Chapter 278. A Better World (Patreon)

[ happy independence day to folks in the usa!

i feel like i'm the worst at pacing -- too much show, not enough tell (ironically). hopefully the last few chaps haven't felt too slow. i think this chapter is pretty interesting, so hope y'all enjoy. ]

Red Griffith cocks his head. I feel his mind suddenly reach out to mine and I reach back clumsily. “You really are new to being a Remorse practitioner,” he says, shaking his head. “For us to successfully infiltrate the black faction, I’ll need to share your thoughts with you as you iterate.”

When we get comfortable enough to shuttle surface-level thoughts around, Red informs me that he’s going to put me into a scenario.

Fifteen minutes of practice later, he enters a scenario. Less than a second passes before memories from another, transient self enter my mind. Scenes a few seconds out of sync transpose on my current reality.

I’m standing in the city. Souls float around me and everywhere I look, people pulse with the ooze of their embodied souls.

“Do as you see fit,” Red says, drawing my attention. “With a boost from ascendant energy, my scenarios last for just under two minutes. I’ll inform you when the time is almost up.”

For a second, I hesitate. There’s a deep-seated fear within me that Red’s words are a lie, that I’m being tricked into hurting people who are real–people who will remember and who will be missed in death.

Reason rears its head. Why would he lie? Why would he even care what I do, anyway? Ascendants that I’ve seen show startling little regard for Eternity’s average denizens. Why would he bother to trick me into killing ants?

I grab the arm of a random passerby, a man whose Light avatar makes him look like he’s covered in vibrant geometric tattoos. He struggles to shove my hand away and gives me a confused look.

“Excuse me–”

Tendrils from my ethereal body extend out, piercing into the man. I try to see beyond my visual sight, focusing on the vital energy and pulsing network of the man’s soul where it takes root in his vessels and organs.

The more I focus, the more his soulscape and ethereal body become distinct, opaque.

The man tries to move and scream, but my practice locks down his muscles and bones. He’s trapped in his own body while I experiment. I look inward, focusing on my own embodied soul, but I can’t touch it in the same way. Like I’ve observed before, Eternity keeps my soul remote, untouchable, tethering it to my physical form through my ethereal body. I know now that when I appeared to heal my soul on the lightless plane by eating souls, what I really did was restore and enrich my ethereal body, providing my intangible soul indirect nourishment.

Now that I can see this man’s soul, attacking it is trivial. I learned offensive soul techniques under Soolemar’s tutelage when preparing to face off against Ari. But my goal isn’t to refine methods of soul attack. My current techniques are at once overkill for handling people back home–with the exception of a necromancy grandmaster like Soolermar–and insufficient to kill Achemiss.

No–what I’m looking for is a way to fix myself so that I don’t need to rely on the dagger and Maria.

The memories pop like a bubble.

Red iterates, allowing me to enter scenario after scenario. We move quickly; the only limit on our progress is how fast I can digest my own memories. In only a few minutes in the real world, we’ve spent several hours in scenarios.

“There’s something I’m missing,” I hiss. Throughout all those scenarios, all I could find were ways to better manipulate the souls and ethereal bodies of random bystanders. Whenever I tried to affect my soul indirectly–using similar methods as when Maria and I orchestrated a soul attack on Karanos–I only caused myself weakness and excruciating pain, my weakened soul unable to respond positively to my efforts.

You wanted to practice on souls, Maria interjects. Did you really expect to find the answer to your predicament in only a few hours of experimenting? Think of how much time we spent mastering the other artifacts within Ash’s rift.

Thanks, Maria, I say, sighing. She’s right, of course, but I’m impatient. My dependence on the dagger is my single greatest weakness.

Red hasn’t complained once since we started running scenarios and he’s maintained an aloof facade. Though I know he’s experiencing all the same memories I am, he doesn’t show it. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by his competence and professionalism–he’s an ascendant, and a protege on top of that. But his demeanor is bookish, giving him the air of someone who’s spent most of his life in libraries. I’d almost expect him to be more affected by watching me conduct repeated human experimentation.

“I think that’s enough for today,” I say. “Thanks for helping me.”

“Any time,” he replies.

I lead him into what looks like a cafe on one of the street corners. Since everyone wears wingsuits here and flies around, the city is both horizontal and vertical, and is shaped almost like a giant pyramid or ziggurat. This particular establishment is mostly outside, with a few different seating areas situated on thick, transparent platforms.

I don’t have currency in this world, but I subtly manipulate one of the cashiers into adding an order for myself and Red with my Remorse and Death affinity. I can’t control the man’s mind or anything like that, but I can move his hands with decemancy to add an order and use Remorse to make it so that he doesn’t notice. Doing all this is unnecessarily complicated, but it’s good practice.

I let Maria pick the drinks. One of the unexpected benefits of her regalia form is that she can taste through my senses.

“So,” I ask, sitting down with two milk-colored drinks, “how did they get you to agree to this whole mess?” Red is putting himself at risk by accompanying me. I’d tried to avoid conversing with him before, not wanting to get attached in case this whole plan goes awry. But after cycling hours of memories through him, he’s undoubtedly learned more about me than I ever intended. It feels wrong for our relationship to be so lopsided.

He considers for a moment while bringing the beverage to his lips. “You didn’t have to actually get us drinks. We can experience the taste vicariously through others who are here.”

“It’s better to have the real thing,” I retort. What I don’t point out is that my Remorse affinity isn’t good enough to let me clearly experience the sensations of others. It was hard enough passing my own memories through Red, and he was doing most of the heavy lifting. I couldn’t read his surface thoughts even if I tried–he would need to metaphorically spoon feed them to me.

Red straightens his posture. “I also knew Ari,” he says slowly. “She was actually the one who encouraged me to join the white faction.”

“How did you meet?”

He laughs. “She welcomed me to Eternity when I passed my ascendant trial.”

So Ari served the same role as Holiday. “If you don’t mind me asking... with your affinities, how did you survive your ascension?”

“You’re not the first to ask,” he says. “Regret and Remorse isn’t a weak combination, but against an ascendant plummeting at high speeds from the atmosphere, it’s not ideal. Thankfully, my world has a system in place to deal with ascensions. The most powerful amongst us maintain a barrier in the atmosphere, below the first ring of satellites.”

“Satellites?”

He appears thoughtful. “What kind of technology exists on your world?”

I give him a brief overview of glossware. He inquires about my world’s methods of rapid communication and techniques to visualize terrain and build maps.

“So all your world’s major technology is based on mass-produced End affinity circuits that can channel other affinities,” he mutters. “Using Light affinity and the four elements to image the world is rather innovative, I’ll admit.”

“How did–does–your world accomplish the same tasks?” I ask.

“I’ll preface my answer by saying that at the time of my ascension, my world was further along in its life cycle than yours. Most people were regulars, and we’d colonized multiple planets within our galaxy. Our overall population was probably much greater than yours, so it’s not like we didn’t have practitioners, but they played a lesser role.”

My eyes widen slightly at the implications. It sounds like Red Griffith’s world is an example of a world that doesn’t burn short and bright, a place with minimal conflict and fewer ascendants. It’s the outcome that the white faction aims for.

“Rather than developing a dependence on practitioners, my world’s people found other ways. I’m not going to claim that practitioners didn’t receive favorable treatment–many were influential politicians and wealthy celebrities–but during my lifetime, their impact was relatively minimal.”

It sounds like the exact opposite of Karanos’s world, Maria observes.

“You said something about a barrier to stop ascendants?” I prompt.

He nods. “Each of the colonized planets maintained one. As long as returned ascendants had no role in creating and powering the shields–that would be cheating, and descendants don’t react well–any half-step ascendant could leverage them for their ascendant trial. The barrier would stop a descendant before the atmosphere, preventing them from damaging populated areas with their initial attack. The descendant would then be led by drone swarms to the location of the trial-goer–almost always to one of several prepared trial sites.” Red smiles wistfully. “It would all be broadcasted live, of course. There’s nothing that beats a fight against a descendant.”

I have to stop myself from gaping. “What’s the mortality rate?”

“Of our half-step ascendants? I don’t know the number, but over the past, say, three-hundred years before I ascended, the number of deaths was less than five. At least one half-step ascendant emerged each decade, so my sample size isn’t particularly large, but those who reached that point were the best of the best.” He gives me a calculating look. “Does that answer your question regarding how I survived?”

One per decade? Maria transmits. That’s more than our world. And he says his world’s practitioner population was small.

“Could any world do what yours did and make a shield?” I ask.

“Why not?”

Why not, indeed? The distance between my world and Red’s feels like an unbridgeable chasm. I can’t even imagine different nations agreeing to fund a barrier in space to defend against descendants.

The destruction of Pardin would have cost trillions of auris, but most practitioners go to remote areas to commence their ascension, so the cost is minimal, I point out, mentally poking Maria.

The cost of establishing and maintaining a shield would be prohibitively expensive up front, but it would save money and lives, she explains.

If only our world’s people weren’t so shortsighted, I think back to her.

Unfortunately, it’s a problem of scale. How many lives and how much capital would be worth the invention, construction, and maintenance of a planetary shield, when ascensions are already so rare?

Red rests an elbow on the table. He changes the subject, saying, “I confess that some of your assumptions bothered me when I was using my Regret affinity. You really think that ascendants as a collective don’t care about Eternity’s sentient beings.” He says that as a statement rather than as a question.

“Well...” I pause. “I’m not sure.” I’ve spent the most time with Ash, so he’s the first example that comes to mind. “Ancient Ash subjugated his entire home world with mind control parasites–I assumed he’d think of non-ascendants in Eternity the same way.”

“Didn’t he treat you the same way?” Red asks.

“Yeah.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What about the others you’ve met, aside from Ash?” He looks at me expectantly. “Have you seen a single ascendant kill a mortal during your time here?”

The first ascendant I spent significant time with, Messeras, brought me through Vracoola’s Domain and Nuremvark, exposing me to mortals for the first time. All his interactions with them were peaceful. Many ascendants live in Nuremvark full time, though they’re a minority, and I never saw them–or anyone–commit acts of violence.

And Karanos... after we made a truce, he took me, Maria, and Crystal on a sightseeing vacation, visiting multiple mortal destinations. We even met one of his old friends, Marina, who worked incognito on a ship ferrying mortals along a picturesque river. Y’jeni, even Cayeun Suncloud–for all that she seemed to take pleasure in killing me and Karanos–never laid a hand upon her mortal subjects.

Huh.

He turns his head, gazing down the massive ziggurat’s side at the different buildings and bustling people. “Accidents happen. And when ascendants make mistakes, the consequences are dire. I also won’t deny that some ascendants take pleasure in slaughter, but it’s not the norm.” He frowns. “Even the craziest, most depraved of us grow tired of killing eventually and move onto other pursuits.”

“How many years have you been an ascendant?”

His brow furrows. “Fifty, so I’m a baby relative to most. Doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. The faction shares information freely with members, you just have to know what questions to ask.”

We people watch for a few more minutes while finishing our drinks, then continue our journey to the competition grounds. After our long conversation. Red is an open book, and the time passes quickly while we share more details about our backgrounds. He turns conversing into an exercise to refine my Remorse affinity.

Before we know it, we reach the confluence point.