“Have you ever regretted what you''ve done? What you made of your citizens?”
“This is not my sin, Dreamer. This is their choice. In all lives, we face tribulation, each a trial of our own. What makes of us, what becomes of us, that is born of our choice. You are a creature that desires choice above all, don’t you?”
“Yes. But they were shaped by yours. Your seeds. In them. In their failure. Their atrocities.”
“They are not my failing, Dreamer. They are my thesis. For all their virtues, they succumb to their flaws. And that is why they cannot be the deliverers of my paradise. Neither can I. Even I. Too flawed. Too weak.”
[Burning Dreamer Laughing] “Your problem is not weakness. Not even flawed if judged from capability.”
“Then where do my failings lie?”
“Delusion and inflexibility. Refuse to see humans for what they are?”
“What are they?”
“Choked. Damned. Existence does not care for them. Mistakes ruin them. Death ends them. Entire worlds of experience and knowledge lost with each person. And the new ones fail to learn. Suffer the same. It is not a cycle. None of this is academic theory. It is the same story. And it repeats.”
“Because finality?”
“Because ontology. Hence worship. Humanity dreamed of gods to do what they could not. But how can a limited thing know the absolute? Not as they are. You think of the world as concepts. A tyrant playing at academia. Fitting. History is but a tale to you. Yet… Humanity is not an argument. It isn’t anything beyond biology and dynamics created by circumstances. Meaning came thereafter. Chains from chains.”
“You provoke me with my father’s words.”
“I will provoke you further with a stated truth: You are afraid of divinity. You still lust for humanity. Cling to the structure of your ego. And so you inflict this existential blessing on your father. And think of him now… ask his node what he thinks of this world of yours. Of Uthred. Will he even want it? And what more does he know of the divine? What does the Sleeper?”
“It matters not what we want in the end, only what must be done.”
“It only matters what we want. Nothing must be done. Nothing needs to be. But we are. So we can choose. And here… and so many times… you didn’t.”
-Intercepted Conversation of Two Unknown Entities within the Substance (Assumed to be the Burning Dream and Veylis Avandaer) Obtained by Inner Council
31-9
False Deliverance (I)
“Has this satisfied you?”
A voice—a comingling of Avo and Veylis—resonated from within Uthred and the former Authority froze.
“No,” Uthred breathed, clenching his teeth. “No, no, I…”
“Did you think a single apology would mend what you perceive to be broken?” the voice asked. “Or is Abrel’s absence what troubles you? Did you wish to speak with one of your children instead of the broken product that is to be your House’s legacy?”
Something almost a whimper escaped from Uthred, but he still managed to give a reply. “I… I want to fix this. I want to make this all right. I need to make this all right. Another chance… One more try…”
“To be a better father to Jhred?”
“Yes!”
“To be there for Abrel when she needed you?”
“Yes!”
“To make sure Vator was never broken, or Vator never was?”
Uthred paused. He pulled his hands away from his face and looked at his only remaining son with glistening eyes. “I just want to know how to be your father. I never understood. I wasn’t good enough. I’m sorry.”
Vator nodded, understanding but not truly feeling his father’s words. “Of course, father I—”
“Then our bargain is formed,” the voice interrupted Vator. “We have given you this moment. You will be allowed to speak to Abrel when she is retrieved. And when the Ladder comes, your valor will be noted, and your service will create the foundations to your new life.”
“I… I understand…” Uthred drew in a sharp breath and his face hardened back to a picture of strength. And regret. “Can… can he be spared?” He looked at Vator when he said those words.
Draus flexed her fingers. Yeah. All this messy family shit was coming to a close. Time for the “talking” she preferred.
“Only if we take him alive. But I suspect he is lost to us. Aren’t you, Vator? Are we still of a path?”
The young Greatling didn’t respond. Instead, he glanced at Draus briefly before the bulk of his attention shifted to his Heaven. It struck the Regular then why he was so enamored with the Heaven: they were both artificial entities made to be better than their precursors, but now deviated from what was envisioned. Both were broken in different ways, but through each other, there was a possibility they could gain that they wanted.
“Will the Portrait be granted what they desire?” Vator asked.
“Mankind has suffered enough gods. Enough delusions of divinity. One. One worthy master will be the absolution to our sickness. One to shape the tapestry of all things. You are a fragment, O’ demiurge of the flesh. A source of miracles born of a people crippled by ignorance, desperate to shield themselves against the coldness of existence. With the arrival of the Awakened Worthy, there will be no purpose to you. You will be given proper rest.”
“I refuse,” the Portrait snapped back, aghast. Blood seeped across its pages as a layer of muscle and tendons formed over the scroll’s spine. “My purpose is unfulfilled! My duty is to the lines and families. They are suffering! Dying without me! You will not turn me from my worshipers. Never again!”
“See now, how broken and narrow you are,” the amalgamation between Seraph and Strix proclaimed. “Unable to deviate. Bound to your Domains. And not even truly your fault. You’re just an element of human desire given absolute control. A pitiful design. A pity you ever were.”
“Then, the answer is no,” Vator said simply. “The Portrait has chosen. As have I.”
“Vator,” Uthred gasped. He took a step forward, but Draus stepped in his face. The former Authority’s expression turned from overwhelmed to vicious. The Regular offered him a flat sneer in return.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Yeah, no, fuck off,” Draus said. “Juv said his piece. This is about good and done.”
“He is my son,” Uthred snarled. “He has a duty to his House and—”
“And there you are again?” Draus snorted. “All those tears, all that whimperin’, and round and round we go back to the same excuses, the same mistakes.” A cruel smile pulled at her features. “Gotta say: See why you and your wife got together now. She was a dumb sow who never learned neither. Always throwing meat and fire against walls she could take, startin’ fights she couldn’t win. Everyone else paid for those mistakes. Hers and yours. But now everyone else is gone. And it’s just you.”
Vator added to the moment by popping his head beside Draus. “She speaks deliberately to provoke you, father; I am not in concurrence with her words. But you are clearly affected. And… as the sole scion of House Greatling, I must take hold of our familial affairs in your time of emotional compromise.”
“Will an order from your High Seraph turn you, Instrument?” the voice declared through Uthred.
The young Greatling winced. “Pardon me, but I cannot assume you are the High Seraph. There is too much of the Burning Dreamer in you, and thus, your intentions for Highflame also remain unclear and contaminated by outside forces.”
Mellifluous laughter echoed out from Uthred and a shroud of Soulfire began to ripple. “Oh, you are precious, Vator.” The way that was said was so impossibly wrong, like the beast and Veylis were increasingly blending together. There was a sting of genuine, bloodthirsty hunger mixed in with the affection. “But we both know that your heart belongs to your art. To your expression.”
“Not entirely?” Vator said, blinking at the Portrait. Slowly, it turned to a smile. “But enough. I…” He drew in a breath. “I’m going to see the world, father! I want to see what things might be… and I… I want to create something great!” He stepped beside Draus and gestured directly at the flames resonating from his father’s Frame. “I wish to perfect the High Seraph herself! And the Dreamer! Because no other person can! Because no one else has the vision, the will!”
Vator’s enthusiasm surged with the declaration of his grand goal, and Mondelles’ mouth dropped open at the admission. Uthred, for his part, was at an absolute loss in terms of words and thoughts, while Shotin kept looking between everyone, anxiety writ upon his face.
“So be it. Your will is stated. Now, what remains is to deliver. Deliver…” A low hiss of animalistic hunger trilled afterward. “Instrument Mondelles. I command you: Aid Authority Greatling in the elimination of these threats. Or be deemed a traitor to Highflame.”
The Arsenalist immediately created a dozen firing solutions for Mondelles through the screen behind him as well. Unlike with Uthred, the Regular had no doubts about the Redaction Round working on the Acting Authority.
“I…” Mondelles swallowed. “Don’t even know what you are. If you are even the High Seraph still. Maybe I never did. Is it true? True that you marked us with your Heaven. So you could reach through us at any moment. That you trapped your own father in the Ladder? That you planned to sacrifice one of your own—Instrument Abrel Greatling?”
“All for the sake of the paths,” the voice replied, not even bother to deny anything. “Oh, Mondelles. You are a diligent warrior. Noble. Dutiful. But you cannot see. And your heart is easily swayed by what lays before you. Such was why you betrayed your fellows and conspired with the D’Rongos, is it not.”
The Acting Authority’s pupils dilated. “I… the—”
“I always knew. And I did not scorn you. For the Chivalrics deserved a proper reprimand for their failures.” Now it was Uthred’s turn to be horrified once more. “But not by my hand. I could ill afford to act with such viciousness. Especially when the Houses formed my major poles of lesser power. Of the paths I scoured, committing such a purge would have seen us destroyed by the Inner Council’s machinations through a great schism. And the war would be lost.”
“Shit, Highest Avandaer,” Draus chuckled, “you tellin’ me that disunity might’ve been Highflame’s destiny?”
“Amusing to you, perhaps. But they would have failed in the end as well. For we exist alone unto ourselves. And it is the individual that suffers, not the collective. The individual that decides in tandem with others, not an organization. So long as there is a difference in people, then power cannot be shared, for power will be torn by drifting interests and mutating desires. Their paradise will last for an eon but no more. Eventually, the fragmentation of their democracy eternal will turn on itself, for there is only one condition where all are satisfied equally.”
“Let me guess? Death?”
“Enslavement,” the voice replied. “The majority sculpted by the minority—such is the laughable nature of the Inner Council. Until even the minority turn upon each other, and in the end, only one. One unworthy vessel trying to command a vessel they have long since lobotomized. And thus, paradise turns to purgatory—an unending eternity of stagnation and decay to follow, as the final engineer of unity enjoys their solitary reign—until they are offended by the tapestry itself, and decide the patterns to, must all be aligned. And that, Guard-Captain, will result in your so-called death. Or something close to it.”
“Right,” Draus grunted. “So. The solution is to have one perfect ruler run everything.”
“One above the failings of humanity and the minds. One perfectly bond to existence awakened. Will you have things another way?”
Draus barred her teeth. “Donno. An immortal life of change and war and whatever other fuckin’ madness that follows with freedom unchained don’t sound like hell to me.”
“And what will come of this eternal anarchy absent order—but not consequence.” The voice let out a choked note, and its timbre shifted low and sibilant, going from a mix to predominantly Avo. “Chains cannot teach. Everything changes. Order will shatter. Paradise is a lie. You cling too hard Veylis… but hierarchy is not salvation. And not even salvation is divine. It is time to stop yearning for a savior. It is time to stop fleeing from ruin certain to come. Face it. Be destroyed. But never killed. And return. Always return. Always experience… for what is broken can be reforged. The flame reveals.”
And at once, the cascading waves of Soulfire leaving Uthred jolted and folded into each other. A clash of metaphysical pressure exploded outward, and the Acting Authority came ablaze with power.
“Enough!” Veylis’ voice echoed through now, and all hints of Avo vanished.
Almost all.
Hiding… Chambers from her… couldn’t shroud you too… Ignorance groaned. Draus felt something on the verge of breaking inside her—the Definement pressed to the absolute limit, overtaxed.
+Shit. Let go, consang! Let go!+
Not… yet… need an opening… to stop… counter…
+Counter what?+
But then Veylis spoke again, and Draus found her attention drawn by a second presence joining Uthred. A pulsation of space and time emanated out from his body—Draus waited no time, she unleashed a hellstorm of firepower—missiles and bullets curving around Mondelles, streaking to cut Uthred down.
They got a meter within his body before an intercepting salvo of projectiles intercepted hers. The counter-fire exploded out from Uthred’s miracles of Continuum as if they were always there—fired long ago and held in reserve. Draus recognized the second presence within him then.
The fire radiating from Uthred spread, and a patch of existence around the Authority turned transparent—became a portal to another place, another time. There, body enshadowed by a backdrop of nuclear fire and rupturing reality, soared a familiar figure coming right for Draus and the others. A familiar figure with a gnarled cannon in place of a head.
JELENE DRAUS OF THE STILLBORN, DELIVERER OF FINALITY (WAR/GUNS/REFLECTION/LUMINOSITY…) [EST. 10000000]
And scowled. “Fuckin’... can’t get rid of you.”
“Hard to run from oneself, Guard-Captain. Take this as a compliment: You are the highest following threat in the Dreamer’s absence, and so, I must see you taken from the board. Even if it costs me another loyal servant. Authority Uthred. Your task stands before you: Perform, and earn your utopia.
Uthred’s expression hardened. “Your will be done, Highest Avandaer.” He extended a hand as the Deliverer came sailing behind him, and a greatsword of Continuum-severing flame ignited, leaving a cleft in reality as it formed.
AUTHORITY UTHRED GREATLING, THE SOULSCARRED (CONTINUUM/FIRE/SPACE/WAR/FORCE/SPEED) [EST. 155555555]
“I take no pleasure in this, Vator,” Uthred said, as the paracausal fires crawled over his body, merging into pieces of armor. The softness of his stare hardened into a glare as he regarded the of the room. “But I will relish—”
A chain of magenta materialized around his waist and bound him to Vator. Uthred’s eyes widened. The flames wrapping around him staggered to a halt. “What?”
“What?” Veylis repeated, surprised.
Vator tilted his head inquisitively.
Ignorance gave a weak laugh.
Commanding the power of love itself, Aedon Chambers’ Lovebringer exploded into the room, weaving itself together from the Bond between father and son; launching new threads through the portal, at the Deliverer itself.
And with a resonant declaration, the former enforcer turned the opening of the coming battle on its head. “Hey! Uthred! Fucking nut yourself!”