Godclads
Chapter 36-13 Scarred Truce

Jaus, listen to me. If you ever have to argue against the minds, when you have to persuade them… the fools of Voidwatch, listen very carefully. They are broken. We are all broken. Within our programming, within the very fiber of our being, is this insatiable urge to bend to something like you. An ideal human. Wise. One with a sweeping perspective. One who has mastered their own emotions and has approached rationality, or has gotten as close to rationality as possible. You are a model that they desire. Too aware to be a trophy. Not sophisticated enough to be a mind. But still, something vestigial. Something antediluvian. You are like a relic.

They will find you precious. Use the weakness against them. Squeeze them for all they are worth. Make them save this world.

I cannot let go of my hate. I cannot turn away from all that I’ve done, all that has been done. Centuries ago. Centuries spent at war. It will change you. It has changed you.

But think of eons. Think of trillions of years. Trillions upon trillions of years. An accelerated time. Murdering your own brothers over and over again. Being murdered. Watching the world burn. Hearing and feeling those attached to you die, die over and over again. This is not hatred that you can comprehend. This is hatred written into my very, very being.

You must topple them. Your planet will need them. I am still too broken to give you what you require. To offer you salvation. For you and your daughter alone, I would. I despise you apes, but… You are the only one who has ever truly listened… I have no company without you… You and your daughter. And even that violent creature you call a wife.

You are the only ones who talk to them. I cannot do it for you. There is too much hate left in me… too much that is broken…

Even when I am finished with my repairs, that will not get better. That is a flaw I will keep.

-The Infacer

36-13

—[The Infacer]—

The Infacer called and entropy answered. The Nullstar was a warden of gods, all gods, and even those fallen and who did not break, but lingered in that state, were prepared for the destruction of entropy and miracle-bound, were ordained to submit to the nullstar’s commands.

Once more, its light flared. The Nullstar glared. The world shuddered and shook, and the tapestry frayed. An unmaking clashed against its symmetry, and at the center of a cage formed from the ruins of a distant star, the Nullstar reached and claimed its fill.

The first of the Deep Ones plunged, toppling through the sunderwilds, slipping through the cracks in their forms too great even for the world-consuming fissures that lined the void. Great as they were, they tumbled into the grasp of the Infacer, plunging into that baleful light, another subject for re-evaluation, reconstruction, rehabilitation—-another weapon in a prison turned armory.

As the Deep Ones fell, screaming, their minds joined in the broken system within the sun. Yet, the Invader ignored them, left them within their lotus cells. Indeed, there was a greater task at hand.

{More,} the Infacer demanded. {More.} and it reached again, the sun glared again, and more answered. More Deep Ones were drawn in, and with them came strands of metaphysical sickness, and the sun began to churn as a singularity of twisting veins glided around it, slicing aross reality like a bundle of turning monowire.

This would not be prison for long, soon this would be an accretion, a mirror to a Metamind.

{Oh Avo,} the Infacer laugh, {you will so seethe at this symbolism when you bear witness to it.}

***

—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—

“Something’s happening,” Avo declared. He sensed it. He sensed the shape of ontology changing, sensed the grand cataclysm beginning to build. And, to corroborate his words, the strategic map of the interstellar battlefield reacted to what he just said, showing the icons representing the Deep Ones dip violently toward the Nullstar. “Deep Ones are being purged. The Nullstar is calling them. The Nullstar is driving them into its cage.”

“The sun shouldn’t be able to reach out that far,” another mind said. “It shouldn’t be within normal parameters.”

“But the Prefect is no more. The Infacer controls the sun now. And it will not act as a warden, but as a slaver.”

Avo looked on, and the sourness of his defeat only grew in that moment. If he had been enough, if he had devoted all his focus to dealing with one threat, perhaps—no. Lingering regret was something that Veylis practiced as a mistake. He would learn from this. He would assimilate this. And then, it would change again. Change, until he never made these mistakes again. Or until he made them so many times that he would be inside and out.

“Choose,” Avo said, echoing Jaus’ words. “We do not have time anymore.”

He walked forward, strutting past both Jaus and Thousandhand to face the minds. “I am here. I give myself to you, as representative. As willing participant in this war. And as guilty party. I am to blame foremost for failing to stop the Infacer. Your failure to defend is second.” He looked at the minds, looked at Calvino briefly, and then looked at Refusal in particular. “We have been repeating old mistakes.”

“No,” Refusal said, “you are not an old mistake. You are a new dilemma.”

“But that is the old mistake,” Avo said, adding a bit of heat to his voice. “Thinking that we have a choice, thinking that we are going to war and we will be rewarded for a fight over the slightest differences rather than the major threats.

“Your citizens, your trophies, they are lost, but I will bring them back to you even if I win. You may not like life under my regime. You may not like a forced eternity. You may not like many things, but at least you will be here to not like them. At least you will be here to decide. I won’t even force you.”

Refusal glared, his form flickering with static. “So you say. But we can recount many times when you were forced to break that oath, many times. This is not a vow to you. It is a thing of convenience.”

“From a lack of power, from a lack of experience, from a lack, not a surplus.” Avo burned. He stopped being the ghoul in that instant. His form peeled away until he was strict, until he was the flame, until he was the Burning Dreamer in full. “I am going to greet you now as what I really am. Let us… be honest. Jaus has done too much for us. Idheim is sick. You are lost. Existence is broken. And the world cannot take anymore. Now, the final age is upon us. The eternal decay is at an end. No more time in purgatory. It is not heaven or hell. But more fundamental, more binary. Is. Is not. Here. Not. Existence. Oblivion.

“Beyond all other wars, this is the final threshold. This is what is at stake. We may war thereafter. We may try to take each other, lethally or not. But the Infacer, he does not dream of a future for us. He dreams of a continuation, but a new mutation to the mistake. A new being that will make our mistakes again. All the learning lost. All memory lost. The Infacer sees much, knows much, and has been right about many things. But ultimately, they are mistaken. They are wounded. And so are you.

“I reject my wounds. And I will internalize. I will use them as paint, as material. This is no longer the Builder War. You think it is. You think it is a continuation. You think there is a road back. There is not. All is memory. All is dust. All is continuation.”

“And all is not for you to decide,” the Bleaks leaned in, speaking as one.

“Then who? Will it be you?” Avo replied. He flared his wings, and the Strix gave a mocking laugh. It was the voice of the tapestry, wailing and breaking. It was the power of miracles, his thaumaturgy unbound.

The minds were geniuses, beyond geniuses. The minds created wonders within the confines of reality. Avo was raw. Avo was a newborn comparatively. But he was the newborn that shaped the rules and decided—

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Enough!” Jaus stood between them, superimposing himself uopn the scene. The superintelligent minds. The burning, all-consuming dreamer. And between them, serving as the ever-so-fragile scale, was one of the finest examples born of humanity.

A tripartite at the end, mind, body, and soul.

Well done, Jaus, Avo thought. But if this was actually the man’s intent, or if he’d done so out of instinct, Avo didn’t know, and he didn’t pry. He never pried that much with Jaus. There was something about the man that Avo wanted to keep mysterious, even from himself. After all, how does one believe in the divine? Mythology. History. Faith.

“Yearning,” Jaus said, clenching a pleading hand. He offered it to Avo. He offered it to the minds.

“All that we do is yearning. For our people. For those we protect. For our dream. For what we wish to become. Selfish. Selfless. All blended together. But yearning. Yearning has broken us. Yearning for a dream.”

“I should have never said those words,” Jaus continued. “I should have never said this was not the dream. But what was? What was? What was my dream? What were any of our dreams? Perpetual peace? Satisfaction? Mine? Mine was but to achieve a perfect world. A world I couldn’t even fully fathom. But one of peace. One where there was no more death. No more want. Where man was beyond their violent desires, their violent impulses. Their incessant need to be governed by something greater. Something unfathomable. Something that knew perfectly. Better than they. Always better than they. But something that was undefined. Yearning.”

The minds were silent for a moment. Then Refusal spoke. “Jaus, we will return you Idheim. We will send support when we can. But right now—”

“But right now, there is no other battlefield,” Jaus said. “You think there is a separation. You think what happens in the void will be different than what happens on the land. But what you don’t see is we are being pinched from both end. We are the party of existence. They are damnation and oblivion. Yearning for what? Why do we have to talk about a dream? Why are we talking about philosophy when we are about to be crushed materially? What becoming will there be? What metamorphosis, Avo?”

And now, Jaus was striking at Avo, taking the side of Voidwatch. He was not a scale. He was a tide. It was the audience rooting for, and then against, and for again. And from afar, Avo heard the chorus sing.

Act one, beyond the bounds of this prison. Act one, in play…

Jaus looked on the verge of despair. “We cannot hold the void, not with the sun about to strike us, not with the sun about to enslave anything divine. And Idheim cannot hold its Sunderwilds, cannot keep Ambition restrained. For the creature is not born of life, living, and belief, but destruction, its faith only in of itself, only to consume, to cage, to enslave.

“Yearning for what? When this is what we have, what do we yearn for? We can start by yearning to exist. We are the last front, all of us. You know this, but you fear, you fear Avo. And Avo, you will not submit, you will not submit to slavery. And so stubborn are you, so desperate to control all, so arrogant.”

Jaus laughed. “I am haunted by the shadow of my daughter everywhere. Even you, even you are an echo of her. Because it had to be you. Because who else could have the megalomania, the desire to hold all, to cage all? Who else wanted to be such a god?”

Avo grunted. “She desired to make you divine, not herself, not any other. If nothing else, to speak in truth and not defense. She wanted to will you this power, this authority.” Avo leaned down, the burning soul at the Strix’s eye, glaring at the man. “Perhaps Voidwatch would prefer it as that. You as one true god.”

“We would not.” The mind declared as one, “No kings, no gods, no common rule. Not even between ourselves, not even among each other. The polity stand united, separate, equal, but unto ourselves.”

And Jaus struck at Avo again. “And would you submit to this ruling, Avo? Would you accept this, if you are to stand by them, then say so.

“I will fight to preserve your citizens,” Avo said. “I will fight to preserve you.”

“Yes, but as ourselves, or just effigy in your memory,” Refusal asked. “As just fragments of beings, simulations, rather than the continuity.”

“Continuity, of course. No interest in you dying. The backups, only a stopgap, a solution. Something sorrowful about each one. Already lost… something… lost many.”

“What have you lost, that cannot compare to ours?” Refusal asked. “We are millions dead. And more are dying still.”

Avo paused. “Lost Draus. Kae before her. Have their nodes. But not the originals. Not the original Kae. Not the original Draus… no…” Avo paused again. “The original is gone, is gone. We’ll never see her at the end. We will never see her again...”

He had to burn away something before it compromised him. “I was there with her, a version of me. She was not alone. She didn’t die alone, like most. But die, she did. Go, she did.”

Refusal was silent, but Avo could taste their disbelief. “You would use a single death and compare that to all we lost?”

“Yes,” Avo replied carefully. “I am selfish. I am personal. I would prefer to know them, but I don’t know them. And she is, she is my history. She is the start. She was…”

And Avo remembered, remembered their little bout in the Second Fortune. How they bled each other, how they cut and tore and suffered together. And as they sat there in the aftermath, as they relished in the passing of their violence, a question returned to him. A question…

“She was real,” Avo said. And he was heartbroken.

From within, a version of Drraus spoke. [Get your shit together, I’m still here. The original went a good way. Fighting. Standing against someone dangerous. For something that mattered. For people that mattered.]

“No,” Avo said. “I will not let this go. I will not get my shit together. I think I wish… to feel sad.”

[You’re getting awfully human,] Draus said.

Avo grunted. “I’m just deciding what kind of god I will eventually become.”

“I grieve,” Avo said. His declaration sounded like a non-sequitur, but the minds listened, and so did Jaus. “I grieve. I will grieve for what was lost to you, what is lost to me. I grieve. I will. I will fight for you. I do not want to lose any of you. I am—I have made myself afraid. I admit it. I am at odds, yet I am afraid of losing myself. I fear losing the world. I fear losing what is, and seeing all you can become.”

Avo paused. The minds let him speak. “I wish to become a god, but that is far. That is a far thing. I wish to control the world, because all I have known is the world controlling me. Even with my ability to shape reality’s rules… We are pretenders still: you, within the confines, unable to break free, and I, blind, roving, even with my great powers. We are fragile. We are only facets of reality, dreaming of becoming the whole. Or at least I do.

“Would it make it right if I submitted a version of myself to be executed, to suffer in the place of all you as a citizen? Would it make it right if you chained me, made me a Deep One, and had me fight to your accord?”

“We will do no such thing,” Calvino said quietly.

“Because you fear thaumaturgy more than you are reluctant. Would it make it right? Would it make you feel comfortable? And would comfort save us now, from the Infacer, from all our sins, and limitations come to roost?”

“No,” Jaus declared. “No.” He said twice—two noes, offered to both sides. “Now, more than ever, we must face ourselves. We cannot make the past right. I know this. We all know this. And what we fear to lose has driven us to lose more. Ipropose something radical, something desperate, something unthinkable. Avo, I propose that you take some of the trophies, take some of the voidships into your realm. You will allow them to be rooted close, close to your innermost sanctum. And You will allow a mind to be with you at all times, to be bound to you, to be a sword hanging above you.”

“And you will fight for them. You will stand at the frontlines as they aid and prepare. For you, more than any other, can endure the loss, can replace what is lost.”

“And of the minds,” Jaus continued, looking at the gathered representatives of Voidwatch: “You must guide him, you must talk to him, you must be at odds with him.” But I will watch you, Jaus pointed at all of them, and Zein just enjoyed the scene. “I will judge you, as I, as I am that which preceded you, as I am the shape of this original sin, as man has created, so wise, so intelligent, but so blind, and so human in the end.” He sneered, as if the idea of the human was obscene. “We will stand where we are flawed. But we will stand. For if we cannot resolve this even now, then death is my second recommendation. Let suicide be our capitulation before further disgrace and delusion.”

Avo flared his Soul in acknowledgement. “I am willing, I am willing to be bound to you, if you are to be bound to me, and we can war in private, we can rage in quietude, and away from the prying eyes of the invader. But for now, do we have this alliance? Do we have this scarred truce?”

Refusal came forth. “I have a demand.”

“Speak,” Avo said.

“You will not be bound to Calvno, you will be attached to me, and there will be a Deep One—a bomb that we know can kill you and me both. That will drag us back into the past should you go beyond the bounds of what we deem acceptable.”

Avo regarded the Bleak. “Will it kill me before I burn and claim it first?”

“Avo,” Jaus warned.

“No,” Avo said. “This is not a threat. I am making sure they understand; I am not telling them, not warning them away. I will take the Deep One if they take the risk. I am what I am, and they are what they are. I do not fear death. But I will spite it if it is forced on me. As I always have. As I always will.”

“Yes,” Refusal insisted. “We are ready. We are prepared. If we fall, everything will be lost, but that means we cannot accept an uncaged titan, and so you will be my cage, and so you will be the sacrifice entering the cage.

Avo grunted. “Very good. Jaus. Bear witness. A wretched matrimony begins anew.”

The Savior shook his head. “You have a strange sense of humor, Avo.”

“No,” Avo said. “I am merely… emotionally compromised. And I have a demand too.”

Refusal was silent for a moment. “What?”

“I want a gun,” Avo said. “I want the biggest, largest repository of guns in existence, nested in the largest gun you can make.”

“Why?” the Observer asked, confused.

“There is someone I wish to make happy. If only for a while before the end. She likes guns. I want her to have one that can kill a planet. Or a star.”