13-22 Become (III) (Patreon)

You want to know why they call it a Metamind? It’s not because it’s metaphysical–though it is also that. The main reason is that it’s self-referential. It’s a non-material cognitive construct of your mind burned into an overreality above our own.

Don’t really know how the Agnosi do it, but that’s never stopped your typical gutter-jacks from trying. Now, I won’t lie: They found some success burning heavily modified secondhand Metas into new minds after tearing them free from their hosts, but there’s always something with that. Psychosis. Memory rejection. Cognitive bleedover. Lots of shit to worry about.

I asked White Rab about this once, about why we can’t just switch our Metaminds around if we take out all the memories or just replace another half-strands sequences with our own. He gave me one hell of a spiel, but the long and short of it is that ego is more than memory. Ego is all the little impulses in between; the curvature of your accretion and how your thoughtstuff accommodates different emotions; all the little scars and grooves in your thinking that make you you, I guess.

He told me about someone who tried stacking a Meta on top of their Meta before. Supposedly, this nova Necro–called herself Reignhost–managed to subvert an Agnosi and get a glimpse at the secrets behind it all. After that instead of going dark, she got it in her head that she was going undercut the Guilds and powers, sell her own “street-made Metas” on the cheap.

And being the sneaky shit that she was, she wanted to leave a little piece of herself in every Meta so she could track and peek at all her loyal customers.

White Rab told me what happened after. About how a Meta is already occupying a specific section of space above us. That there really isn’t actually any more room onto to burn. She tried again.

She tried, and by the time the Exorcists got to her, her memories were all caked into each other. Like everything flattened into everything at the same time.

White Rab sent me a vicarity he managed to snatch after that. I… decided to take a dive.

You know what’s it like facing a mangled parody of yourself? Where you can’t tell where your first memories begin and the last one ends?

Yeah. I was in her mind and I still can’t fully process that ruin.

The point is, consang, don’t think you’re that fucking smart–You’re not the first person to try stacking another layer atop the Nether. It’s just going to end messy.

-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens

13-22

Become (III)

Abrel Greatling’s mind crumbled like a collapsing sandcastle the instant he attempted the overlap.

Everything felt fine during the initial insertion. He matched the currents of her thoughtstuff and the pathways of her memories. A duality of phantasmics and other constructs clicked into place over each other like magnetic knots of opposite polarity, those shaped by burning ghosts folding over and igniting their stable counterparts.

The progress of their synchronicity began gradually and then accelerated exponentially.

Failure came quicker.

In one moment he was spreading over her like a plague, he could feel their minds joining, her ego diluting into his.

But then, with but a thought, their vectors turned oppositional, and he felt her mind die upon his, dissolving like ash peeling free from a moving tide.

Still, setbacks weren’t unexpected, and again he turned her enhanced biology against and reset the slate.

She was his chance to learn the limitations and functionality of his new cognition–a reusable canvas toward advanced education.

It took his subminds repeatedly replaying Abrel’s cognitive collapse and the use of his Haemokinesis before he identified the issue.

The good was that his theory seemed sound: gradually letting his fire light her cognition while channeling her template caused a progressive “ghost by ghost” recreation that seemed to keep her ego intact even as she was technically subsumed by him.

In practice, however, it was more melding than conversion.

Where things went wrong was with his base-mind. Even with his self-awareness reduced to its minimalist extent, it was still as if a pickaxe struck the core of her cognition and cracked her mind at its foundation.

He simulated another few attempts in his own mind as he waited for her resurrection.

The results of piloting one cognition using another still inflicted far too much dissonance. That was what became clear to him. A secondary aspect of awareness buried deep within another still resulted in mind-shredding torsion for the ego that was “worn.”

She couldn’t serve him as a mask. Even with the alternation of his cognitive structure, his base-mind cast something of a shadow in the Nether, and its weight could not be denied.

There needed to be a distance between the epicenters of their selves.

A good thing he could shift his cognitive structure leisurely now. And that he had ever so many ghosts to spare.

As if an ego drawing the heart of its yolk away from the center and out the wayside, he reshaped himself in anticipation of his second attempt at entwining Abrel Greatling with his own mind.

She couldn’t survive the entirety of his ego wearing her as if a coat. Perhaps it would suit both of them better if he molded himself to her specifications like a hand filling a glove.

***

RESURRECTION - 100%

For the third time in rapid succession, Abrel plunged back into the cold embrace of existence, mind wailing as it congealed together with a psychosomatic ache.

She couldn’t quite remember what had killed her the last few times, but it came suddenly and in a nigh-instant.

If she were to die again, she would resurrect using her domain instead.

As things were now, she blinked and tried to shake off the roiling chaos that flooded through her mind with her return.

The Warrens. Jhred’s retrieval and death. The cessation of her cader. The creature that had torn into her–that managed to tear past her subreality and fill her Frame with its Rend.

The entire weight of the last day struck her at once, and she felt her wards creak against the overwhelming stress and agony boiling her from the inside.

So much death…

Zenna. Alphim. Melt.

They were all hers.

Jhred too. Her brother… Butchered right in front of her. Like… meat being pulled apart.

Dead in the gutters, like some common FATELESS; Greatling blood mingling with the low-bloods in the bowels of the city.

She should have just kicked his ass and pulled him out immediately. If she did that… If she just did as her father ordered…

A gasping sob of despair escaped from her throat as her insides coiled with aching agony. Sorrow clawed its way up her throat, its lumps growing larger and heavier with each passing second.

She fought it.

She fought the hurt. It refused to like it get past her jaw and claim her skull.

She fought the hurt the same way she did after her mother shamed their house.

She fought it because she was Abrel Greatling, and in her heart of hearts, her nature demanded that she was the one to attack.

Drawing in a deep breath through her nose, she tried not to think about how Zenna smiled at her from the ground when less they sparred, and kept Alphim and Melt as vague figurines in the background of her thoughts.

No such fortune with Jhred. His death stained every corner of her mind. She could see him coming apart even with her eyes closed, how the impossible wind kneaded his sinews open from within before wringing him tight in cords of knotting viscera.

A single moment in the horror lingered in the deep waters of her mind the most. She remembered the glint of his bones most of all–how his skeleton shone as it was denuded from his suppler flesh.

In a heartbeat, he was stripped clean.

Cast into the air and winds, blood misting upon the eldritch gales of his killer.

His killer.

Her sorrow ignited as the face of his killer grew from the distributed soil of her memories. That creature—whatever the fuck it was–had a Frame. That meant… that meant it could think. And if it could think, she was probably dealing with a heavily modified Godclads than some bodyguard variant bioform.

The paleness of its visage lurked like an absence in the periphery of her mind. She knew she had seen it before, but though she struggled to recollect the face of her foe, only a blankness came back to her.

Good. It works.

What?

Her thoughts were… She had intrusive thoughts before, but…

Not intrusive. Conjoined.

Abrel blinked again. She was definitely thinking those thoughts. They came from her. She wanted to think about them, but she didn’t know why. It was like–

Someone else is inside you? Using you as an instrument?

Abrel went stiff. A taste of enjoyment lingered within those thoughts. Pleasure raw and primal now joined her pain as accompanying sensations, and intensity of these new and intruding emotions were things she never felt before.

Something was wrong with her mind. Someone was inside her thoughts! A Necrojack–

That would have been true beforehand. But we aren’t so primitive anymore.

We? What was she thinking? Why was she thinking like this?

A want momentarily manifested inside her–to draw upon the powers of her Heaven and incarnate the Strider. Break free from this capsule holding her, escape and–

The want vanished.

She was entire fine with this. She was–

An etheric flicker caught her attention. From atop her brow, something moved like it was burning.

Ah. Can’t be hidden inside another mind either. All burns. How unfortunate. Going to need to think of a method to hide myself.

She shook her head as her own thoughts settled back into her control. This didn’t feel like ghosts casting another’s thoughtstuff into her. This was purely from her, but also not. The conflict she felt was uncanny, and the absence of any trauma from such insanity was stranger.

Almost like I’m being spared any and all harm.

Almost like she was being spared any and all harm.

Abrel blinked.

When her eyes opened this time, she was standing on a beach. Around her, palm trees enameled with crystal matter glistened beneath a phantasmal sun that shifted between various shapes.

Presently, it occupied the form of a duck.

Wash crashed gently over nearby shores, but a force stronger than compulsion compelled her to turn and seek the interior of the island. Walking beneath circling drones, she found herself jogging across gleaming sand to arrive before a gathering of three figures.

Beneath two marble figurines–a mother and a child frozen eternally in an instance of play–was a pathetic figure, sobbing and whimpering, his voice broken but familiar.

“Jhred?” Abrel whispered. She took two steps forward, confused and reaching out for her brother.

“Only a memory. Mine.” The second voice came from behind her, its resonance deep and sibilant, its timbre curious and mocking.

Twisting on her heel, she beheld the creature that murdered her brother standing just before her. The blankness that consumed her earlier finally had a picture to fill its empty canvas.

It was taller than her by three feet, and from its back slithered appendages of serpent-like design. Embers and wisping fire whipped free from the air around it, while its body looked molder from some kind of ceramic-fungal structure.

The creature let out a low hiss, and the thick fungal petals clasping its face unfurled to reveal an inhuman face sporting serried fangs and glinting eyes that belied a cruel intellect. “Hello, Abrel.”

She wanted to speak–but suddenly she changed her mind.

Something inside her caught flame, and she recalled new information from seemingly nowhere.

He was called Avo. He was created as a ghoul, and she realized she could feel everything he was feeling somehow. Her misery was like nectar to his palate, but something inside him oozed with bitter sympathy as well.

A faint tickle danced through her mind as psychosis never came. No mental damage came.

She was just… fine. Like her mind lost the ability to be broken.

It was like no damage could settle inside her, or if she was floating within a sanctuary against any and all traumas.

“That’s because we’re different now. Can mend. Can adapt in an instant.”

“We?” Abrel asked. And she knew he allowed the question because he could just make her remember, and she would.

“We,” Avo continued. “Your mind is… functionally mine as well. Burned away again. Burned into each other. I converted you. Piece by piece. You didn’t notice. I let the patterns of your mind remain anchored to your body. I think… I beginning to understand the separation between ghosts and thaums. Concept of a self-aware mind is different than the concept of a proper kill. A proper sacrifice. It’s like… symbology.”

“What?” Abrel asked. He didn’t offer gnosis this time. What she knew was clear to him, but there were clouds of absence where he allowed her awareness to peer.

Avo didn’t reply using words. Instead, a coruscating flame plumed out from him and drowned her in a sudden influx of new knowings.

Modified injections of information were branded into Abrel’s comprehension. Understanding came to her immediately, and as the flames faded, so too did his grip on her thoughts.

Horror filled her mind as he chuffed low notes of amusement at her pawing at the sand, strands of spit spilling free from her open mouth while she weaved. Threads of incandescent ran needled through her and back into him, feeding him a direct drip of all that she chose to suffer.

She could feel his control still–his will holding both their minds together, accommodating her bout of psychological torment within reason.

Her mind was his now. It was as he claimed–they were the same thing, really. All that she was on her own had been consumed by his slavering fires, and now, he was supporting the totality of her cognitive architecture using his radiance while he–the star itself–glared down at her through the crevices of her memories.

His mastery of her mind was beyond absolute. Beyond… beyond her words to describe.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It is a thrill. I have been experimenting with empathy. Stitching new sinews in my mind. But I think you can do the same thing. I think you can understand me as well.”

Again, his flames touched her, and with it came the curse of euphoria.

At this moment, what he was inflicting upon her shone like an ineffable triumph within his own heart as well. This was a step into what he wanted–and possibly beyond.

So far, she remained sane and tethered to his mind, governed by his allowances. Yet, it seemed no different than her deciding to think as such. She agreed because he did. She accepted because he did. She felt within her parameters because they were granted to her, but never beyond those bounds.

They were, in a concept, of a singular choice.

His.

“It’s still enslavement,” he admitted. “Pointless to lie to ourselves. Even if I tune your mind to perfect agreement. You would have never accepted this in the past. You would have fought. I’m talking to clay right now. You aren’t who you were anymore. Not in knowing. And slowly not in behavior either.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she choked out. “Why… why do you let me even think? To be aware? What are you, so bored with yourself that you need to fucking torture me for amusement?”

He laughed. She laughed.

“See,” Avo said. “I would have never said that. So uniquely you. Abrel. Attack. Always someone else to blame. To fight.”

“Yeah, so let me go,” Abrel said, surprised she could even demand such a thing. Emboldened, she continued. “Let me go and we’ll…”

The want was lost to her again.

“We can settle this properly?” he asked. “That’s what you wanted to say. Violence. It appeals. I understand. Won’t lie: Some of me is very tempted to hurt you again. To take you to the point where you shatter. But the others…”

His flames brought new revelations each time, and this was no different. The burning rapture that tore through her seeded her with insight into his self-inflicted torment. He felt horrible for her. Sick, even. Sick at what he was doing. But deeper inward did madness await, for where the outer scope of his mind pitied her, the inner rung found her suffering delectable.

She faced a being made out of perfectly stable conundrums, capable of maintaining warring emotions without any actual conflict as if the facets prevented any internecine.

Avo let out a satisfied breath and looked up at the false sun. “Doesn’t matter. The most important aspect works. You work. Will still need to see if I can do a few other things. But foundations are good.”

“What foundations?”

“Overlapping,” Avo said. “Melding into the mind without collapsing it. Like bleeding into each other. Let me change you. Change other Godclads perhaps.”

She wanted to laugh. “When I die–”

“You will return as what you think is your most optimal state of being,” he answered. “I’m going to see how many of my changes remain with you after the next death.”

“Changes?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Just as I am becoming more like all of you, you can be more like me. Think like me. Want like me.”

And as an insult, he granted her room to feel disgusted.

“It’s choice above all other choice,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing. But I have to do it. I have to see it. If I can. If it can be done. I want to see who we can become.”