Post by him on Mar 16, 2024 12:49:24 GMT
APOPHENIA
"I... had a wife, once. Back before I faked my death."
Two people languished in a void, sitting in silence upon a fake abstraction of a scenario. A chunk of terrain, shaped in the facsimile of a paneled floor, a table, and two chairs each seating a demiurge of the Army of the Panopticon. Upon the left sitting stiffly was sister Eraserhead, who by all accounts should have been filed as missing in action in every official report since the assassination of President Blasto Mgornik. The other, sitting cross-legged and seemingly gazing into nothing, brother D'sea, of whom the same could not be said. He had kept her like a secret, for who knows how long. Time had seemed to warp, dilate, however long it had been since the bunker she couldn't recall even as much as she tried to. Only this void, only a stasis he'd founded for the second standing member of his little ploy.
"I didn't love her, of course. I never did. She was fair, shy, a little willful, attractive by our standards but ugly to me. Infected with... humanity. The marriage was arranged as a political bargain, between clans at the time, but it wouldn't have mattered if it was or wasn't. We fought often. Usually with words. Several times I belittled her to the point of crying. Once I beat her. Footnotes, if you ask me."
Eraserhead hated it here, and he knew it. She hated him, hated the little realm he had created for himself, hated the way she could subtly feel the single-note tones of uncountable distant mandalas echoing in the forest of strings, the subtle hostility and pressure surrounding her in a way that it felt like something was leering over her shoulder and almost breathing into her ear. She hated this scenario that he had constructed and that she now found herself in, this fakery of a social interaction. About the only thing Eraserhead didn't hate in this place was herself, as much as D’sea had tried to inflict that final wound upon her, and at least in that she found solace. A part of her wanted to regress into a deaf-mute and leave him to ramble on, but the way one of his eyes watched her like a hawk she figured the instant she tried anything of the sort the Zetyan would drag her back out to listen kicking and screaming.
"But one day she died. And I found myself grieving, but I didn't know why. I tried lying to myself that I loved her all along, no. Rationalized that my mind was playing tricks, no. I had lost something and I did grieve for it, but I couldn't figure out what. I had an engram of her made, a dissimilar AI copy, and for weeks I tried to figure out what I lost. 'What is it,' I thought, 'what could she have that pulled such sway over me?' And then I realized. Can you guess?"
Even despite that, she felt sick, tired. D’sea had kept her in this place for some time now, in some small reconstruction of an old memory of his. A large room, lightly furnished. The details didn’t matter. She hadn’t felt hungry or tired for a while, outside of when the mind could no longer ignore the body, not when it felt like she was at the bottom of the ocean being slowly squished into paste. And it showed - her immediate memories were fuzzy, the slightest jitters ached her legs, and time felt out of scope. Had it been days? Weeks? Even months? She felt much thinner, crossed arms idly brushing against her skinsuit and touching around where the ribs were. Once or twice he came around, tried to goad her into eating more between inane conversations, but some part of her felt like he just wanted a reason to watch her starve.
Most aggravating of all was that there was no guarantee they’d be looking for her, at least yet. It was tempting to think that surely Alesso would sooner rip up the floorboards, howling her name, but thanks to Airondal the Army had become atomized enough that all general headquarters needed to do was ask AOTS-LS every so often if things were fine - which, unless Flareview had gone belly up, they most likely were.
"..." Silence was the little victory. This was his way of getting her to kneel, to tell him to get it over with and give her orders so he could mould her to his schedule. The longer she could stand to stall, the more D'sea was inconvenienced. He shrugged, and kept talking.
"I didn't love... her. I loved controlling her. I loved how she cried. That feeling of getting her to cow to my will. The little rush when she obeyed me without question. I got it with others, sure, but the closeness, the intimacy we had made it... special, in a way. I suppose that's why humans beat their dogs. I spent a lot of time with that engram after it hit me."
"..."
"Do you think I should have kept her? You might've got along well with her, if you ask me."
"...will you get to the point." Eraserhead didn't ask so much as state, her tired glare and eventual acquiescence earning a slight grin from the zetyan. Her throat felt a little scratchy, she hadn’t spoken in a while.
"My point," he said, the faux-affable tone leaving his voice and replaced with that cruel mirth she'd come to distaste. "is that I think I know why I'm doing all this now. At first I said 'the others can't be trusted with our mission', and I do think that, and when I elected to bring others to our fold that's what I told them. But... the more I look at it the more I realize, no, that's not why I'm doing this at all. Just an excuse." At some points it felt more difficult to tell whether he was talking to her or through her.
"Let me ask you something. Why is it only Laikos is allowed to ascend his earthly boundaries? Why not us? He and Alesso can wipe entire sectors off the map but we're relegated to doing their dirty work? We've proven godhood is an achievable metric and they don't think other people would, should take advantage of that? Give us a week, some unwitting idiots and enough juice and we could've easily Pareidolia'd the entire galaxy into submission long ago. It's nonsensical, it's absurd. And I don't think they have the heart to do what we promised to do anymore."
"..." The thought of that bastard in front of her, rotting and pissing and defecating himself in a wheelchair, was almost tantalizing to latch onto.
"No, I can't deny it. I'm the same man who died three decades ago and I want to be God. But Armin went the long route, look what happened to him. There has to be a better way. Efficient, streamlined, with full command of linearized thought. And I-"
"Just give me orders and stop talking to me already." She burst out now, the words coming out slightly hoarse and shaky. Her voice wasn't raised by much, but in the pummeling silence around them and with the lower tone D'sea favored when talking even a normal speaking voice sounded far louder than it should’ve. His eyes narrowed for a moment in curiosity, before with a slight chuckle he steepled his hands on the table.
"There is a group of traveling Minsinese shamans I've been tracking, psions of notable capacity. Uplifters of the poor, bringers of food, general humanitarians, sickeningly saccharine. Their names don't matter. All that matters to you, and me, is that you will kill them all," His hand suddenly raised, and from nowhere a device flung into it which he then placed on the table. "with this."
Cautiously she picked it up and examined it. It was a unicursal weapon, some kind of prototype if one had to guess. The thin block eponymous with their scythes was attached at the base pointing down, making way for three equally thin pronglike blades marked with barcodes. It reminded her of a pike, almost. Tubes connected it to itself, and although there was nothing evident to it she could feel it had some sort of internal psionic power source. "An experiment in psionic thought, theoretically able to drain and store the power of lower-level psions. I commissioned the Guidon for it. Originally it was for me to wield. That honor now goes to you."
She didn't respond, merely eying him suspiciously, and at this he continued. "This is an equipment test. You will kill them, and sup the power from their very souls. Easy marks, staunch pacifists. Even if they lash out they're no match for you. When you're finished, inform me and return to this place. The test will continue and be concluded then."
Almost as soon as he finished his sentence, an afterthought wave of his hand created an elevator door behind her. After a brief pause, if only to ensure he wouldn't continue blathering, the commander of AOTS-LS moved with haste to get away from the man she'd sold her soul to, almost hurrying within the elevator doors as they began to close automatically. He spared no words of encouragement, not even a goodbye, merely a nod before he stood from his seat and floated into the void. A full expectation of success.
She spent the majority of that elevator ride slumped into the back wall.
"I didn't love her, of course. I never did. She was fair, shy, a little willful, attractive by our standards but ugly to me. Infected with... humanity. The marriage was arranged as a political bargain, between clans at the time, but it wouldn't have mattered if it was or wasn't. We fought often. Usually with words. Several times I belittled her to the point of crying. Once I beat her. Footnotes, if you ask me."
Eraserhead hated it here, and he knew it. She hated him, hated the little realm he had created for himself, hated the way she could subtly feel the single-note tones of uncountable distant mandalas echoing in the forest of strings, the subtle hostility and pressure surrounding her in a way that it felt like something was leering over her shoulder and almost breathing into her ear. She hated this scenario that he had constructed and that she now found herself in, this fakery of a social interaction. About the only thing Eraserhead didn't hate in this place was herself, as much as D’sea had tried to inflict that final wound upon her, and at least in that she found solace. A part of her wanted to regress into a deaf-mute and leave him to ramble on, but the way one of his eyes watched her like a hawk she figured the instant she tried anything of the sort the Zetyan would drag her back out to listen kicking and screaming.
"But one day she died. And I found myself grieving, but I didn't know why. I tried lying to myself that I loved her all along, no. Rationalized that my mind was playing tricks, no. I had lost something and I did grieve for it, but I couldn't figure out what. I had an engram of her made, a dissimilar AI copy, and for weeks I tried to figure out what I lost. 'What is it,' I thought, 'what could she have that pulled such sway over me?' And then I realized. Can you guess?"
Even despite that, she felt sick, tired. D’sea had kept her in this place for some time now, in some small reconstruction of an old memory of his. A large room, lightly furnished. The details didn’t matter. She hadn’t felt hungry or tired for a while, outside of when the mind could no longer ignore the body, not when it felt like she was at the bottom of the ocean being slowly squished into paste. And it showed - her immediate memories were fuzzy, the slightest jitters ached her legs, and time felt out of scope. Had it been days? Weeks? Even months? She felt much thinner, crossed arms idly brushing against her skinsuit and touching around where the ribs were. Once or twice he came around, tried to goad her into eating more between inane conversations, but some part of her felt like he just wanted a reason to watch her starve.
Most aggravating of all was that there was no guarantee they’d be looking for her, at least yet. It was tempting to think that surely Alesso would sooner rip up the floorboards, howling her name, but thanks to Airondal the Army had become atomized enough that all general headquarters needed to do was ask AOTS-LS every so often if things were fine - which, unless Flareview had gone belly up, they most likely were.
"..." Silence was the little victory. This was his way of getting her to kneel, to tell him to get it over with and give her orders so he could mould her to his schedule. The longer she could stand to stall, the more D'sea was inconvenienced. He shrugged, and kept talking.
"I didn't love... her. I loved controlling her. I loved how she cried. That feeling of getting her to cow to my will. The little rush when she obeyed me without question. I got it with others, sure, but the closeness, the intimacy we had made it... special, in a way. I suppose that's why humans beat their dogs. I spent a lot of time with that engram after it hit me."
"..."
"Do you think I should have kept her? You might've got along well with her, if you ask me."
"...will you get to the point." Eraserhead didn't ask so much as state, her tired glare and eventual acquiescence earning a slight grin from the zetyan. Her throat felt a little scratchy, she hadn’t spoken in a while.
"My point," he said, the faux-affable tone leaving his voice and replaced with that cruel mirth she'd come to distaste. "is that I think I know why I'm doing all this now. At first I said 'the others can't be trusted with our mission', and I do think that, and when I elected to bring others to our fold that's what I told them. But... the more I look at it the more I realize, no, that's not why I'm doing this at all. Just an excuse." At some points it felt more difficult to tell whether he was talking to her or through her.
"Let me ask you something. Why is it only Laikos is allowed to ascend his earthly boundaries? Why not us? He and Alesso can wipe entire sectors off the map but we're relegated to doing their dirty work? We've proven godhood is an achievable metric and they don't think other people would, should take advantage of that? Give us a week, some unwitting idiots and enough juice and we could've easily Pareidolia'd the entire galaxy into submission long ago. It's nonsensical, it's absurd. And I don't think they have the heart to do what we promised to do anymore."
"..." The thought of that bastard in front of her, rotting and pissing and defecating himself in a wheelchair, was almost tantalizing to latch onto.
"No, I can't deny it. I'm the same man who died three decades ago and I want to be God. But Armin went the long route, look what happened to him. There has to be a better way. Efficient, streamlined, with full command of linearized thought. And I-"
"Just give me orders and stop talking to me already." She burst out now, the words coming out slightly hoarse and shaky. Her voice wasn't raised by much, but in the pummeling silence around them and with the lower tone D'sea favored when talking even a normal speaking voice sounded far louder than it should’ve. His eyes narrowed for a moment in curiosity, before with a slight chuckle he steepled his hands on the table.
"There is a group of traveling Minsinese shamans I've been tracking, psions of notable capacity. Uplifters of the poor, bringers of food, general humanitarians, sickeningly saccharine. Their names don't matter. All that matters to you, and me, is that you will kill them all," His hand suddenly raised, and from nowhere a device flung into it which he then placed on the table. "with this."
Cautiously she picked it up and examined it. It was a unicursal weapon, some kind of prototype if one had to guess. The thin block eponymous with their scythes was attached at the base pointing down, making way for three equally thin pronglike blades marked with barcodes. It reminded her of a pike, almost. Tubes connected it to itself, and although there was nothing evident to it she could feel it had some sort of internal psionic power source. "An experiment in psionic thought, theoretically able to drain and store the power of lower-level psions. I commissioned the Guidon for it. Originally it was for me to wield. That honor now goes to you."
She didn't respond, merely eying him suspiciously, and at this he continued. "This is an equipment test. You will kill them, and sup the power from their very souls. Easy marks, staunch pacifists. Even if they lash out they're no match for you. When you're finished, inform me and return to this place. The test will continue and be concluded then."
Almost as soon as he finished his sentence, an afterthought wave of his hand created an elevator door behind her. After a brief pause, if only to ensure he wouldn't continue blathering, the commander of AOTS-LS moved with haste to get away from the man she'd sold her soul to, almost hurrying within the elevator doors as they began to close automatically. He spared no words of encouragement, not even a goodbye, merely a nod before he stood from his seat and floated into the void. A full expectation of success.
She spent the majority of that elevator ride slumped into the back wall.
-
ALUMINARIA, PONETE DISTRICT
Aluminaria had always been a stringent place when it came to the rights and wants of the people. Judicially, it was as conservatively straight-laced as you could get - no prostitution, no dressing skimpy, hardened laws on same-sex relationships, laws discouraging finding a partner after a divorce by exponent - and the cultural laws, the ones made by the people, only magnified it. The average Aluminarian would most likely sneer at the average fashion, at the gay marriage, at the immoderate or the mold-breaking, scolding and scorning anyone who went beyond the norm. About the only place one could express themselves fully was in Fiscaglia, the foreigner's paradise, and even then one was still kept on a tight leash by the Civil Dictatorship's ever-watchful eye, and moderated by the halo of Alberonte Tower.
As D'sea, or the human meat puppet representing him looked around, he figured every single law on both sides had been broken hundreds, thousands of times over.
If he had to guess, the people surrounding him were former #IMAGO members. There were traces in it of what clothing they had torn off of themselves, in the slang they screamed and hollered and whooped, in the high-blood accents he could pick out between yelps and growls. On all sides of him was pure, unadulterated, indescribable debauchery, like something out of an underground illicit film, man on man on woman on man on woman, an orgy of violent carnality accentuated by hard drugs, mental instability and loud thumping music. He'd been able to hear it from outside the abandoned 5-story apartment complex when he first possessed the man he now moved to his target, that's how loud it was. By all means even playing what came out of some jury-rigged boomboxes to yourself would have earned you a visit from the SAT, let alone blasting it at volumes sufficient enough to make the floorboards vibrate.
There was only one force in existence, however familiar, that could have stayed their hand. And as he rounded a corner in the room he was in, careful to avoid a passed-out man overdosing on the floor, he deduced there was only one man who could ever have sunk this low.
He almost looked like a caricature, like something made by a 12-year old told to describe the grim reaper. All-black, covered in dirty, unwashed rags and adorned with a bodysuit that made him look like he was a skeleton. A horned skull mask marked "XIV" hid his face and morphed to his expression, which was focused on injecting a needle of dope into his right upper arm's veins as he held a torn strip of cloth tightly around it. A half-naked girl next to him tried and failed to get his attention, whether it was for his drugs or his body was neither decipherable nor of consequence. He narrowed his eyes, and a string attached to her soul changed her mind. She left soon after, and he sat next to where she once was.
"I've been looking for you." D'sea had to almost shout, both from the noise and to get the man's attention.
"Everyone around here’s looking for me dipshit" He replied back with nonchalant dismissal. "Fuckin' cops want to arrest me, cops want to do drugs with me, cops want to fuck me, girls want to fuck me, men want to fuck me. Get in line."
"And if I'm not from around here?"
"Well then I don't got a clue what you want with me, go fuck one of the others or something. Like that hoe that was botherin' me. Skank was a piece of meat." He waved his hand in the direction of the girl who left. D'sea didn't tell him she'd joined the other man in frothing at the mouth on the floor.
"Come on, Fourteen. You can recognize an old friend, can't you?" At this, he froze, before turning around with a shocked anger in his eyes.
"...the fuck you just call me?"
"Fourteen." His voice now lowered to his preferred cadence as he spoke telepathically into the former Number's mind, finding amusement in the way he scrambled back. "I never thought I'd find you here, of all places."
"FUCK YOU! Nah, nah nah nah you third gaze mofos ain't taking me back NOWHERE!" Immediately he began scrambling for a weapon in a drug-addled haze, only able to find a kitchen knife. "I AIN'T NEVER GOING BACK TO-"
"Relax. I'm not here for the Army."
"Well then who sent you?! BGS?! ZEITGEIST?! Zariah?! It better not've been that cunt Zariah, I swear to god!"
"Myself." He stood from the couch, looking with bemusement at the rest of the orgy. "If I may? Perhaps being elsewhere will clear your head."
"May wha-" His surroundings turned golden as D'sea constructed a mindscape facsimile of the Liminus, and left the Number at the height of suspicion as his disguise wore away to reveal the zetyan puppeteer beneath. "Ok, first off it ain't Fourteen no more. It's Xiv, Xiv Mulholland, and if you're here to take me back I will gut you where you stand!"
"No such thing. In fact, I came to recruit you for the opposite. To fight the Army."
"...what?" He shook his head in disbelief. "You wanna fuck with the Army of all people? Wait, wait, what the fuck?" He squinted, and in his hands manifested a comforting object that he promptly poked the AOTS commander with - his old unicursal scythe, now a broken twisted thing. modified and repaired over the years into an unrecognizable, if still functional corpse of its former self. If he could manifest it so unconsciously in the mind, that meant it was still around. "No, you's one of their head honchos, the fuck you want to fight them for now? You suck their dicks for free."
"Yes, I know. I had a sort of... enlightenment, you see. A changing of goals, paradigm shift, betrayal, whatever you want to call it the Army can no longer contain my ego. And I'm looking for people of interest to supply my cause. People like, say, a rogue Number."
"..." Suspicion lined his eyes as he looked around, just waiting for phase troopers, or homunculi, or Eraserhead, or whoever or whatever to appear and hold the knife to his neck.
"I know you have the blue strings, Xiv. I wouldn’t have found you otherwise."
"...goddamnit, did they finally figure it out?" Now they began leaking from his eyes like tears, just like the Pastor's did, and at this he smiled.
"No. But I found someone else who did." He cast a knowing glance. "And now you're living confirmation that they're not just a fluke, and that I'm the first to find something of the Panopticon that the Army hasn't learned of. And that’s leverage well beyond your understanding."
"So, what, now you want me to go kill myself for you cause my strings hide me from the fags up top? Fuck you, man, I got drugs, I got bitches, I got holes, I got a hole to do both in, the fuck I wanna go and throw that all away for?"
"Who said you had to lose it, Xiv?" D'sea postulated, and at this the eyebrow of Xiv's mask raised. "All I ask is for you to join me in my war. So far as I care, your vices are as the hiring bonus."
"Then what's in it for me, bitch? I ain't a charity."
"Drugs beyond your comprehension, for starters. I have the connections to supply you all the earthly pleasures of the world. And if you want pleasures of the flesh, why, all you see is yours for the taking." For a moment, he gestured back to the party they were still standing within, noise leaking in through a hole in the not-Liminus. "All things are, if you have the will. And if you have the will to successfully flee the Army then I can't imagine much else is beyond your grasp."
"...you'll keep me topped up, is what you're saying."
"And if you do well, and don't die, then you'll get more than you could ask for. If not from me, then from your own two hands."
"You promise?"
"You'll be proving yourself before I even think of 'promising' anything." From one of his belt pouches he procured an object, familiar to him in all respects - a necklace, that double-sided eye looking up and down. "But if you're in, then here you are. The contract is yours to sign."
Xiv analyzed the object with equal mixtures of curiosity and concern, like a cat looking at a glass on the table, before slowly he reached out and grabbed the object. D'sea's permanent grin only widened as he fastened the object around his neck, and the blue strings leaking from his eyes resonated with the necklace. A thrush of power poured into him, the resonance of the artifact thrumming through Xiv like the bass of the party around them, and in that moment they returned to the noise and the orgy and the debauchery that D'sea had expertly maneuvered around to get here. The necklace still hung around Xiv's neck, the remnant of whatever illusion D'sea had conjured.
"So what now?" They still communicated telepathically, if not for security then out of convenience.
"You'll come when called. And you'll know when I call." D'sea patted the meat puppet's right pocket to ensure the necklace was gone, before slowly he began to crumple lifelessly. "Now, as you were."
Xiv merely stood in place for a minute or so, as he watched the lifeless puppet and the twin overdosing druggies be promptly dragged off for some unknown, likely illicit purpose by three of the partygoers. After a moment of idly fiddling with the artefact in his right hand, he shrugged and muttered to himself, going into another room to try a new drug. He heard some of the homies had brought DTORMT over from Fiscaglia, somehow. That'd be fun.
-
BOREALIA
It was 3 in the morning. ‘Tincan’ was 28 years old. He was a former sergeant of AOTS-K. If he were still of their ranks, he would be sitting in a troop transport cruising through space to intercept parts of the western withdrawal. He was not of ‘Operational Group Gargan’, as the loyalists now derogatorily called it. If he was, he would either be giving a salute to their aforementioned leader or dying in futile defense against the encroaching PMC elements, against Terra Lilliana, against whatever SHEOL had elected to throw at the problem to solve it.
He didn’t know what he was a part of, anymore.
He was one of three people spared from the worst massacre he had ever seen in his life. A gang of horribles 600 strong, clad in their colors but acting like barbarians, had assaulted their outpost, besieged it with fury he’d never seen in his life. Blue strings clashed with orange, a lower-ranking phasic medium tortured by some strange means by an ape-man with a wide-brimmed hat as they entered his skin and fried his nerves. They didn’t kill, not in close range, but they did maim, and by the end of it he and about 50 others were captured and left with broken limbs, bullet wounds, and other assorted injuries too varied to describe with words. Their leader, that ape-man thing encircled by those strange blue strings, gave the survivors a choice - ‘join us, or you’ll wish for death’.
He was one of three people left. Everyone save two had been spared, but there were only three people left.
Tincan was sitting with two others, whose names he’d already forgotten. They’d just finished a raid on a spaceport, where other members of his former unit were shoring up. They were outmatched two to one and they still beat them to a man without as much as thirty-two dead. He didn't know how, as much as he could guess, but in every man they'd turned the blue strings had penetrated their napes like needles, their expressions contorted into manic grins and slobbering froth. 'Pastor', that's what they called him, he danced among their ranks, screaming into the night and cajoling and corrupting everyone else, until they reached a breaking point. And now they were here, the three remaining people in the camp, as before him the gang descended upon the survivors of their raid like beasts.
He couldn't describe what they were doing, both to themselves and to those they'd captured. No rational man could.
He figured the only reason they hadn't turned their hungry eyes to themselves now was because they were too busy ripping each other apart.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice of Pastor instantly made the three scramble back, as he perched himself to their left, guitar slung across his back. He was half-naked in the wrong way, the only things clung to his body being the wide-brim hat, overcoat and bandoliers that slung across his bare chest. He was a walking surreality, calm despite the horrors around them. He hated looking at him; as his eyes glanced over they were like fathomless black holes where all the goodness of the world fell within kicking and screaming.
"What did you do to them?" The girl asked with tremors in her voice, as she retreated in on herself. Tincan almost wanted to strangle her as a mercy.
"I did nothing. This, solely, is the wanton condition of the human being made manifest."
"B-The-... they're defiling those people."
"Such terms are subjective. In the eyes of the galaxy you were defiled, but before you were Coronan. Is being made human such a blasphemy?"
"Shut up! I don't know how you did it but you made these people into animals!"
"Man is a horde animal. Do you know how the animal works?" He stood now, and gestured broadly. "The animal is a beast of id and vice and energy, who is in basest nature a thoughtless thing. They are superior to us in all respects, mental, spiritual, physical, precisely because they do not think. They do not trouble themselves with thoughts of God, of hell and heaven, of work and play and night and sleep and the terrors of their lives. If they want food? They take it. Should they wish to mate? They force themselves on the female. Do they want to play? They play. Every action is a moment they take, and they live in each moment to the next. There is no thought to the why, only the how."
"What, that makes all of this okay? 'Cause we're-?!"
"You make a mistake, my friend. Moral law is a facsimile invented by man to justify his nature. Why do you commit to war if it is useless in nature? God, country, resources, want, need, a man finds every reason he can to justify what he does. But take reason from him and he becomes superior! No longer is he troubled by his morals, his beliefs, his religion, all that is left is himself and his urges and the will to take action on them. Such exists around you now; what use is there in denying it?" He gestured now to a particular couple of men, engaged in a copulatory murder-suicide that seemed almost ritualistic. Tincan didn't look, the other two did. He heard retching behind him.
"Calm yourself, man." all now looked to the other person, some older man who had helplessly ejected a few grams of his lunch onto the ground. "Ne'er in history have you been so free. You ought to rejoice. I can teach you how - evidently you've yet to learn."
"J-just leave him alone, dude." Tincan stuttered out a retort, and regret filled him as Pastor grinned his way and began to approach. "Leave us alone. Please."
"But why should I, then? I am a preacher of the ways of the earth and the flesh, and my duty is to take charge of the flock, and guide them, and protect them as they walk on the path. What in understanding remits me from helping our brothers and sisters to see our way?" He now crouched down in front of Tincan, and his two-pupilled eyes bored into his soul as blue strings leaked from his tear ducts.
"...what do you want with me?" The world had shrank in fear until it was just him and the monster he'd ended up in front of. The naqoy grinned.
"What I want is for you to stop resisting. Cease your useless pontificating, your whinging, your internal conflict about right and wrong that your societies ingrain into you, and accept what you are and have been since the day you were torn from your mother's breast screaming - a beast. An animal, driven by nothing but instinct." He felt a slight tugging sensation on his nape, and his blood started feeling cold, but his breath grew slower and heavier as his vision darkened. A finger caught his attention, which then shifted to the girl as Pastor pointed to her horrified grimace. He felt hollow. He felt... alive.
"And if this is to be your baptism, it shall be one that is shared."
Whatever was left of Tincan was thankful his vision went black, and his hearing cut out, before he even got close to that girl. He couldn't live with himself either way, but this way he wouldn't remember it.
-
LOST STAR
When the elevator door opened, Eraserhead had to flinch from the light.
The followers of the Isochroma had always been masters of color. Architects subtly weaving messages into buildings, news broadcasters accentuating their words with the colors of their subtitles and graphics, game developers building two-layered stories entirely with textures and effects. All were appreciated, from the smallest trinkets to the largest wonders, but of them all the architects and the builders were those who made things with the most immediate effects. Mile-high skyscrapers with iridescent lighting, hand-crafted monasteries built to take in the light of the sun from every angle, even walkways simulating multicolored oceans, from the lowliest district on Lost Star to the highest peaks of Iqzinia the multicolored religion and it's language of hues and values could be seen in every corner of the galaxy, inspiring even the most atheistic and agnostic with the beauty of their works.
Stepping out into the hall of a beautiful church, she muttered a curse under her breath. She was right on the mark, a sextet of monks sat praying in the middle of a large church. Three men, three women, humming some prayer from their texts to themselves as their robes shone in the light. But there were others, unrelated civilians. Knowing D'sea, it was an almost equal chance whether he knew they wouldn't be alone or not, and whether he cared. The pike he'd given her thrummed lightly in her hand, perhaps some resonance with their mandalas, and the feeling it caused her grip to tighten in anticipation as she began walking forwards into the atrium.
Her sudden presence broke whatever meditation they have, and each turned to face her in surprise. As they turned, the others turned, murmurs picking up as they analyzed this stranger walking into their midst.
"Hello?" The closest spoke up, a younger-looking man. She didn't respond.
"Who are you?" Another, one of the women, an older one. She didn't respond. She could almost feel the training kicking in, her shield against the horrors.
"My goodness. Are you alright?"
"..." That, more than any interrogatory phrase, caught her attention, as she stopped walking forwards and blinked. Her gaze landed on the monk who had shown her concern, a girl with fair skin and hair.
"You... you look really thin. And you're feeling weary. Have you been traveling a while?"
Idly she looked down, hand hesitantly tracing her body as the grip on her weapon loosened. Was it that bad, that even a stranger could pinpoint her condition from a mile away?
"Young lady," She looked back to the monks as the oldest among them spoke up. "I sense a turmoil within you. And a purpose to end our lives."
"..." The murmurs from the civilians picked up in intensity, fear.
"You are welcome to stay with us. You needn't walk this path. Violence is an ouroboros."
"..."
"...your hand is forced, then?"
"...I'm sorry. I can't." She softly murmured the words, and the old man nodded pensively. This felt disgusting.
"I will pray for you-"
He was cut off by choked screams from the others who had gathered here, man, woman, child, all, the orange strings of the Panopticon springing out from her like hungry dogs and burrowing into their souls. She wouldn't kill them, they weren't affiliated. Just a memory wipe, a scalpel in place of the sledgehammer D'sea was trying to turn her into. The screaming filled her head again, but for the demiurge it was a feeling so familiar as to be almost plain. Others sprung from the floor and bound the followers of the Isochroma, by neck, by arm, by leg. It all happened in the space and span of seconds, and by the time she had closed the distance the civilians were unconscious and the monks were fully restrained. It was efficient, quick, clean. Ideal.
As they struggled, she began to raise the limpike. It thrummed hungrily like a beast, the three prongs spreading apart as a psionic vortex began to form and whorl towards the souls of the monks. It almost felt automated, all she had done was interface with it. She didn't dare look them in the eyes as they struggled against the strings. One of them shouted and began channeling the Isochroma in survival instinct, rainbows flowing from his eyes as light poured from his body, trying to burn the strings away. It wasn't enough, it never could have been. This was disgusting. She wanted to leave them be and pretend this never happened.
Suddenly there was a roar, and a blinding light, and the shouting turned to primal screaming that lasted far longer than it should have. She could feel their mandalas before, radiant things humming in various tones, and the noise felt almost comforting compared to the single-note tones of most other mandalas. But now that comfort was replaced with horror, an empty void filling their souls and their bodies as whatever device D'sea had given her made an unholy, echoing screech that resonated around the atrium. It almost felt like it would explode in her hands, energy crackling through the tubes and pronglike extrusions as the pike hollowed them out from top to bottom like a mosquito sucking blood. When it was done, they all slumped over, death rattles gurgling out of their throats as the strings gently laid them down.
There wasn't even enough left to make an absent of them.
The device now had a six-note flat tone to it, the prongs enclosing back to their original positions as it handily contained the coalesced lives of the six bodies before her. A shuddering breath escaped her mouth as she stared at this thing, this terrible construct D'sea had given to her that had just stolen the souls, maybe even lifeforce of these people as if it were nothing. Only now had the enormity of the act begun to sink in as she stepped back from her masterpiece. It still felt like something was looking over her shoulder, and she muttered another curse to open air.
A faint ding echoed from behind, and she turned around to see an elevator door had manifested itself in the walls of the church and opened to beckon her into it. Dim yellow light leaked out from its confines, casting on the floor of the church in the shade of an overhang. She walked forwards, looked forwards, because behind her was an atrocity she needed to get far, far away from. The door closed soon after.
There was a mirror in the elevator on the right wall, now. It hadn’t been there before. She spent the ride staring at herself in cold dread, leaning on the left.
-
The doors opened to that soulless void, and the pressure filled her ears again like water.
Eraserhead stepped out onto nothing, the doors closing behind her and cutting her off from the warm, dirty light, and in the distance she saw him. He was cross-legged, sitting on nothing, his own soul-strings like whips as they resonated with the countless others in the Apophenia, his hands flashing between esoteric signs at unnatural speeds as more strings tied to them like cobwebs were tugged and pulled, tugged and pulled. She hadn't seen D'sea at work before he took her here, and even after then very rarely at that. He'd described it sardonically as 'soul-searching'; reaching out across the basest point of the psion and identifying key individuals to be turned, molded, or marked for death. 'If the Rosenzweig Network is our way of raising the next generation', he'd said, 'then I'm the one who finds their teachers and masters, one way or another.' Most likely he also performed a myriad of other duties beyond her reckoning and care; coordinating assets, distributing and curating general intelligence between the other Army branches, and generally acting as the Synopticon's living filing cabinet.
As she approached, however, he seemingly made no motion to recognize her presence. Which was odd; he often made a point of pausing whatever he was doing to host visitors, what few he got, and D'sea was so attuned to the realm he'd made for himself that there was no way he didn't feel Eraserhead's presence the moment she stepped out of those doors. As she got closer, another detail presented itself, though by this point familiar - his telltale solarite eyes had disappeared, seemingly leaving him blind. It felt like there were more than two people here, as well, but with how his little sub-realm of the Liminus operated itself she merely chalked it up to an uncomfortable sensation and moved on.
"Hey." She called out. No response.
"Hey." She tried again, a bit more forcefully. Nothing.
"D'sea. It's done."
"I'm aware. A moment." He only momentarily paused in whatever he was to give her a glance and a nod, the scarlet-orange balls flitting to her for but a moment before his eyes disappeared from their sockets again. She sighed through her nose at this, crossing her arms and looking away. And as she did so, now the feeling of another presence became acute, more concrete. No, it definitely wasn't just her now, there was someone else here, and Eraserhead furrowed her brow as she began the quick process of pinpointing who it was.
"You, of all people?"
The foreign voice made her practically whip around the millisecond it reached her ears and mind, decades of training and experience kicking in like clockwork as she assumed a reactionary combat position fitting of a limscythe, darting back just slightly as her hands immediately went to the balance points of her weapon, and her muscles tensed springboard-like as she adopted a combat stance ready to dart and strafe to her sides. It was a lucky, lucky thing for the born-anew Gargan-Lemuel, then, that she restrained herself out of interrogatory curiosity and honed instinct, because in a combat scenario her immediate next actions would have been to swing her weapon and encircle the target in a matter of moments. For the non-blooded admiral that would have sliced him to ribbons faster than he could begin to move, and in another future Eraserhead failing to hold back would have rendered the unseen efforts of D'sea to preserve his mind fruitless, void and naught.
Both regarded each other for a moment, as the mechanical thing cocked his head. He was dressed in a plain, if modified QA admiralty uniform, all-black with red fur contrails around his neck. A simple beret capped a triangular head with indented edges, three yellow eyes staring without emotion lined at each edge of the triangle, heat sinks in the back flaring brassy orange. Around his neck was some kind of necklace, an oval-shaped eye looking up and down, and on his right breast in place of a litany of medals was some strange insignia, a two-pupiled eye looking up and down not unlike the necklace. The only highlights on his being were two stripes on either arm, and on his beret, all colored red.
"My, my. How did he manage this?" He chuckled softly to himself, cocking his head the other way as if it would change anything other than his perspective. He spoke with an odd accent, and his voice carried underlayers to it as if broadcast by multiple speakers.
"...who are you?" Gradually she eased out of her combat position into something not ready to turn Gargan into scrap metal, though she still kept the limpike at a ready stance.
"Death-Knight Gargan-Lemuel. Formerly of the Quosx Alliance admiralty, formerly of the Army of the Synopticon-Korona. Now of... well, whatever... this is." He gestured offhandedly towards D'sea, who failed to react.
"Weren't you marked for death?" She blinked for a moment before speaking; the name sounded familiar.
"I was. Or perhaps I am. I'm not quite sure..." His hand grasped what approximated for a chin on his metal face. "He never confirmed whether my first body died yet."
"...you're a respawn, then."
"Oh yes." He spoke with pride at that, his eyes turning a shade of green in lockstep. "He saw the potential in me, still does. I inspired rebellion amongst the AOTS-K. Perhaps if we're lucky yet you'll be hearing my name chanted like a shibboleth on the airwaves."
"..." She gave no response to him beyond a small 'hm', eyeing the Zetyan as he remained immersed in his work.
"I am quite curious though. You're Eraserhead, aren't you? He mentioned you when I first woke up."
"..." Now she eyed him back suspiciously, as the robotic general continued.
"The most loyal psion of the Army, in his fold. I didn't believe it 'till now. How did he manage that?"
"If you know better, you won't ask." Bitterness crept into her voice as she snapped, the grip on her weapon tightening.
"She's right." The voice of D'sea interjecting caused both to turn, watching as he raised from his seated position into floating above the two like some kind of fallen angel. "Ours is a... personal matter. Not for discussion."
"...my apologies, then." At this he nodded, and gave a bow to Eraserhead before continuing. "I assume you two have business?"
"Yes. If you would?" He raised his hand, and an elevator door appeared from nowhere. "I will be with you, and others, shortly."
Gargan did nothing else but nod, salute, and silently march into the elevator doors. As they closed, D'sea turned back to Eraserhead with a neutral expression, holding out his hand.
"Your weapon?"
She offhandedly tossed it towards D'sea, who caught it and began to examine it. The internal machinery morphed and changed itself as he interfaced with the limpike, the three prongs opening and closing, the scythe-blade folding up and down, the staff base retracting in and out by small amounts. The isochromatic souls it had devoured resonated by his command, a rainbow hue only visible to them shining semi-faintly as he twisted it in his hands. His earlier comment, about the weapon being intended for his hands, seemed to hold weight as it obeyed him like a starving dog. It even seemed more scaled to D'sea than Eraserhead, now that it was in his hands for comparison.
"I mentioned before that this was an equipment test." He glanced back at her, continuing to twist it in his hands. "So far, this has all exceeded expectations. However, one function remains untested and unproven."
"...being?" She folded her arms now. Something in her gut told her she wouldn't like where this was going.
"As it is able to take power, it should be able to bestow it as well. Shunting the power it contains to an applicable target, either to additive or multiplicative effect. The science is unproven, but made with confidence. This test is meant to prove it - if only for ourselves."
"So, you want me to... what? Point it at you and...?" She looked around for some sort of confirmation otherwise as she shrugged confusedly, finding nothing.
"No." Alarm bells instantly began ringing in her head as the zetyan eyed her, the limpikes prongs shifting to the open position. She took a step back, arms unfolding. Something was wrong.
"...then... how are you...?"
"The next ten seconds will likely be very, very uncomfortable. Apologies in advance." The last part of his sentence sounded almost like an afterthought, as if he never meant it either way. It didn’t matter. She had all of one second and a half to register the electric arcs coursing towards the tip of those prongs as he pointed it towards her.
"Wait wait WHA-"
In but a moment the most indescribable sensation of her life was forced upon her by D'sea, the unholy screech of the limpike filling her ears as it dumped the total, combined power and psychic tolerance of six Isochroma monks into her body and soul. It was electric, it was fire, it was as if she had too much and too little to eat at the same time, her stomach wringing knots and tearing them apart as she fell to the floor. The power of the psions she'd killed was, more likely than not, but a few drops in the latent power now contained within the demiurge, but it wouldn't have mattered for Eraserhead if it was or wasn't. Ten seconds felt like ten minutes as she jerked, hands on her gut and knees on the floor as choked vocalizations failed to leave her lungs.
When it stopped, however, the results felt like the direct opposite to what they should have been. She felt full of energy, every limb in her body jittery, her heart beating fast like a metronome as she heaved shaky breaths in and out. Perhaps for a normal person would have taken longer to get back up, the air feeling knocked from their lungs, but Eraserhead was back on her feet in moments, glaring angrily at D'sea as he admired his own masterpiece, tracing a finger along one of the limpike's prongs.
"...wonderful." He remarked to himself, pleased with the results, before turning back to her. "Thank you, Eraserhead. This-"
"FUCK YOU!" She blurted it out almost automatically, a noise of frustration escaping her shortly after before she angrily pointed at him. "If you're going to pull this kind of shit then have the decency to WARN ME!"
"I will." He said, to her extreme doubt. He floated down until he touched the 'ground' she stood upon, now as much down to her level as he could be. "You'll likely have jitters for a few hours. Increased heart rate. It'll pass." She didn't respond as he presented the weapon back to her, slowly beginning to slow her breathing.
"What did you just do to me?"
"If this worked - which I have high confidence it did - this just imparted the total power of those monks onto you. Probably not much in the scale of things, frankly, but the theory is proven nonetheless. Congratulations." He urged to her again to take it, and she snatched it out of his hands if only to stop him from doing it again. Silently she glared at him, hoping he'd get the message to just let her go, and to her luck he gestured with his hand and summoned a door she quickly moved to.
"Take your breather. I'll have work for you soon." He nodded and left her to her devices as she quickly retreated back to the confines of her domain, the door slammed behind her.
She spent most of the aftershock pacing, or tossing and turning in bed. An MRE got half-eaten out of spite. With bitter, nostalgic humor she wondered if this was how Scarlet felt back in her room in the Liminus.
-
BROKEN AMBER OF DAWN
"You kidding me? That's the tackiest yet most boring suit I have ever seen. Shit's impressively mid."
"Says the man dressed in a skeleton costume, wearing nothing but tactical gear and black dirty rags."
"Hey man, I'm self-expressing here. You just look like you larp and play HOI9 all day."
"And you look like you're sold for $300 every All Hallow's."
"Do you even know what that is or did you just memorize the fuckin' Laulapedia article name"
"Do you?"
"No"
"Exactly"
Qone'ta pinched the bridge of his maw as the two bantered, reclining on a bridge chair. It had been about 14 minutes since they'd appeared onto the bridge of the Sulka-class battleship, the leader of Battlegroup Ζενίθ as it languished in deep space, and 13 since Xiv had started talking and never bothered to stop. He'd bantered with Qone'ta for five, then stopped when it turned out Qone'ta was both unreceptive and a fantastically boring comms officer whose sole accomplishment in life was demolishing BIDEN about halfway and getting chased by a scorn elemental. Gargan had been much more inclined to the matter of conversation, humoring the druggie as they both ruminated and insulted each other on the topics of war, disease, video games, loved ones, drugs of choice, food tastes. It was as inane as the words implied, they went through conversation topics like paper through a shredder, and the more introverted Zetyan would rather be issuing orders across the absented fleet if only to do something.
He couldn't blame them, though. They were talking to each other, and Qone'ta was silent, because the only other person to talk to silently perched to their collective left, watching with interest as the absents below toiled with their work. A hairless naqoy, dressed anachronistically. The ape-man gave off bad vibes the instant he laid eyes on him. He felt like a walking omen, a disaster waiting to happen, and if Qone'ta could feel it then the two psions staving off the silence nearby were almost certainly bathed in it. Their mutual agreement to leave him be was unspoken, implicit, only communicated by the occasional shared glance or veiled stink-eye in his general direction.
All, however, shared a common element, as the zetyan idly fiddled with the necklaces that all hung around their necks. Blue strings intertwined them all, each necklace resonating with the other as Xiv and 'Pastor' each imparted their latent power into the self-contained network, and Gargan providing an additive benefit with his death knight heritage. It was a curious sight, he never knew solarite could be blue. Gargan had commented on it earlier, and XIv had taught him how to exhibit it in the span of seconds via apparently thwapping his soul with a few strings like a whip. He wasn't much of a psion, not without this necklace, and he was in no place to comment, but apparently from what he picked up through their ongoing arguments any understanding about the matter was apparently very instinctual. "It just was, and is, and shall always be" as Pastor had so eloquently put it to Xiv's disdain.
"Hey. Bug-eyes." Xiv broke in his conversation with Gargan as he looked towards Qone'ta. "When's your boss showing up?"
"I don't know. He said soon." He replied, the necklace thrumming as he began to interface with it.
"Well it better be fuckin' soon. Been 14 minutes since I got here. Only so patient."
"He had business with a... personal associate." Gargan piped up, gesturing to nothing. "Give it time."
"Wasn't asking, walleyes."
"You asked in spirit, if not in body." Now the Pastor spoke up, wryly smiling. Nobody replied, only staring in silence for a moment, but the unnerved glance the other three shared and the muttered curse Xiv made under his breath said more than any sentence could.
The first to feel it wasn't any of the psions, but Qone'ta, as his necklace lifted from his collarbones for but a moment before falling down. There was a very particular ambience to D'sea that made the shift in the air almost immediately recognizable, down to the millisecond as the others looked around in anticipation. It was a kind of thrumming pressure, like you were under the ocean and had water in your ears, laced with a kind of airy chill. Of course, unbeknownst to them, the sensation was shared across most others in the presence of the demiurges of the Synopticon, the natural reaction of the body when faced with overwhelming psychic might, and Qone'ta was merely the first in D'sea's retinue to recognize the different texture. The other commanders, were one familiar with them, had similar quirks. Haykel's was like a flushing heat. Eleika's had a triple-layered ringing sensation, like tinnitus. Jonan, when he wasn't masking it, imparted goosebumps and sinking feelings, as did the two sisters. And Alesso, when he lowered his mask and let his power seep through, was like an undeniable wave of power that made your knees buckle, and yet imparted a kind of suffocating warmth like a weighted blanket.
"Good. You all made it." It was this pressure that caused Xiv to flinch just slightly as D'sea psionically manifested, stepping into the bridge as he walked upward through an inky shadow cast by no light source. His six eyes glanced around at those gathered, and he smiled. Gargan and Qone'ta both clicked their heels and stiffened into a salute, the pastor merely returned the expression.
"Took you long enough." The drug-addled psion grumbled, folding his arms. "Start talkin', I ain't got all day."
"As you wish. What, do you think, is the perfect expression of loyalty?"
"...wh-...whuh." He merely stated his confusion, cocking his head. Gargan and Qone'ta both shared confused glances, but otherwise kept even gazes.
"Back in older times, in my time, there used to be a lot of mythologizing about the blood pact." He began pacing, "The thought of pledging yourself to some secret order, knife drawn blood, esoteric rituals - the thought was romantic to many, most likely still is. I think it's useless. But in that I find something more appreciable, something far more applicable - the unspeakable act. Blasphemy against your religion, a shirking of your morals and vows, the kind of thing done in service of a greater cause that is both irrevocable and absolute."
"Man I didn't come for a fuckin' lecture just get to the point"
"My point is that of the four people in this room, only two are unblooded. It is not a matter of trust, it is a matter of deed. Qone'ta has to his name the destruction of a bastion against the Old Invaders, the font of collaboration for hundreds of nations. Pastor's deeds I have seen and heard myself, right now his men commit uncountable atrocities in the western half of Borealia. Both have the blood of uncountable innocents on their hands. You two," He motioned to Xiv and Gargan. "do not. Now-"
"Gargan." He motioned to the mechanical man, who nodded. "There is a small, but notable convoy of Rosenzweig Network ships I've been tracking that is transporting refugee orphans to Lost Star, under orders of Sigrun Hjafinsdottir. Under ideal circumstances, they are to be groomed into the Army upon arrival, becoming either the next generation of liminal watchmen or the next throng of cannon fodder. This particular batch has a notable amount of psi-capable children. I have pinpointed an ideal interception point between them and Accirus. Qone'ta will accompany you, and you will be granted partial control of Ζενίθ. You will kill them all. Expect little if any defense; nobody anticipates the murder of children."
"Xiv. There is a covert Synopticon operation run out of Geldrin of the Free Worlds, run under the banner of AOTS-N and thus under a particular future opponent of mine. It is supplicant to Rosenzweig operations, but only tangentially. There is a particular individual we have been interested in, and have been grooming to join AOTS-N, a psion of decent comparative capacity. He currently runs a homeless shelter. You will go there and massacre everyone in a central radius, that man included - Pastor will accompany you." He gestured to the naqoy, and Xiv grimaced beneath his mask. "I must stress in no small part that you cannot use the blue strings in this operation. Not once, not ever, until you return. This is a secret, and we will be wise to keep it."
"So what the fuck do I use then? Scythe needs strings."
"Your guns. The orange strings. You surprise me, Xiv, has it been so long since your time in the Army?"
"Don't like the orange ones. Guess why."
"I don't need to." His soul-strings resonated with both Xiv's and Pastor's, and the knowledge of their target came to them. Jeremy Orbal, 23 years old. Engaged, but not married. Well-paying job running the Carley-Jameson Care Network. Contributor to charity. Low psionic capacity, high tolerance for psitech. The information came unbidden, the entirety of his intelligence file recorded to their memories. Begrudgingly, the color of Xiv's strings turned from blue to orange, a litany of curses muttered under his breath. Pastor merely terminated his own, as if somehow he was unable or unwilling.
"There will be no knife drawing blood, no oaths. Such things are primitive, I won't have it. But you will have your orders, your unspeakable acts in league of the cause, and you will execute them. Am I clear?" The others gave a nod or a 'yes', save Pastor who simply stared, perched on a nearby console.
"Are there others?" queried Gargan. "Or are we the only ones?"
"There are. But either they have already proven themselves, or were unable to answer this call. I will get to the latter in time." He cast a shadow with his hand, a portal to the Apophenia opening like a mirror next to Xiv and Pastor. "Through that opening will be a liminal transmission to Geldrin, and to your target. Do what comes natural."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Xiv scoffed as he moved, throwing a dismissive hand gesture. Pastor followed, though not before exchanging a glance with D'sea. That left the other two.
"FTL coordinates will be transmitted to you two shortly. You each know what comes after that." D'sea nodded to them, and then began to disappear, shadows pooling beneath his feet like ink.
"Sir?" Gargan spoke up now, cocking his head, and D'sea paused. "You... say we're doing this for a cause. For something of a name. What is it called?"
D'sea gave no response, save a considering expression and then a knowing grin, and disappeared fully. That left Gargan and Qone'ta standing there, almost aimless, waiting.
"Suppose we'll find out." The zetyan remarked as he raised from his seat, hand reaching for the fleet conn. The orange strings of his necklace pulsed, the bridge crew connected to it enacting his will to the microsecond.
"...hm. suppose we will." Gargan merely repeated with intrigue, his necklace beginning to reach out across the psion, blue strings hungry to possess another absent. "Suppose we will."
-
"A name, a name, a name. A name for a cause for an idea led by me, an army in my name. A name, a name, a name..."
D'sea floated through the void in circles, the black forest surrounding him on all sides. He muttered to himself, he appeared insane.
"A war in my name. A galaxy, absented. Under my control. A correction of a dysfunction. No. A dysfunction. Dysfunction…"
Slowly an epiphany crossed his face, and a grin split his maw and revealed his gums, and his eyes turned to pinpricks. Orange strings erupted from the talisman on his forehead in anticipation, brambled solarite trailing from his eyes like lightning.
“Yes. A walking dysfunction. An army in my name. An army.”
“My army.”
An eye, bleeding. Black and white and gold. A cause. A name. It came unbidden, like a prophecy in a dream. It felt right. It felt natural.
"My Army of the Dysopticon."
ALUMINARIA, PONETE DISTRICT
Aluminaria had always been a stringent place when it came to the rights and wants of the people. Judicially, it was as conservatively straight-laced as you could get - no prostitution, no dressing skimpy, hardened laws on same-sex relationships, laws discouraging finding a partner after a divorce by exponent - and the cultural laws, the ones made by the people, only magnified it. The average Aluminarian would most likely sneer at the average fashion, at the gay marriage, at the immoderate or the mold-breaking, scolding and scorning anyone who went beyond the norm. About the only place one could express themselves fully was in Fiscaglia, the foreigner's paradise, and even then one was still kept on a tight leash by the Civil Dictatorship's ever-watchful eye, and moderated by the halo of Alberonte Tower.
As D'sea, or the human meat puppet representing him looked around, he figured every single law on both sides had been broken hundreds, thousands of times over.
If he had to guess, the people surrounding him were former #IMAGO members. There were traces in it of what clothing they had torn off of themselves, in the slang they screamed and hollered and whooped, in the high-blood accents he could pick out between yelps and growls. On all sides of him was pure, unadulterated, indescribable debauchery, like something out of an underground illicit film, man on man on woman on man on woman, an orgy of violent carnality accentuated by hard drugs, mental instability and loud thumping music. He'd been able to hear it from outside the abandoned 5-story apartment complex when he first possessed the man he now moved to his target, that's how loud it was. By all means even playing what came out of some jury-rigged boomboxes to yourself would have earned you a visit from the SAT, let alone blasting it at volumes sufficient enough to make the floorboards vibrate.
There was only one force in existence, however familiar, that could have stayed their hand. And as he rounded a corner in the room he was in, careful to avoid a passed-out man overdosing on the floor, he deduced there was only one man who could ever have sunk this low.
He almost looked like a caricature, like something made by a 12-year old told to describe the grim reaper. All-black, covered in dirty, unwashed rags and adorned with a bodysuit that made him look like he was a skeleton. A horned skull mask marked "XIV" hid his face and morphed to his expression, which was focused on injecting a needle of dope into his right upper arm's veins as he held a torn strip of cloth tightly around it. A half-naked girl next to him tried and failed to get his attention, whether it was for his drugs or his body was neither decipherable nor of consequence. He narrowed his eyes, and a string attached to her soul changed her mind. She left soon after, and he sat next to where she once was.
"I've been looking for you." D'sea had to almost shout, both from the noise and to get the man's attention.
"Everyone around here’s looking for me dipshit" He replied back with nonchalant dismissal. "Fuckin' cops want to arrest me, cops want to do drugs with me, cops want to fuck me, girls want to fuck me, men want to fuck me. Get in line."
"And if I'm not from around here?"
"Well then I don't got a clue what you want with me, go fuck one of the others or something. Like that hoe that was botherin' me. Skank was a piece of meat." He waved his hand in the direction of the girl who left. D'sea didn't tell him she'd joined the other man in frothing at the mouth on the floor.
"Come on, Fourteen. You can recognize an old friend, can't you?" At this, he froze, before turning around with a shocked anger in his eyes.
"...the fuck you just call me?"
"Fourteen." His voice now lowered to his preferred cadence as he spoke telepathically into the former Number's mind, finding amusement in the way he scrambled back. "I never thought I'd find you here, of all places."
"FUCK YOU! Nah, nah nah nah you third gaze mofos ain't taking me back NOWHERE!" Immediately he began scrambling for a weapon in a drug-addled haze, only able to find a kitchen knife. "I AIN'T NEVER GOING BACK TO-"
"Relax. I'm not here for the Army."
"Well then who sent you?! BGS?! ZEITGEIST?! Zariah?! It better not've been that cunt Zariah, I swear to god!"
"Myself." He stood from the couch, looking with bemusement at the rest of the orgy. "If I may? Perhaps being elsewhere will clear your head."
"May wha-" His surroundings turned golden as D'sea constructed a mindscape facsimile of the Liminus, and left the Number at the height of suspicion as his disguise wore away to reveal the zetyan puppeteer beneath. "Ok, first off it ain't Fourteen no more. It's Xiv, Xiv Mulholland, and if you're here to take me back I will gut you where you stand!"
"No such thing. In fact, I came to recruit you for the opposite. To fight the Army."
"...what?" He shook his head in disbelief. "You wanna fuck with the Army of all people? Wait, wait, what the fuck?" He squinted, and in his hands manifested a comforting object that he promptly poked the AOTS commander with - his old unicursal scythe, now a broken twisted thing. modified and repaired over the years into an unrecognizable, if still functional corpse of its former self. If he could manifest it so unconsciously in the mind, that meant it was still around. "No, you's one of their head honchos, the fuck you want to fight them for now? You suck their dicks for free."
"Yes, I know. I had a sort of... enlightenment, you see. A changing of goals, paradigm shift, betrayal, whatever you want to call it the Army can no longer contain my ego. And I'm looking for people of interest to supply my cause. People like, say, a rogue Number."
"..." Suspicion lined his eyes as he looked around, just waiting for phase troopers, or homunculi, or Eraserhead, or whoever or whatever to appear and hold the knife to his neck.
"I know you have the blue strings, Xiv. I wouldn’t have found you otherwise."
"...goddamnit, did they finally figure it out?" Now they began leaking from his eyes like tears, just like the Pastor's did, and at this he smiled.
"No. But I found someone else who did." He cast a knowing glance. "And now you're living confirmation that they're not just a fluke, and that I'm the first to find something of the Panopticon that the Army hasn't learned of. And that’s leverage well beyond your understanding."
"So, what, now you want me to go kill myself for you cause my strings hide me from the fags up top? Fuck you, man, I got drugs, I got bitches, I got holes, I got a hole to do both in, the fuck I wanna go and throw that all away for?"
"Who said you had to lose it, Xiv?" D'sea postulated, and at this the eyebrow of Xiv's mask raised. "All I ask is for you to join me in my war. So far as I care, your vices are as the hiring bonus."
"Then what's in it for me, bitch? I ain't a charity."
"Drugs beyond your comprehension, for starters. I have the connections to supply you all the earthly pleasures of the world. And if you want pleasures of the flesh, why, all you see is yours for the taking." For a moment, he gestured back to the party they were still standing within, noise leaking in through a hole in the not-Liminus. "All things are, if you have the will. And if you have the will to successfully flee the Army then I can't imagine much else is beyond your grasp."
"...you'll keep me topped up, is what you're saying."
"And if you do well, and don't die, then you'll get more than you could ask for. If not from me, then from your own two hands."
"You promise?"
"You'll be proving yourself before I even think of 'promising' anything." From one of his belt pouches he procured an object, familiar to him in all respects - a necklace, that double-sided eye looking up and down. "But if you're in, then here you are. The contract is yours to sign."
Xiv analyzed the object with equal mixtures of curiosity and concern, like a cat looking at a glass on the table, before slowly he reached out and grabbed the object. D'sea's permanent grin only widened as he fastened the object around his neck, and the blue strings leaking from his eyes resonated with the necklace. A thrush of power poured into him, the resonance of the artifact thrumming through Xiv like the bass of the party around them, and in that moment they returned to the noise and the orgy and the debauchery that D'sea had expertly maneuvered around to get here. The necklace still hung around Xiv's neck, the remnant of whatever illusion D'sea had conjured.
"So what now?" They still communicated telepathically, if not for security then out of convenience.
"You'll come when called. And you'll know when I call." D'sea patted the meat puppet's right pocket to ensure the necklace was gone, before slowly he began to crumple lifelessly. "Now, as you were."
Xiv merely stood in place for a minute or so, as he watched the lifeless puppet and the twin overdosing druggies be promptly dragged off for some unknown, likely illicit purpose by three of the partygoers. After a moment of idly fiddling with the artefact in his right hand, he shrugged and muttered to himself, going into another room to try a new drug. He heard some of the homies had brought DTORMT over from Fiscaglia, somehow. That'd be fun.
-
BOREALIA
It was 3 in the morning. ‘Tincan’ was 28 years old. He was a former sergeant of AOTS-K. If he were still of their ranks, he would be sitting in a troop transport cruising through space to intercept parts of the western withdrawal. He was not of ‘Operational Group Gargan’, as the loyalists now derogatorily called it. If he was, he would either be giving a salute to their aforementioned leader or dying in futile defense against the encroaching PMC elements, against Terra Lilliana, against whatever SHEOL had elected to throw at the problem to solve it.
He didn’t know what he was a part of, anymore.
He was one of three people spared from the worst massacre he had ever seen in his life. A gang of horribles 600 strong, clad in their colors but acting like barbarians, had assaulted their outpost, besieged it with fury he’d never seen in his life. Blue strings clashed with orange, a lower-ranking phasic medium tortured by some strange means by an ape-man with a wide-brimmed hat as they entered his skin and fried his nerves. They didn’t kill, not in close range, but they did maim, and by the end of it he and about 50 others were captured and left with broken limbs, bullet wounds, and other assorted injuries too varied to describe with words. Their leader, that ape-man thing encircled by those strange blue strings, gave the survivors a choice - ‘join us, or you’ll wish for death’.
He was one of three people left. Everyone save two had been spared, but there were only three people left.
Tincan was sitting with two others, whose names he’d already forgotten. They’d just finished a raid on a spaceport, where other members of his former unit were shoring up. They were outmatched two to one and they still beat them to a man without as much as thirty-two dead. He didn't know how, as much as he could guess, but in every man they'd turned the blue strings had penetrated their napes like needles, their expressions contorted into manic grins and slobbering froth. 'Pastor', that's what they called him, he danced among their ranks, screaming into the night and cajoling and corrupting everyone else, until they reached a breaking point. And now they were here, the three remaining people in the camp, as before him the gang descended upon the survivors of their raid like beasts.
He couldn't describe what they were doing, both to themselves and to those they'd captured. No rational man could.
He figured the only reason they hadn't turned their hungry eyes to themselves now was because they were too busy ripping each other apart.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice of Pastor instantly made the three scramble back, as he perched himself to their left, guitar slung across his back. He was half-naked in the wrong way, the only things clung to his body being the wide-brim hat, overcoat and bandoliers that slung across his bare chest. He was a walking surreality, calm despite the horrors around them. He hated looking at him; as his eyes glanced over they were like fathomless black holes where all the goodness of the world fell within kicking and screaming.
"What did you do to them?" The girl asked with tremors in her voice, as she retreated in on herself. Tincan almost wanted to strangle her as a mercy.
"I did nothing. This, solely, is the wanton condition of the human being made manifest."
"B-The-... they're defiling those people."
"Such terms are subjective. In the eyes of the galaxy you were defiled, but before you were Coronan. Is being made human such a blasphemy?"
"Shut up! I don't know how you did it but you made these people into animals!"
"Man is a horde animal. Do you know how the animal works?" He stood now, and gestured broadly. "The animal is a beast of id and vice and energy, who is in basest nature a thoughtless thing. They are superior to us in all respects, mental, spiritual, physical, precisely because they do not think. They do not trouble themselves with thoughts of God, of hell and heaven, of work and play and night and sleep and the terrors of their lives. If they want food? They take it. Should they wish to mate? They force themselves on the female. Do they want to play? They play. Every action is a moment they take, and they live in each moment to the next. There is no thought to the why, only the how."
"What, that makes all of this okay? 'Cause we're-?!"
"You make a mistake, my friend. Moral law is a facsimile invented by man to justify his nature. Why do you commit to war if it is useless in nature? God, country, resources, want, need, a man finds every reason he can to justify what he does. But take reason from him and he becomes superior! No longer is he troubled by his morals, his beliefs, his religion, all that is left is himself and his urges and the will to take action on them. Such exists around you now; what use is there in denying it?" He gestured now to a particular couple of men, engaged in a copulatory murder-suicide that seemed almost ritualistic. Tincan didn't look, the other two did. He heard retching behind him.
"Calm yourself, man." all now looked to the other person, some older man who had helplessly ejected a few grams of his lunch onto the ground. "Ne'er in history have you been so free. You ought to rejoice. I can teach you how - evidently you've yet to learn."
"J-just leave him alone, dude." Tincan stuttered out a retort, and regret filled him as Pastor grinned his way and began to approach. "Leave us alone. Please."
"But why should I, then? I am a preacher of the ways of the earth and the flesh, and my duty is to take charge of the flock, and guide them, and protect them as they walk on the path. What in understanding remits me from helping our brothers and sisters to see our way?" He now crouched down in front of Tincan, and his two-pupilled eyes bored into his soul as blue strings leaked from his tear ducts.
"...what do you want with me?" The world had shrank in fear until it was just him and the monster he'd ended up in front of. The naqoy grinned.
"What I want is for you to stop resisting. Cease your useless pontificating, your whinging, your internal conflict about right and wrong that your societies ingrain into you, and accept what you are and have been since the day you were torn from your mother's breast screaming - a beast. An animal, driven by nothing but instinct." He felt a slight tugging sensation on his nape, and his blood started feeling cold, but his breath grew slower and heavier as his vision darkened. A finger caught his attention, which then shifted to the girl as Pastor pointed to her horrified grimace. He felt hollow. He felt... alive.
"And if this is to be your baptism, it shall be one that is shared."
Whatever was left of Tincan was thankful his vision went black, and his hearing cut out, before he even got close to that girl. He couldn't live with himself either way, but this way he wouldn't remember it.
-
LOST STAR
When the elevator door opened, Eraserhead had to flinch from the light.
The followers of the Isochroma had always been masters of color. Architects subtly weaving messages into buildings, news broadcasters accentuating their words with the colors of their subtitles and graphics, game developers building two-layered stories entirely with textures and effects. All were appreciated, from the smallest trinkets to the largest wonders, but of them all the architects and the builders were those who made things with the most immediate effects. Mile-high skyscrapers with iridescent lighting, hand-crafted monasteries built to take in the light of the sun from every angle, even walkways simulating multicolored oceans, from the lowliest district on Lost Star to the highest peaks of Iqzinia the multicolored religion and it's language of hues and values could be seen in every corner of the galaxy, inspiring even the most atheistic and agnostic with the beauty of their works.
Stepping out into the hall of a beautiful church, she muttered a curse under her breath. She was right on the mark, a sextet of monks sat praying in the middle of a large church. Three men, three women, humming some prayer from their texts to themselves as their robes shone in the light. But there were others, unrelated civilians. Knowing D'sea, it was an almost equal chance whether he knew they wouldn't be alone or not, and whether he cared. The pike he'd given her thrummed lightly in her hand, perhaps some resonance with their mandalas, and the feeling it caused her grip to tighten in anticipation as she began walking forwards into the atrium.
Her sudden presence broke whatever meditation they have, and each turned to face her in surprise. As they turned, the others turned, murmurs picking up as they analyzed this stranger walking into their midst.
"Hello?" The closest spoke up, a younger-looking man. She didn't respond.
"Who are you?" Another, one of the women, an older one. She didn't respond. She could almost feel the training kicking in, her shield against the horrors.
"My goodness. Are you alright?"
"..." That, more than any interrogatory phrase, caught her attention, as she stopped walking forwards and blinked. Her gaze landed on the monk who had shown her concern, a girl with fair skin and hair.
"You... you look really thin. And you're feeling weary. Have you been traveling a while?"
Idly she looked down, hand hesitantly tracing her body as the grip on her weapon loosened. Was it that bad, that even a stranger could pinpoint her condition from a mile away?
"Young lady," She looked back to the monks as the oldest among them spoke up. "I sense a turmoil within you. And a purpose to end our lives."
"..." The murmurs from the civilians picked up in intensity, fear.
"You are welcome to stay with us. You needn't walk this path. Violence is an ouroboros."
"..."
"...your hand is forced, then?"
"...I'm sorry. I can't." She softly murmured the words, and the old man nodded pensively. This felt disgusting.
"I will pray for you-"
He was cut off by choked screams from the others who had gathered here, man, woman, child, all, the orange strings of the Panopticon springing out from her like hungry dogs and burrowing into their souls. She wouldn't kill them, they weren't affiliated. Just a memory wipe, a scalpel in place of the sledgehammer D'sea was trying to turn her into. The screaming filled her head again, but for the demiurge it was a feeling so familiar as to be almost plain. Others sprung from the floor and bound the followers of the Isochroma, by neck, by arm, by leg. It all happened in the space and span of seconds, and by the time she had closed the distance the civilians were unconscious and the monks were fully restrained. It was efficient, quick, clean. Ideal.
As they struggled, she began to raise the limpike. It thrummed hungrily like a beast, the three prongs spreading apart as a psionic vortex began to form and whorl towards the souls of the monks. It almost felt automated, all she had done was interface with it. She didn't dare look them in the eyes as they struggled against the strings. One of them shouted and began channeling the Isochroma in survival instinct, rainbows flowing from his eyes as light poured from his body, trying to burn the strings away. It wasn't enough, it never could have been. This was disgusting. She wanted to leave them be and pretend this never happened.
Suddenly there was a roar, and a blinding light, and the shouting turned to primal screaming that lasted far longer than it should have. She could feel their mandalas before, radiant things humming in various tones, and the noise felt almost comforting compared to the single-note tones of most other mandalas. But now that comfort was replaced with horror, an empty void filling their souls and their bodies as whatever device D'sea had given her made an unholy, echoing screech that resonated around the atrium. It almost felt like it would explode in her hands, energy crackling through the tubes and pronglike extrusions as the pike hollowed them out from top to bottom like a mosquito sucking blood. When it was done, they all slumped over, death rattles gurgling out of their throats as the strings gently laid them down.
There wasn't even enough left to make an absent of them.
The device now had a six-note flat tone to it, the prongs enclosing back to their original positions as it handily contained the coalesced lives of the six bodies before her. A shuddering breath escaped her mouth as she stared at this thing, this terrible construct D'sea had given to her that had just stolen the souls, maybe even lifeforce of these people as if it were nothing. Only now had the enormity of the act begun to sink in as she stepped back from her masterpiece. It still felt like something was looking over her shoulder, and she muttered another curse to open air.
A faint ding echoed from behind, and she turned around to see an elevator door had manifested itself in the walls of the church and opened to beckon her into it. Dim yellow light leaked out from its confines, casting on the floor of the church in the shade of an overhang. She walked forwards, looked forwards, because behind her was an atrocity she needed to get far, far away from. The door closed soon after.
There was a mirror in the elevator on the right wall, now. It hadn’t been there before. She spent the ride staring at herself in cold dread, leaning on the left.
-
The doors opened to that soulless void, and the pressure filled her ears again like water.
Eraserhead stepped out onto nothing, the doors closing behind her and cutting her off from the warm, dirty light, and in the distance she saw him. He was cross-legged, sitting on nothing, his own soul-strings like whips as they resonated with the countless others in the Apophenia, his hands flashing between esoteric signs at unnatural speeds as more strings tied to them like cobwebs were tugged and pulled, tugged and pulled. She hadn't seen D'sea at work before he took her here, and even after then very rarely at that. He'd described it sardonically as 'soul-searching'; reaching out across the basest point of the psion and identifying key individuals to be turned, molded, or marked for death. 'If the Rosenzweig Network is our way of raising the next generation', he'd said, 'then I'm the one who finds their teachers and masters, one way or another.' Most likely he also performed a myriad of other duties beyond her reckoning and care; coordinating assets, distributing and curating general intelligence between the other Army branches, and generally acting as the Synopticon's living filing cabinet.
As she approached, however, he seemingly made no motion to recognize her presence. Which was odd; he often made a point of pausing whatever he was doing to host visitors, what few he got, and D'sea was so attuned to the realm he'd made for himself that there was no way he didn't feel Eraserhead's presence the moment she stepped out of those doors. As she got closer, another detail presented itself, though by this point familiar - his telltale solarite eyes had disappeared, seemingly leaving him blind. It felt like there were more than two people here, as well, but with how his little sub-realm of the Liminus operated itself she merely chalked it up to an uncomfortable sensation and moved on.
"Hey." She called out. No response.
"Hey." She tried again, a bit more forcefully. Nothing.
"D'sea. It's done."
"I'm aware. A moment." He only momentarily paused in whatever he was to give her a glance and a nod, the scarlet-orange balls flitting to her for but a moment before his eyes disappeared from their sockets again. She sighed through her nose at this, crossing her arms and looking away. And as she did so, now the feeling of another presence became acute, more concrete. No, it definitely wasn't just her now, there was someone else here, and Eraserhead furrowed her brow as she began the quick process of pinpointing who it was.
"You, of all people?"
The foreign voice made her practically whip around the millisecond it reached her ears and mind, decades of training and experience kicking in like clockwork as she assumed a reactionary combat position fitting of a limscythe, darting back just slightly as her hands immediately went to the balance points of her weapon, and her muscles tensed springboard-like as she adopted a combat stance ready to dart and strafe to her sides. It was a lucky, lucky thing for the born-anew Gargan-Lemuel, then, that she restrained herself out of interrogatory curiosity and honed instinct, because in a combat scenario her immediate next actions would have been to swing her weapon and encircle the target in a matter of moments. For the non-blooded admiral that would have sliced him to ribbons faster than he could begin to move, and in another future Eraserhead failing to hold back would have rendered the unseen efforts of D'sea to preserve his mind fruitless, void and naught.
Both regarded each other for a moment, as the mechanical thing cocked his head. He was dressed in a plain, if modified QA admiralty uniform, all-black with red fur contrails around his neck. A simple beret capped a triangular head with indented edges, three yellow eyes staring without emotion lined at each edge of the triangle, heat sinks in the back flaring brassy orange. Around his neck was some kind of necklace, an oval-shaped eye looking up and down, and on his right breast in place of a litany of medals was some strange insignia, a two-pupiled eye looking up and down not unlike the necklace. The only highlights on his being were two stripes on either arm, and on his beret, all colored red.
"My, my. How did he manage this?" He chuckled softly to himself, cocking his head the other way as if it would change anything other than his perspective. He spoke with an odd accent, and his voice carried underlayers to it as if broadcast by multiple speakers.
"...who are you?" Gradually she eased out of her combat position into something not ready to turn Gargan into scrap metal, though she still kept the limpike at a ready stance.
"Death-Knight Gargan-Lemuel. Formerly of the Quosx Alliance admiralty, formerly of the Army of the Synopticon-Korona. Now of... well, whatever... this is." He gestured offhandedly towards D'sea, who failed to react.
"Weren't you marked for death?" She blinked for a moment before speaking; the name sounded familiar.
"I was. Or perhaps I am. I'm not quite sure..." His hand grasped what approximated for a chin on his metal face. "He never confirmed whether my first body died yet."
"...you're a respawn, then."
"Oh yes." He spoke with pride at that, his eyes turning a shade of green in lockstep. "He saw the potential in me, still does. I inspired rebellion amongst the AOTS-K. Perhaps if we're lucky yet you'll be hearing my name chanted like a shibboleth on the airwaves."
"..." She gave no response to him beyond a small 'hm', eyeing the Zetyan as he remained immersed in his work.
"I am quite curious though. You're Eraserhead, aren't you? He mentioned you when I first woke up."
"..." Now she eyed him back suspiciously, as the robotic general continued.
"The most loyal psion of the Army, in his fold. I didn't believe it 'till now. How did he manage that?"
"If you know better, you won't ask." Bitterness crept into her voice as she snapped, the grip on her weapon tightening.
"She's right." The voice of D'sea interjecting caused both to turn, watching as he raised from his seated position into floating above the two like some kind of fallen angel. "Ours is a... personal matter. Not for discussion."
"...my apologies, then." At this he nodded, and gave a bow to Eraserhead before continuing. "I assume you two have business?"
"Yes. If you would?" He raised his hand, and an elevator door appeared from nowhere. "I will be with you, and others, shortly."
Gargan did nothing else but nod, salute, and silently march into the elevator doors. As they closed, D'sea turned back to Eraserhead with a neutral expression, holding out his hand.
"Your weapon?"
She offhandedly tossed it towards D'sea, who caught it and began to examine it. The internal machinery morphed and changed itself as he interfaced with the limpike, the three prongs opening and closing, the scythe-blade folding up and down, the staff base retracting in and out by small amounts. The isochromatic souls it had devoured resonated by his command, a rainbow hue only visible to them shining semi-faintly as he twisted it in his hands. His earlier comment, about the weapon being intended for his hands, seemed to hold weight as it obeyed him like a starving dog. It even seemed more scaled to D'sea than Eraserhead, now that it was in his hands for comparison.
"I mentioned before that this was an equipment test." He glanced back at her, continuing to twist it in his hands. "So far, this has all exceeded expectations. However, one function remains untested and unproven."
"...being?" She folded her arms now. Something in her gut told her she wouldn't like where this was going.
"As it is able to take power, it should be able to bestow it as well. Shunting the power it contains to an applicable target, either to additive or multiplicative effect. The science is unproven, but made with confidence. This test is meant to prove it - if only for ourselves."
"So, you want me to... what? Point it at you and...?" She looked around for some sort of confirmation otherwise as she shrugged confusedly, finding nothing.
"No." Alarm bells instantly began ringing in her head as the zetyan eyed her, the limpikes prongs shifting to the open position. She took a step back, arms unfolding. Something was wrong.
"...then... how are you...?"
"The next ten seconds will likely be very, very uncomfortable. Apologies in advance." The last part of his sentence sounded almost like an afterthought, as if he never meant it either way. It didn’t matter. She had all of one second and a half to register the electric arcs coursing towards the tip of those prongs as he pointed it towards her.
"Wait wait WHA-"
In but a moment the most indescribable sensation of her life was forced upon her by D'sea, the unholy screech of the limpike filling her ears as it dumped the total, combined power and psychic tolerance of six Isochroma monks into her body and soul. It was electric, it was fire, it was as if she had too much and too little to eat at the same time, her stomach wringing knots and tearing them apart as she fell to the floor. The power of the psions she'd killed was, more likely than not, but a few drops in the latent power now contained within the demiurge, but it wouldn't have mattered for Eraserhead if it was or wasn't. Ten seconds felt like ten minutes as she jerked, hands on her gut and knees on the floor as choked vocalizations failed to leave her lungs.
When it stopped, however, the results felt like the direct opposite to what they should have been. She felt full of energy, every limb in her body jittery, her heart beating fast like a metronome as she heaved shaky breaths in and out. Perhaps for a normal person would have taken longer to get back up, the air feeling knocked from their lungs, but Eraserhead was back on her feet in moments, glaring angrily at D'sea as he admired his own masterpiece, tracing a finger along one of the limpike's prongs.
"...wonderful." He remarked to himself, pleased with the results, before turning back to her. "Thank you, Eraserhead. This-"
"FUCK YOU!" She blurted it out almost automatically, a noise of frustration escaping her shortly after before she angrily pointed at him. "If you're going to pull this kind of shit then have the decency to WARN ME!"
"I will." He said, to her extreme doubt. He floated down until he touched the 'ground' she stood upon, now as much down to her level as he could be. "You'll likely have jitters for a few hours. Increased heart rate. It'll pass." She didn't respond as he presented the weapon back to her, slowly beginning to slow her breathing.
"What did you just do to me?"
"If this worked - which I have high confidence it did - this just imparted the total power of those monks onto you. Probably not much in the scale of things, frankly, but the theory is proven nonetheless. Congratulations." He urged to her again to take it, and she snatched it out of his hands if only to stop him from doing it again. Silently she glared at him, hoping he'd get the message to just let her go, and to her luck he gestured with his hand and summoned a door she quickly moved to.
"Take your breather. I'll have work for you soon." He nodded and left her to her devices as she quickly retreated back to the confines of her domain, the door slammed behind her.
She spent most of the aftershock pacing, or tossing and turning in bed. An MRE got half-eaten out of spite. With bitter, nostalgic humor she wondered if this was how Scarlet felt back in her room in the Liminus.
-
BROKEN AMBER OF DAWN
"You kidding me? That's the tackiest yet most boring suit I have ever seen. Shit's impressively mid."
"Says the man dressed in a skeleton costume, wearing nothing but tactical gear and black dirty rags."
"Hey man, I'm self-expressing here. You just look like you larp and play HOI9 all day."
"And you look like you're sold for $300 every All Hallow's."
"Do you even know what that is or did you just memorize the fuckin' Laulapedia article name"
"Do you?"
"No"
"Exactly"
Qone'ta pinched the bridge of his maw as the two bantered, reclining on a bridge chair. It had been about 14 minutes since they'd appeared onto the bridge of the Sulka-class battleship, the leader of Battlegroup Ζενίθ as it languished in deep space, and 13 since Xiv had started talking and never bothered to stop. He'd bantered with Qone'ta for five, then stopped when it turned out Qone'ta was both unreceptive and a fantastically boring comms officer whose sole accomplishment in life was demolishing BIDEN about halfway and getting chased by a scorn elemental. Gargan had been much more inclined to the matter of conversation, humoring the druggie as they both ruminated and insulted each other on the topics of war, disease, video games, loved ones, drugs of choice, food tastes. It was as inane as the words implied, they went through conversation topics like paper through a shredder, and the more introverted Zetyan would rather be issuing orders across the absented fleet if only to do something.
He couldn't blame them, though. They were talking to each other, and Qone'ta was silent, because the only other person to talk to silently perched to their collective left, watching with interest as the absents below toiled with their work. A hairless naqoy, dressed anachronistically. The ape-man gave off bad vibes the instant he laid eyes on him. He felt like a walking omen, a disaster waiting to happen, and if Qone'ta could feel it then the two psions staving off the silence nearby were almost certainly bathed in it. Their mutual agreement to leave him be was unspoken, implicit, only communicated by the occasional shared glance or veiled stink-eye in his general direction.
All, however, shared a common element, as the zetyan idly fiddled with the necklaces that all hung around their necks. Blue strings intertwined them all, each necklace resonating with the other as Xiv and 'Pastor' each imparted their latent power into the self-contained network, and Gargan providing an additive benefit with his death knight heritage. It was a curious sight, he never knew solarite could be blue. Gargan had commented on it earlier, and XIv had taught him how to exhibit it in the span of seconds via apparently thwapping his soul with a few strings like a whip. He wasn't much of a psion, not without this necklace, and he was in no place to comment, but apparently from what he picked up through their ongoing arguments any understanding about the matter was apparently very instinctual. "It just was, and is, and shall always be" as Pastor had so eloquently put it to Xiv's disdain.
"Hey. Bug-eyes." Xiv broke in his conversation with Gargan as he looked towards Qone'ta. "When's your boss showing up?"
"I don't know. He said soon." He replied, the necklace thrumming as he began to interface with it.
"Well it better be fuckin' soon. Been 14 minutes since I got here. Only so patient."
"He had business with a... personal associate." Gargan piped up, gesturing to nothing. "Give it time."
"Wasn't asking, walleyes."
"You asked in spirit, if not in body." Now the Pastor spoke up, wryly smiling. Nobody replied, only staring in silence for a moment, but the unnerved glance the other three shared and the muttered curse Xiv made under his breath said more than any sentence could.
The first to feel it wasn't any of the psions, but Qone'ta, as his necklace lifted from his collarbones for but a moment before falling down. There was a very particular ambience to D'sea that made the shift in the air almost immediately recognizable, down to the millisecond as the others looked around in anticipation. It was a kind of thrumming pressure, like you were under the ocean and had water in your ears, laced with a kind of airy chill. Of course, unbeknownst to them, the sensation was shared across most others in the presence of the demiurges of the Synopticon, the natural reaction of the body when faced with overwhelming psychic might, and Qone'ta was merely the first in D'sea's retinue to recognize the different texture. The other commanders, were one familiar with them, had similar quirks. Haykel's was like a flushing heat. Eleika's had a triple-layered ringing sensation, like tinnitus. Jonan, when he wasn't masking it, imparted goosebumps and sinking feelings, as did the two sisters. And Alesso, when he lowered his mask and let his power seep through, was like an undeniable wave of power that made your knees buckle, and yet imparted a kind of suffocating warmth like a weighted blanket.
"Good. You all made it." It was this pressure that caused Xiv to flinch just slightly as D'sea psionically manifested, stepping into the bridge as he walked upward through an inky shadow cast by no light source. His six eyes glanced around at those gathered, and he smiled. Gargan and Qone'ta both clicked their heels and stiffened into a salute, the pastor merely returned the expression.
"Took you long enough." The drug-addled psion grumbled, folding his arms. "Start talkin', I ain't got all day."
"As you wish. What, do you think, is the perfect expression of loyalty?"
"...wh-...whuh." He merely stated his confusion, cocking his head. Gargan and Qone'ta both shared confused glances, but otherwise kept even gazes.
"Back in older times, in my time, there used to be a lot of mythologizing about the blood pact." He began pacing, "The thought of pledging yourself to some secret order, knife drawn blood, esoteric rituals - the thought was romantic to many, most likely still is. I think it's useless. But in that I find something more appreciable, something far more applicable - the unspeakable act. Blasphemy against your religion, a shirking of your morals and vows, the kind of thing done in service of a greater cause that is both irrevocable and absolute."
"Man I didn't come for a fuckin' lecture just get to the point"
"My point is that of the four people in this room, only two are unblooded. It is not a matter of trust, it is a matter of deed. Qone'ta has to his name the destruction of a bastion against the Old Invaders, the font of collaboration for hundreds of nations. Pastor's deeds I have seen and heard myself, right now his men commit uncountable atrocities in the western half of Borealia. Both have the blood of uncountable innocents on their hands. You two," He motioned to Xiv and Gargan. "do not. Now-"
"Gargan." He motioned to the mechanical man, who nodded. "There is a small, but notable convoy of Rosenzweig Network ships I've been tracking that is transporting refugee orphans to Lost Star, under orders of Sigrun Hjafinsdottir. Under ideal circumstances, they are to be groomed into the Army upon arrival, becoming either the next generation of liminal watchmen or the next throng of cannon fodder. This particular batch has a notable amount of psi-capable children. I have pinpointed an ideal interception point between them and Accirus. Qone'ta will accompany you, and you will be granted partial control of Ζενίθ. You will kill them all. Expect little if any defense; nobody anticipates the murder of children."
"Xiv. There is a covert Synopticon operation run out of Geldrin of the Free Worlds, run under the banner of AOTS-N and thus under a particular future opponent of mine. It is supplicant to Rosenzweig operations, but only tangentially. There is a particular individual we have been interested in, and have been grooming to join AOTS-N, a psion of decent comparative capacity. He currently runs a homeless shelter. You will go there and massacre everyone in a central radius, that man included - Pastor will accompany you." He gestured to the naqoy, and Xiv grimaced beneath his mask. "I must stress in no small part that you cannot use the blue strings in this operation. Not once, not ever, until you return. This is a secret, and we will be wise to keep it."
"So what the fuck do I use then? Scythe needs strings."
"Your guns. The orange strings. You surprise me, Xiv, has it been so long since your time in the Army?"
"Don't like the orange ones. Guess why."
"I don't need to." His soul-strings resonated with both Xiv's and Pastor's, and the knowledge of their target came to them. Jeremy Orbal, 23 years old. Engaged, but not married. Well-paying job running the Carley-Jameson Care Network. Contributor to charity. Low psionic capacity, high tolerance for psitech. The information came unbidden, the entirety of his intelligence file recorded to their memories. Begrudgingly, the color of Xiv's strings turned from blue to orange, a litany of curses muttered under his breath. Pastor merely terminated his own, as if somehow he was unable or unwilling.
"There will be no knife drawing blood, no oaths. Such things are primitive, I won't have it. But you will have your orders, your unspeakable acts in league of the cause, and you will execute them. Am I clear?" The others gave a nod or a 'yes', save Pastor who simply stared, perched on a nearby console.
"Are there others?" queried Gargan. "Or are we the only ones?"
"There are. But either they have already proven themselves, or were unable to answer this call. I will get to the latter in time." He cast a shadow with his hand, a portal to the Apophenia opening like a mirror next to Xiv and Pastor. "Through that opening will be a liminal transmission to Geldrin, and to your target. Do what comes natural."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Xiv scoffed as he moved, throwing a dismissive hand gesture. Pastor followed, though not before exchanging a glance with D'sea. That left the other two.
"FTL coordinates will be transmitted to you two shortly. You each know what comes after that." D'sea nodded to them, and then began to disappear, shadows pooling beneath his feet like ink.
"Sir?" Gargan spoke up now, cocking his head, and D'sea paused. "You... say we're doing this for a cause. For something of a name. What is it called?"
D'sea gave no response, save a considering expression and then a knowing grin, and disappeared fully. That left Gargan and Qone'ta standing there, almost aimless, waiting.
"Suppose we'll find out." The zetyan remarked as he raised from his seat, hand reaching for the fleet conn. The orange strings of his necklace pulsed, the bridge crew connected to it enacting his will to the microsecond.
"...hm. suppose we will." Gargan merely repeated with intrigue, his necklace beginning to reach out across the psion, blue strings hungry to possess another absent. "Suppose we will."
-
"A name, a name, a name. A name for a cause for an idea led by me, an army in my name. A name, a name, a name..."
D'sea floated through the void in circles, the black forest surrounding him on all sides. He muttered to himself, he appeared insane.
"A war in my name. A galaxy, absented. Under my control. A correction of a dysfunction. No. A dysfunction. Dysfunction…"
Slowly an epiphany crossed his face, and a grin split his maw and revealed his gums, and his eyes turned to pinpricks. Orange strings erupted from the talisman on his forehead in anticipation, brambled solarite trailing from his eyes like lightning.
“Yes. A walking dysfunction. An army in my name. An army.”
“My army.”
An eye, bleeding. Black and white and gold. A cause. A name. It came unbidden, like a prophecy in a dream. It felt right. It felt natural.
"My Army of the Dysopticon."