “Half-strand,” Draus said simply, “I asked you what you remembered; how you got here. Don’t need no show to go with it.”


    “I heard,” Vator replied, eyes narrowing. “You’re very rude, you know that. Gods, Captain Draus, perhaps this is why my mother sent so many of your kind to die meaningless, pointless deaths. Were the other Regulars as rude as you?”


    “Nah,” Draus replied with a grunt. “Most of them ain’t much of anything at all anymore. But again, the same can be said for your mama.”


    Vator considered her words, and unlike his sister, simply nodded, accepting them. “Fair enough. I see that you are a materialist. There is little worth in arguing with someone like you. Alas, if you could have only seen it—”


    Draus stared blankly at him. “I was there. Was too busy doin’ a lot of Saintist killin’ than any gawkin’.”


    “What a pity. You were not immersed. You were merely a participant and not a enjoyer. Tell me, did you feel it? Did you savor the moment when the Heaven of Love ruptured your flesh and inflicted upon you the Rash? Did you fight it, using your Heaven to sustain you where all others fell?”


    “Yeah,” Draus said without hesitation.


    “So did I,” Vator replied, “longer than most others, longer than even my father. I watched him, watched him come apart and die. He could have burned himself, but he chose death, and I do not know why. For when I looked up, I saw… I saw wonders beyond wonders. The High Seraph, wielding the Gatekeeper, her halves clashing against, splashing ghosts, and a curtain of red so vibrant.”


    “But then my mind wasn’t my own, torn from me. My sinews bound to the world, and I was lost. But I was home, so utterly home, amongst countless other beings, my thoughts their thoughts, their thoughts mine. And for that moment I glimpsed, I tasted what it was like to be…” Vator flinched as he snarled the last word out. “Human. Just human. Little more than a broken animal. I hated it. All that impulse—the noise.”


    The anguished fervor left the boy as soon as it came, and he shuddered with satisfaction as he recounted what followed. “When I found myself parted from the others, I was looking through the cracks lining Scale. Something had sheared clean through the memite; an impossible power, and through the wounds I saw them. I saw four Souls burning bright within a city born of dragons. And I saw a new god rise.


    The Hungers were falling, I could hear their voices screaming in the chorus, and there, within were the Strix and Seraph—” Vator’s eyes gleamed. “They faced each other. For a moment. It was absolute. Perfect. Divine. The others were unmade by the homunculi, but I grew eyes upon the bodies of my bastards. I looked. I gave my body just to bear witness. And I saw them break and die. But still the flames flowed. Still, death couldn’t claim the greatest of us. Four Souls shattered like a conjoined dawn and their yolk bled together, a unified placenta for rebirth. And then the flames poured down through the world, devouring everything, taking all. Including me.”


    Finally, Vator looked to Draus, offering her a strange gaze. “There, while I was lost in the thick of the current, my body savaged by the Rash, I could feel two forces reach out for me, their own minds barely more than tatters, but their wills and instincts battling to control the paths of the current, to control where my future would lead. And I see now, I see now that the Burning Dreamer claimed me, stolen me from Highflame as prisoner or sacrifice for you, an offering of revenge.”


    “You are mistaken,” Mercy said.


    Vator looked away from Draus and shot the Famine a boyish smile. “Priest, you yet live.”


    “I have not lived for a very long time,” Mercy replied. “But still I serve. If only to make one final act right in my existence. You are no slave, Vator Greatling. You have purpose. The Burning Dreamer is broken. So is the High Seraph. So is Love and Truth and countless more. They are mending, but the final design of the Stillborn’s user is uncertain, and we require an architect. An artist. You have been given choice and opportunity—at the Regular’s mercy.”


    Vator offered a arched eyebrow at Draus. ‘Is he being honest?”


    Draus said nothing. Slowly, she considered another possibility: that Avo was actually dead and the High Seraph had trapped her in some variation of purgatory, forcing her to suffer through this impossible bullshit. “Seems to be the case. Don’t rightly know what I’m gonna do with you yet. Might still shoot you.”


    “Might be too late for that,” Vator said, offering a taunting grin.


    “Nah. Ain’t never too late to greet the Big Nothin’. But the rotlick dragged you out of the muck for a reason. You, out of everyone.” Draus sighed. +Fuckin’ seriously, Avo? Him?+


    Ignorance stirred. Yes. Him. He makes many futures possible. Use him. Show him. Awaken his god. Shatter his… faith…


    And then Ignorance slipped away again, and Draus shook her head, left with nothing but a lingering impulse: to use her ontology against Vator, and to reach into his Frame and access his Heaven.


    Somehow.


    The damn instincts were getting more intrusive by the minute. The Regular hid a frown as she bade her Simulacra to extend a gleaming hand. Vator frowned as he gazed upon the reaching appendage. He leaned back slightly, more confused than fearful. ‘What is this? Have you decided to murder me another way.”


    “No,” Draus said. “Ain’t gonna kill you. But I don’t think you’ll much like this either.” And somehow, Vator trusted her. He stopped flinching and leaned in instead, offering his nape like a nu-dog.


    “Then I am at your regard,” Vator breathed. The way he spoke, how he reacted… None of it was human at all. The Regular judged his cognition and watched his accretion spin. It revolved, and never once did its pace change. The ease of his acceptance filled her with apprehension instead—whatever she was about to do—but still, she laid a hand upon him.


    And as her ontology contacted his, an unseen flame poured over from Draus, igniting Vator from within.


    The Greatling gasped. Shuddering, he shuddered as Soulfire rippled out from within him, and mem-data crawled horizontally across Draus’ cog-feed.


    ACCESSING LIMINAL FRAME


    OVERWRITING LIMINAL FRAME CONFIGURATION…


    UPDATED TO [STILLBORN] TEMPLATE


    PRIMARY HEAVEN DETECTED [PORTRAIT OF SKIN AND SINEW]


    AWAKENING HEAVEN


    Then, Draus felt an unseen force course through her being, a subtle susurrations beneath the surface of reality, breathing awareness into the Heaven that lurked within Vator. A rousing power stirred. Miracles washed out from the boy with each ripple of Soulfire, and Draus felt the Domains of Flesh, Skin, Blood, Bone, and more caress her awareness.


    Wait, how the hells did she even know what they were?


    Aren’t just a Godclad anymore. You burn within me. As I have burned. As I am you. And you are I.


    Vator gasped. “What… are you doing to…”


    “Me.”


    Another voice thundered out from within him, but it was not his own. It sounded like a symphony of children, their pitches shrill and airy, rising from a place deeper than the material. At once, a massive scroll of viscera burst out from behind Vator like unfurling wings. The Greatling shook violently, but his face revealed no pain, only surprise.


    Above him, the scroll expanded into a living portrait. Its spine was made from bone, and threads of sinew attached it to a flagging page of animated skin. Ink danced upon the flesh-like tapestry as a highly detailed painting moved before Draus. Countless bodies moved and writhed upon the page, many of them flayed, some of them transforming, all of them twisted and misshapen.


    It all looked to be in classical Sang style, and from the many victims shown within the scroll, a mournful cry followed. “Why… why are we here? Why must we be… what were we? What were… no… you!”


    PORTRAIT OF SKIN AND SINEW (BIOLOGY/SKIN/BLOOD/BONE/VISCERA/TORTURE/ARTISTRY/MEDICINE) [EST. ERROR; FRAME DAMAGED - ONTOLOGICAL UPGRADES AVAILABLE]


    “What?” Vator breathed, looking up at his own Heaven.


    Once more, it screamed down at him, the people within the page reaching out, mangled, mutilated limbs stretching off the canvas to claw at his face. “Your fault! Your fault! We were meant to heal! We were meant to preserve! You used us! You and the faithless twisted us! MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER!”


    And any hint of glee vanished from Vator’s eyes.