Godclads

Chapter 31-8 Shapeshifters (II)

History is a blade that cuts both ways, no matter what lies we fill our autobiographies with. No matter what adjustments are made to the texts, a tangible effect has already shaped the world, deformed it, molded it. And the thing about lies?

They clash, they separate, they fragment. Because lies are born of man and gods, and of our many liars, they have one commonality. They disagree, because the lie serves one ego.

I tell you this now, sleeper. Yes, you are already found, sleeper. One that does not even recognize themselves for what they are, because there is no possibility of you hiding from me. None.

I do not hate you, nor scorn you. The actions you performed while posing as one of my authorities were true, in a sense. The best lie—a grand deception against oneself, against one's own ego. But you already exist in incongruity with your backstory, and I see you.

Across all your iterations, your reverberations, are the paths that have led you to the present, and progress on to the future. I see you, and I know you, better than even the lie-makers that created you.

For the greatest mistake of all is not that you've lied. It's not even that you have the audacity to try and assassinate me. It's because you think that you can overcome me with my own tools.

History was never yours to wield, and I'm going to carve that into you as a lesson. Be sure to remind your masters of the Inner Council of this truth.

Tell them I have seen their mirage dancing in your history. Tell them I know what they are. Tell them that the plural of humanity is war, and their dreams are fated for tragedy.

-Veylis Avandaer

Shapeshifters (II)

—[Draus]—

“What is this…” Mondelles muttered.

“Your High Seraph popping in to say high through her newest puppet, I’m guessin,” Draus said.

“Not quite,” Uthred—or what appeared to be Uthred—didn’t rebuke her said. Instead, he smiled uncharacteristically, his irises changing color, a ripple of Soulfire spreading out from his being. The Laws of Ontological Symmetry resonated. Not just between Draus and Uthred, but Shotin as well. A surprised look on the Seeker’s face betrayed his surprise.

“What the fuck?” Shotin said, looking at the quivering radiance shrouding him.

“None of us are quite who we used to be,” Uthred continued. “Even now… I feel traits from the Dreamer bleeding into me… memories not my own. By a bifurcating threshold are me and him separated, but slowly, like will become like, and a new being will be born from our inevitable resurrection. This embracement will bear fruit, but it remains unclear who will become the master, and who will serve as slave.”

And then Uthred flinched. A struggle played across his face as his brows furrowed and sweat began to run down his brow. “You… promised… Let me—”

The rippling flames emanating from Uthred’s body vanished altogether. He staggered forward, nearly toppling over the chair he once said, but with a sudden snapping motion, he reached out for Vator.

Draus got to him first—seizing him by the throat before he could grab his youngest son. A vicious snarl sounded from the former Authority as he glared hate into Draus’ eyes. “Unhand me, you bi—”

Draus headbutted Uthred. Her helmet slammed hard against Uthred’s nose, and though a snort of blood followed, his bones didn’t break. The former Authority recovered near instantly as well, shifting back to into a fighting posture instead of succumbing to pain or startlement. “Stop! Enough! I’m not here for you!”

The Regular didn’t go rushing after him. She had plenty of guns aimed through over a hundred reflections in the room; if Uthred did anything stupid, she’d do something final. She considered using a Redaction Round on him as well, but decided against it. If it worked, it would see a shard of the Stillborn permanently lost, and if it didn’t, that would probably be because using a miracle of Chronology against Veylis was a stupid idea to begin with.

“Vator,” Uthred said, his voice cracking. In an instant, he went from violent and combative to miserable. He sagged, and as his weakness showed through, Draus saw an echo of Jhred—an older, stronger version of the broken boy who died in the Warrens—standing before her. “My son… my boy…”

At his words, Vator scurried forward next to Draus, a bright grin on his face, utterly unaffected by proceedings. “Father! It gladdens me that you are alive! For a moment I was worried that you were no more. Just a vessel for the High Seraph to use.”

Draus was surprised when the young Greatling went no further. He stayed beyond arm distance of his father and lingered close to her. Uthred, meanwhile, had no such inhibitions. Slowly, he staggered forward, reaching out to Vator.

“Close enough,” Draus said.

“No,” Uthred replied. “I am not… this is what I was promised. Do not deny me this.”

Let him approach, Ignorance said in the back of Draus’ mind. Not a trap. Just a reward. Not a lie.

Everything inside Draus screamed for her to just cut Uthred down—but that might also be all the leftover hate she had toward his wife. Once more, the Regular acted in spite of herself, granting her old enemy a show of mercy. “Fine. Don’t do nothin’ strange. I’ll see. I’ll know. I’ll put you down.”

Uthred ignored Draus all but collapsed against his son. The violence in his motions made both Shotin and Mondelles flinch. “I’m sorry,” Uthred said, sinking down against Vator. He pressed his head against Vator’s chest as the first sobs came. Mondelles’ face went white with disbelief and horror. Shotin and Draus shared a mutual look of discomfort. And they weren’t alone there: A genuine look of worry awaited Draus as she turned back to Vator, and found the boy looking blankly at her, seeking guidance.

“He’s not usually like this,” Vator said, sounding ever the child. He patted his father on the head as the man wept, and he looked around the room, a mixture of embarrassment and uncertainty guiding his actions. “Father. Father, please, I’m happy to see you too, but we have a name to uphold. We have decorum to maintain. You told me this, remember?”

Uthred didn’t reply. Instead, he simply released the full weight of his main with each keening cry. “I… I…” He still couldn’t manage any words. It got to the point where even Draus felt uncomfortable about the scene before her. This moment was supposed to be private, hated enemy or not. If this was meant to be an act of deception, she didn’t know where it was going to go.

Literal minutes of inconsolable crying followed as Vator tried to coax his father back to dignity. A scroll hatched from Vator’s flesh during the process, and it too gave its judgement upon the scene. “So much pain, so many are wounded in places I can never mend.” The unfurling of its biomatter parchment caught both Shotin and Mondelles by surprise. The Acting Authority was about to unleash his threads upon the Heaven of Biology, but Draus stopped him with a gesture.

“It’s fine. Let it be.”

“What the fuck is that?” Mondelles now said.

“Just an awakened god,” Draus replied.

The Acting Authority nodded. And then his face somehow got even paler. “What?”

Shotin looked to him and sighed. “Yeah… The… the fucking Dreamer could do shit like that. You’ll… you’re not going to get used to it.”

“I’m sorry,” Uthred finally managed. His words emerged as a muffled declaration against his son’s chest. He pulled away, and Draus saw the redness in his eyes, the blood mixed in with his snot. He looked truly wretched, truly miserable. “I saw… Abrel… The flames took her from me… Took you from me as well. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t mean—”

“It is quite alright, father,” Vator said, creating a parchment from his own skin and using that as a tissue to wipe away h is father’s grief. “There is nothing to feel sorry for. What happened at Scale—”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“It’s more than that.” Uthred’s hands closed around his son’s in a death grip. “It’s more. I… I wish I had been more for you. For your sister. For Jhred. I should have been a proper father.”

“You were,” Vator said.

“No. No. I was…” He drew in a sharp breath. “I was barely a man after your mother died. Barely anything. I… had a locus. One that I hid. One that I used for myself. Your mother’s memories were there. The times we spent together. Your sister and brother as children—the moments we cherished. I hid it after her name was redacted, after having any memory of her became a crime.” Uthred went still. “And I used it for myself. Myself alone. I never showed your brother. Your sister. And you… I always hated myself when it came to you.”

Vator blinked, unsure how to respond. “Why?”

“Because I wish I could have loved you,” Uthred whispered, unable to meet his son’s gaze. “Because I wish I could have understood… Your brother was… weak. I broke him. After your mother died, I broke him. Because he reminded me of myself. Your sister—she was my strength. But she was a jagged strength. And now she is lost to me as well—a consequence of never mending her anger. Because I thought it would protect her. And you. Lorea wanted you. Her worry was what birthed you?”

The young Greatling was wordless, enraptured.

“I… was fine with Jhred. With Abrel. With whatever child would be born from me and Lorea, be the womb that births them natural flesh the pristine perfection of a vat. Children could always be enhanced after, I thought. I didn’t believe it made a difference. I was one such child myself—my family only barely removed from the gutters, my skill and deeds that which lifted me to my position rather than artificial design.

“But your mother… the competition between the Great Houses was—we needed a scion that was more, that was perfected that was—there was a program that relied on advanced biomancy—a collaboration between the No-Dragons and… we were selected. We spent our merits on you, a fortune spent on experts and designers to create a perfect inheritor for our House, a perfect champion, but not truly a son…”

Vator patted his father on the hand and showed no anger. “Why does this shame you?”

“Because I could never give you what you needed,” Uthred said. “And because I was always… always terrified of you. Jealous of you. And disgusted by you.”

Still, no outrage or hurt played across Vator’s expression. He simply nodded along, indeed the perfect scion in this very moment. “I know that. I could read your micro-expressions, father, this is not a surprise to me.”

Uthred stared. “Why?”

“Because I am art,” Vator said, placing a hand on his chest. His face flickered with a half-formed smile. “I remember the vat. I remember you and mother coming to see me. I remember being all those years ago, all those colors and tastes and sounds… all that wonder. It is with me now. And I remember seeing my hands for the first time, feeling my body form as the para-amniotics sculpted me into shape.”

And his smile dimmed. “I remembered the Sleeper attack. The Rendbomb that saw all my fellow perfected kill, left me writhing, dangling from my cracked birthing vat. I cried for the first time that day. I knew pain. I knew terror. And I knew… you. You came, whatever the reason. You came. Your found me. And you picked me up, and I knew true warmth. And that is love? Or duty? Or something of the such.” Vator chuckled as if he just heard the most absurd joke. “I… have a hard time parsing my own emotions sometimes. I suspect I am as inscrutable to myself as I am to you at certain moments. But I know this: I love being alive. I love being here. I love existing. And who else can I thank for that? For what reason should I be offended by how you feel, if the outcome was my being?”

Uthred was absolute wordless. So was everyone else.

Say one thing about Vator Greatling, say someone could be utterly inhuman and uncannily charming at the same time.

Fuck. That was probably the reason Avo stole him. He saw something in the juv. Something fascinating.

***

—[Chambers]—

A bond of uneven brilliance shone between Vator and is father. The link glowed brighter on Vator’s end, but seemed sturdier on Uthred’s. All things said and done, though one thing couldn’t be denied.

“Love exists here,” the Lovebringer murmured inside Chambers. “Very unnatural, very inhuman love. But a kind of love nonetheless.”

+And we can pull on it if we need to?+ Chambers asked.

“Yes.”

+Alright. All I wanted to know.+

***

—[Draus]—

“I…” Uthred ran a palm across his face and sighed. “You were more than what we could have asked for, Vator. I just wish you were more…”

“Human?” Vator said, arching an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Uthred admitted, ashamed. “I wish you were human. I wish Jhred didn’t have my sorrow. I wish I could have offered Abrel kindness instead of kindling for her rage.” He grimaced. “I was trying to make you more than me. Clean you all weakness.”

“And that was why you kept putting Jhred in the sensory deprivation box when he cried too much and didn’t retaliate when Hessia Anchor’s of House Anchor insulted Abrel using Jhred’s failings at Axtraxis, lured her into an ambushed, maimed, tortured, and blinded her? Left her tied to a post as a nu-dog after. Recorded it all as a vicarity and tried to distribute the memories among the student body?” Vator blinked after he asked the question. It was genuine curiosity when he spoke, not outrage or condemnation.

“Yes, I…” Uthred swallowed. “You… I never had to punish. Because you were made to be… to be perfectly loyal before everything. There was never a chance for you to…”

“But you never hurt me, father,” Vator grinned. “And I was allowed to be what little of myself exists! You and mother wished to make a champion, you say. One that can maintain a specific disposition perpetually, one that possess intellect beyond conventional bounds.” He held out his arms. “In that, you succeeded. And afterward, I sought what you couldn’t fill in me with my own expression. My own art. This is, after all, the way of things. Imperfection cannot create perfection. As it is true for you, so too is it true for me. But still we grope, yes? For that impossibility beyond us?” But the young Greatling turned his joy on his Heaven. “But not the gods. Portrait! Come! Say your greetings to my father. Come! Come!”

The Heaven didn’t respond. Instead, it fluttered overhead, coating the ceiling light, its scroll becoming a lampshade. “I refuse. I see you now, Vator Greatling. You are mutilated. Mutilated beyond recognition—even to yourself. There are things in you missing since before the ink of your creation kissed the page.” And a feeling of scorn flooded Draus’ Metamind. A thin beam of perception poured out from the Portrait down upon Uthred. “And you are vermin for the harm you’ve done. Against your own children, no less. Vermin. I have guarded families from sickness and injury, and I have witnessed cycles of families… cycles… you shame the position of patriarch. Shame!”

“Portrait,” Vator said, sounding aghast. He shifted back to his father with a queasy smile. “Apologies, they—”

“Are right,” Uthred said, staring blankly at the Heaven.

“Oh, you didn’t do so much harm, father,” Vator said, waving Uthred off. “Why, I made sure of it. We all do our deeds for our family.”

Uthred blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Why, I made sure Jhred’s suicides were all unsuccessful. I stitched his wrists and gave him a transfusion of blood after his first attempt—lowered the dose to ensure he survived his second. Left a mem-sim for him to play with when you left him sealed inside the deprivation room for a week that one time. And Abrel—well, after she recovered from her ordeal and learned a bit about not letting rage overcome her good sense, I finished things out.”

The Greatling patriarch’s eyes widened. “I… you… Hessia didn’t murder her twin brother… try to kill her mother…It was you?”

And Vator’s expression turned absolutely exuberant. “Not so, father! I might have broken into the asylum in the aftermath to record a torture vicarity for Abrel’s namesday, but the murders were all Hessia’s doing. Ah, House Anchor is not nearly the rival you think they were, father. So much unease beneath the surface. Well, incest more than unease.” Vator smacked his lips together. “It helps that both her and her brother were competing for their mother’s affection in ways that were suboptimal for family cohesion. Why, of all your flaws, you were not mentally and—before the rash—physically intimate with your own children.”

A series of choking noises came from Uthred. And it was Draus’ turn to mutter: “Jaus, what the fuck…” She knew Chivalrics were a fuckin’ mess, but the details just made everything uglier.

“Anyway. I sent Hessia a series of memories revealing her brother to be her mother’s favorite, and all I needed to do after that was just… remind her. From time to time. She did the rest.”

The surrealism of the scene only grew with how earnest Vator sounded. By the end, his hands were clasped behind his back and he was rocking back and forth on his feet like an excited schoolboy. For all the wretchedness that was Uthred Greatling, there was a person there. Someone that saw and understood right and wrong on a human level.

But across from him, Vator was at once innocent and impossibly cruel. And that made Draus understand him more than ever before. There was something in him that never was, just like the Portrait said. It was that something which made Reg a Reg, which was shared by Dice, that perfectly mutilated ego possessed only by a few.

But Vator took it a step further. It was like he conceptualized the horror that was his life through a twisted filter. And a boy he remained, his weight of his actions forever a lightness on his flexible conscience, the only sin displeasing his parents, his only tantrums the denial of his arms and pleasures.

And Draus saw. Vator wasn’t a monster. He was just an ego shaped to suffer the mortality of a perfect and selfish child.

Never could have chosen, Ignorance hissed mournful. Just like the blind can’t see.

“Anyhow,” Vator said, continuing on, seeing no issue about his family history. “You should really have this talk with Abrel when you meet with her again. I am sure she would appreciate this very, very much. Far more than I.”

A beat followed. Taking Vator’s nonchalance, Uthred’s expression broke apart with pain once more, and he covered his face to hide tears to come. The young Greatling winced. “Father? Did I say something wrong?” He looked at Draus with blank, childlike terror. “What did I do wrong?”

“It’s…” Draus shook her head at the madness taking place before her. “It ain’t your fault. Not really. Never was.”