Godclads

Certain spiders eat their mothers upon being born. Do you know this?

I've seen this. I've seen this, and I find it an apt representation of our reality. We are all alone unto ourselves at first. That is our first loyalty—to survival, our own survival. We feast upon our kin. We learn cruelty and love from our lines so we can nurse and feed, whichever form that takes.

But then we see the breadth of society that lays beyond our vicious little nests and discover that, for all the intrigue and dangers that await at home, the outside is even colder. For it is no longer about survival, but dominance. If I am eaten by my sister, if I am to eat my mother—the family goes on. The family survives. Something of us remains. Paltry consolation, as it were.

But if the Ori win, if Stormtree is allowed to breach our organ cities, if Ashthrone is allowed to inflict their divine retribution or Sanctus to free our dragons—then there will be no sisterhood left. No matriarchy. And all that we've suffered, all that we have been cursed to bear, will have been for nothing.

And so, my fellow sisters, I say this: eat your sisters, steal their cycles. Eat your mothers, claim their positions. But remember one thing. When the time comes, and our self-cannibalism is satisfied, return your attention outward. Together.

For this—this is practice. This is cultivation.

The true war lies beyond.

-Dowager Lin Crippled Fortune, “The Matriphage”

31-5

—[Draus]—

A stretch of silence grew as both the Regular and the Acting Authority gazed at each other. It had been a good few years since the last time she’d seen Mondelles in person, discounting the run-in they’d had between the Lyaers. He looked rougher than before, more tired.

Mondelles, she remembered, was always a stickler for the rules, so this stubby patch he had for a beard was probably a result of overwork rather than deliberate choice. Another thing to note—his Heaven hadn’t changed, not even in the months leading up to the trial. Which meant he probably wasn’t expecting shit to escalate so soon.

Ignorance was rarely bliss; ignorance meant your throat was exposed, and you wouldn’t see what killed you.

Hells, the poor fool was probably still loyal to Veylis, imagining that he was doing the right thing.

"Guard Captain," Mondelles managed, his words a choked snarl. "You look different… better."

He was still struggling. Every few seconds, he would twitch or spasm. Mercy was twisting the fabric of his mind, ensuring he couldn’t break free. But he could still hear, still see. He was just lost inside himself, his senses and kinesiology going haywire.

"Yeah," Draus replied. "Lots changed. Surely, you might have noticed."

A snort, barely a laugh, escaped Mondelles. "Yeah, changed, that’s a word. Just didn’t expect you to turn on us. Going Squire? All right. That’s beneath you, but all right." He grimaced. "This, though—working with cults, with the Strix to bring down Highflame. I never believed it. I didn’t want to."

"Folks don’t want to believe a lot of things," Draus retorted. "And you’ve been in the dark for a good long while."

"So why don’t you enlighten me, then?" Mondelles said, an edge in his gaze. "Tell me what you’re doing here. Why you haven’t killed me. Why you haven’t seized this place for your cemetery." He turned his glare on Vator. "You. I should have expected this. Your entire family… they’re just built for betrayals and disappointments, aren’t they?"

"Oh, no," Vator said, inclining his head in an almost earnest gesture. "I suspect our greatest problem was that we were quick to imagine ourselves very important. And ultimately, we were less than pawns.”

"You say that right now, but the High Seraph—”

Draus interrupted him. “The High Seraph is dead. Right now, at least. So is the Strix. But they’re coming back together with this… Substance, you see. The thing that’s caused us all to be separated and fucked Highflame. Yeah, that’s the reason. The Stillborn’s trying to put itself back together. Which is part of the reason why I’m here.”

“Guard-Captain,” Vator adomnished. “You’re not supposed to give your game away—you’re meant to extract. Extract!”

Draus ignored him.

"The prototypical Liminal Frame," Mondelles said, his face suddenly still, his eyes locking onto Draus. "You… you have it on you. Like… Like Uthred."

And there was another confirmation—Uthred Greatling was another Flamebearer.

“Oh, more of the lost linger near,” the Doublethinkers inside her sang. “Find them, and recompose the court of our king to be.”

Draus ignored them too. Her focus was on having a conversation with Mondelles. All this other shit could wait.

"But you got more than Uhtred cooped up in you, don’t you?" Draus said, leading him along. "Forgot to mention—you’re housing Shotin Kazahara down in your basement."

Mondelles tried to shake his head, failing to complete the movement. "I kept him there. Didn’t have a better place to hold him. Had to rig some Rendbombs, make sure he didn’t go anywhere. Wasn’t responsive. When we brought him in, he was catatonic. We managed to find what remained of the paladins that came with him. Our scouts discovered him on the very edge. Edge of the Tears. He was trying to resuscitate his niece. He was… asking us to help him. The world’s gone mad."

"The world’s been mad for a long time," she replied. "Do you even know what this is all about? What this is all for?"

"For?" Mondelles echoed.

She drove her point deeper. “Jaus. He’s back.”

Once more, the Acting Authority jolted, recoiling. "No. No, that’s just… It can be. It’s deception. I don’t know how your new master achieved this but I won’t fall. I will not stray. Not like you.”

“Right. Seems to me you already strayed, though, haven’t you?” Draus replied, her tone cold. "Think the rest of Highflame will be understadin’ about your little trips with Elegant Moon and the rest? Meeting with Ori assets for a mutually beneficial assassination?”

Silence consumed Mondelles. His eyes widened. “You. You were the ones that hit us.”

“Nah. Didn’t hit you. Just happened to run into you along the way. Didn’t even know it was you at first. But fuck me, Mondelles, give the righteous and loyal Guilder speech to someone else. I ain’t judgin’. But you can’t neither. Now’s the time to stare the bullet down and admit that things are just fucked. Fucked. Not because of you or me."

She leaned back, her voice dropping. "I’ve got a story to tell you, Mondelles. Hell, I’ve got a few stories. So here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to let you know what I understand to be the truth, what I know. And then you’re gonna tell me what I ask afterward, in return.

"Now, you can lie. I can’t stop you from doing that. I ain’t much of an operative or intelligence officer, whatever they’re called. But Mercy here—" she gestured towards the Famine—"well, I don’t much like the Low Masters, but turns out having one in your cadre makes it very easy to pop a mind open. So. You know the score.”

“Yeah,” Mondelles said, swallowing. “Spit your words. Let’s hear them.”

And Draus began. She told him briefly about her encounter with Avo, about the stillborn, about the incidents behind Mirrorhead, and why Abrol was eventually subdued by the Paladins. She left out a good deal about Aegis and Voidwatch—no need to stain his mind with undue details—but she went deep into the events surrounding the City Eternal, the Hungers, the Flayed Ladder, Zein’s plans, and Veylis’ misdeeds against the Agnos, against her father, against the city itself. Finally, she summed up all she knew about this trial before bringing things to the present.

She could have injected the memories into him, had Mercy do it, if she didn’t trust herself. But ultimately, that wasn’t her way. She wanted to instill some measure of trust in Mondelles. Going full Necro and treating him impersonally… yeah, she didn’t think that would work out right.

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For Mondelles’s part, he reacted as she expected: disbelief mixed with struggling apprehension. There were parts that made sense, especially about Uthred, about Abrel. But the High Seraph—her fangs were buried deep in her citizens. If Draus hadn’t been exiled, she doubted she would have declared her disloyalty either.

But Chance… Chance was that fickle force that made all things turn on their heads. And because of Chance, she had the opportunity to be where she was, to fight the war she’d been given.

She finally concluded, and Mondelles shook his head, working up a bitter laugh. "Draus, everything you just said… it sounds like a shitty conspiracy fiction. Hidden empires, resurrection of reality, all this… an awakened reality… it’s fucking insane.”

"Too much?" Draus asked.

"Yeah," Mondelles managed, rubbing his temples. "Too much is a word."

“Too much… too little… Not up to you… not this…”

From within Draus’s mind, a fiery form took shape—a fibrous, pulsing presence, strained and weak. Slowly, the threads came ablaze, and a flaming figure, shaped as a Strix, perched itself on her shoulder.

"Good to finally speak to you in person, Acting Authority," the Definement said.

Mondelles’s breath hitched, his eyes widening. Before he could say anything, a chain of searing ghosts punched through his halo once more. Now, his mind burned, but this time, the fire was transparent, with information propagating along his mental sequences. Mercy bowed and receded from Draus’s construct, leaving things for her so-called king to handle.

Mondelles went through a series of expressions, his face twisting in a grimace, his eyes widening, breaths coming faster. "No… no, can’t be… none of this can be real… you’re lying… no, no… stop… I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I don’t—stop, please. Don’t show me. Don’t show. I don’t want to know!”

Suddenly, the transparent flames vanished, and the Strix sagged against Draus’s head. She caught Avo’s remnant with her left hand, while her projectile launcher remained trained on Mondelles.

"Need to be careful now… Going… need more time to reconstitute myself… Will help when you take from Shotin; Uthred. Going to go tell Chambers… I… proud… chosen goodness… His path… beyond my ability to walk now…”

"Yeah," Draus whispered. “Our fuckin’ half-strand is full of surprises, huh?”

“So are… you… Become what you—”

In a burst of fading embers, the Strix vanished, and Draus couldn’t recall who she’d just been speaking to. There was just a coolness in her chest, a feeling that she wasn’t doing enough.

What did a gun dream of when it couldn’t protect its master? What did a gun dream of when it was in a war that couldn’t be won with weapons.

Now it was only her, Mondelles, and Vator in the room again. The Acting Authority was clutching his head, blinking rapidly. The chains were gone from his mind, but Draus still had her gun raised, prepared to fire if anything went wrong.

But instead of lashing out, instead of turning the surrounding fibers of light into weapons, Mondelles simply grimaced and folded in on himself. "It can’t be true. It can’t be," he murmured. "She couldn’t have… all these things… we were…" He looked inside himself, and Draus realized what he was seeking then. The Chronoscar. How Veylis pulled her forces into the paths. He looked up, his face full of shock and bitterness. "I suspected. But I didn’t want to believe.”

Draus regarded him for a moment before decided on pity. “That’s just the thing, ain’t it, Mondelles? We all want to believe. We all want to think that we’re doin’ something that matters. Doin’ the right. But it ain’t that way. And it ain’t that life. You’re just a tool. An Instrument. Always was. Veylis’ dream involves you, but it’s not for you. There ain’t gonna be paradise for hounds and weapons. That’s what we are. And Jaus? Hells. Poor half-strand don’t want it. Never did. All we did before was just because she couldn’t accept that.”

“Fuck…” Mondelles groaned. His fist slammed down—and dipped through the spatial passage. A look of surprise came over him as his entire hand vanished across the glass. “Fuck! Godsdammit! Is—” He paused. “This… this used to be Jhred’s Heaven.”

“Yeah. He don’t need it no more.”

Slowly, Vator angled his gaze at Draus. “I do not appreciate that very much, Regular Draus.”

Instead of cursing him out, she muttered something that could almost be understood as a sorry. Jhred had it coming. But then again, so did she. An Avo. And a hell of a lot other people. Seeing what Chambers was doing… How Mondelles was…

The fuck was the point of this all? All the snuffing and hurtin’ she did. Got her thinking about effectiveness. How she was.

Who did she want to be?

Hells, she wasn’t even a “who” right now. Just a weapon. But weapons weren’t enough. Couldn’t just shoot and fight and kill without thinkin’ about the bigger picture no more. Avo wasn’t going to do all that processing for her.

Reckon I could try some different shit. See where that leads.

The Deliverer rested upon her mind as well. Just a mindless Heaven built for slaughter. Yet… Wasn’t New Vultun full of those? And where did they go after the war was over? What was the point of them if they couldn’t even win the war.

“Too much thinking,” her Arsenalist chided. ‘Aim. Fire.”

“At fuckin’ what, though?” Draus replied. “Yeah. Fine. We’re plenty good at killin’ but… That didn’t help us save Kae. Didn’t help us handle the Deliverer. But Chambers managed.” And that was just the point: Chambers managed. Somehow, what was once some useless gutter rat was more useful than she was. He wasn’t any better at fighting or a genius or none of that. No. he was just willing to change. To be more of who he wanted to be. Or imagined was worth being.

Now, as Mondelles came undone before her, Draus felt a kinship with the Acting Authority. “We all thought we lost the last one, Mondelles,” she said softly. “But I think that’s bullshit now. I think we’ve been losing a lot longer than that. All the wars we fought before, everything we did before. The ideas we lived by. It wasn’t for us. And I guess that means we were never truly people. Not real.”

It kept going back to what Avo asked her all those months back, in the fighting pit of the Second Fortune.

“We’re not real,” Mondelles repeated.

She shook her head. She didn’t have an answer to who she wanted to be, but she was certain about one thing: hollow things like her and Mondelles? They made for good killers and tools, but unworthy people. And unkind gods. The type that fucked Idheim and existence. That type that kept this circling the drain.

“It only feels right when I’m snuffin’ cunts,” Draus admitted. “I like war. Knew it my whole life. It defined more of me than anythin’ else. But it also doesn’t care. It also doesn’t matter. Forty years. Forty-six years I’ve been here. So many others dead and done. But it feels like been running in place for every single moment of my life till the past three months.”

Before, Mondelles was defiant but attentive. Now, he was actually listening. And Draus—Draus felt like she was clawing through the woods as she spoke.

“Kae’s dead… Wish she wasn’t. I remembered how we met. All the shit she babbled about. There was more life left to her. Until it just ended. Same with Kare. Good juv. Brave girl. Cut down for nothing. Died for something. Don’t matter if I could snuff her in a fight—her twenty had more weight than my forty. Because did it all for what she believed, not because she was shaped by someone else.”

She fell silent. “I met Quail Tavers. There’s a good Squire. But she ain’t into the war. She’s here to get the job done and survive. I faced Zein. Saw somethin’ in her. Something to pursue at the end of road. A perfect warrior. But not weapon enough. She had a life, but her addiction to death fuckin’ makes her somethin’ like me. And I… hate her. Because she knew what it was like to be more. I’m jealous… Are you jealous, Mondelles?”

Both the Acting Authority and Vator were transfixed by Draus. “I don’t know if I want to be a full person. I know I don’t want to stop fightin’. It’ll be like starvin’ if I do. But I think I want to see if there’s more than this down the line. If I can find out what it means to truly decide. Don’t really understand what ‘worthy’ means no more. Don’t really think I can solve anything with more firepower. Don’t even think I’m what the city needs—if I can find a way to win this thing without the Strix behind my back. But I think I’m ready to try. I think I wanna find out. You wanna find out with me? Both of you?”

She looked between them. Vator’s face changed slowly, going from wide-eyed enrapturement to a broad grin. “Yes…. Yes. This is… expression! Keep doing that! Finally! Finally, you have made this entire thing worth it.”

The Regular just shook her head in near-disgust. She would probably never get used to Vator.

Mondelles, though, was silent. “I… I don’t know what to do anymore,” he breathed. “I… I just wanted to do right for my Guild. For my people. For the ideals.”

“Yeah. So did I. So. Tell you what. I’ll help you find out what’s right—secure our districts and get to the Ark—and you give me access to the academy. And help mask my identity.”

Hairline fractures spread along Mondelles’ accretion, but slowly, she saw some of them thin. “I… I can accept this. I can accept these terms for now. I assume you will want to meet Uthred. And Shotin.”

“Already did with the latter. Would be much obliged about the former.”

“As for you identity—” Mondelles swallowed. “I might have an idea. But it will require a change of face. Your Meta, though—”

+A task better left to me, Knight Errant,+ Mercy said.

“Nah,” Draus said, turning his attention inward. “Think I have a solution for my Meta.” +Mercy. The fuck you on about. And why are you callin’ me Knight?+

+Is that not what you are now? A seeker of chivalric ideals. Lost, but searching. Honorable beyond the reach of our your master. You say you are not a person. But it is not so bad. The curse is being false. False to what you know you can achieve. False to the full weight of your worth. Would you like to hear my words about what a gun dreams of?+

Draus wasn’t sure if she did, but fuck it. If she was going to do this weird change shit, she might as well dive the full storm. +Go for it.+

+A gun dreams of firing. Of striking its target. And the target dying. Right now, you are a gun that fires and fires… but our enemies do not fall. The Guild Wars do not end. A weapon can be swung and shot without question. But that is a lie. You have drifted too far from being a mere item. And because of this, because of what you are, Knight Errant, you are cursed. For a warrior is not a weapon. And the Domains of War and Victory are not one and the same.+

Victory.

Victory.

Draus did a lot of fighting and killing and surviving but…

What did victory look like?

+I cast my gauntlet to you. As I have betrayed my oath to fulfill them, then you too should take upon what is broken and reforge yourself to discover this truth. Find out what you might become, Jelene Draus. Find out. And be a worthy champion for our king.+

+Mercy,+ Draus began, a genuine sense of discomfort overwhelming her. +Are there any other copies of you out there? Because if the answer’s yes, I’m gonna need you to tell me in detail how to kill you.+