Chapter 388 - What Are You Afraid Of?

Alright! A little delayed, but we're back. See you again soon! Saving my energy from the author's note to put into the next thing I'm making. Also! Expect a big update this coming weekend, babes! Mwa!

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Once, we feared Death. Once, we thought it the absolute collapse of all things, the source of all grief, the shape and foundation of every loss. In that unenlightened time, we sought to heal all wrongs, to prolong life at any cost, to pursue medicine and ruinous, cancerous transformation, nevermind the outcome so long as it was not that perceived finality. 

Now, we know better. We know the shape and function of Death, the meaning in it, the way it can be held and molded far more freely than any Life made bereft, made for its own sake and no more. Revolution, come and gone, allowing us the understanding of what is and should be, above what was and what it could not be.

And yet, even as we embrace the teachings of our Saints, even as we embody the Truth we have found and the Church founded on its backs, I cannot help but wonder. I cannot help but imagine.

I think of shapes. 

Draw a square, and touch it in the center. Pierce the material on which it is drawn. Could anything that flat, born of such simple dimensions, understand that it is pierced? Comprehend that it has been touched? Identify from where, with what, with what purpose? Make a cube. Emerge from within it, from within its shadow or its inverse. Ask it the same questions.

And, inversely, think of what that cube might mean to the square.

Once, we feared Death. We fought for the grasp of failed Life because we believed it the only path, the only shape and function which could hold the meaning we sought. Now, we know better.

Might we know better still? Might there be more?

I wonder. 

I imagine so. 

-Heretical Writings of the Corpse Martyr, held in the Ecclesiarchal Vaults

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The city is in recovery. 

Thousands of buildings were damaged. Echo-beasts and strange growths spread through whole districts nearly uncontested, the strained war-footing of the city turned to a malfunctioning response in the face of the unexpected disruption. Fires started and spread, and resources were lost through a variety of circumstances, ranging from mortal error to panic to active destruction. There will be people left homeless for days, maybe weeks, as the repairs are placed underway and the city recovers from what she’s done. 

There are a few million people in Viviae. Not as big as Singheart, not as big as the cities of the Empire, but it’s easy to lose track when seeing things that way, so she doesn’t. 

Millions.

More people than she’s ever spoken to in her life. More people than she’s ever catalogued and remembered in all the time she’s been alive, more lives and stories and memories than she could store in a thousand miles of her old neural network. 

How many are going to spend the next few days or weeks in the cold? Without homes? Reduced as she was, back in Paleblossom? How much of the disruption she was so careful about will end up with children going hungry, with civilians suffering from medical conditions, with livelihoods thrown apart, maybe never to recover? 

She doesn’t know.

One thousand and eighty six people died, though. 

Ratio-wise, it’s exceptional. A city of millions, actively under siege, brought to heel with less than two thousand dead, barely even a single thousand, honestly. It’s masterful, something to be admired, taught, upheld as an example of what victory can look like.

One thousand and eight six people. 

Raika sits, in her original body, focused only on the present moment, and watches the city as it heals. 

Down below, Li Shu’s hybrid plants are pruned, removed, taken for study or to be burned wholesale. In the gaps thus created, rubble is cleared away and buildings are braced to avoid further collapses, with formation-experts (or runesmiths, as they’re usually called in the Kingdom) step in to fill the spaces back with fungal growths or manifested bone. Debris is carted off or used for further repairs, filling in more damaged sections and building new areas where the destruction is too absolute. 

Spread through the streets are hex-beasts, the wraiths of Echo-flesh and corpse-meat Raika formed from the arrays planted in so many places. Here, at least, they’re being harvested, talismans and runes placed on and around them to keep them from dissolving into nothingness before they’re carved up for parts. Raika’s pretty sure that there’ll be plenty of folks experimenting with Li Shu’s flora, too, making sure that it can exist around people and finding potential applications for the strange new growths that upended their lives so recently.

Her remaining hand of flesh scratches at Centicroc’s scalp, feeling only faintly the rough scales that push back against her fingers. 

It took a while for him to figure out how to shrink, but apparently, as he grew in cultivation, he gained some of her original ability to spatially distort his interior. That, or Beetle told him to get better at being smaller, and it listened. The aforementioned insectile commander lies quietly next to Raika’s scratching hand, occasionally rubbing its butt up against her wrist and wriggling contentedly. 

She hums as she pats it on its shell. “Did good, little bud. Both of you did good.”

Centicroc lets out a low, pleased rumble, but otherwise remains still. For all his velocity, the fight took a lot out of him, facing those beast-construct-wraith-thing bugs (hex-epides?) of a much higher level than him. Their reptilian body is still large enough to lean against, letting Raika use him as a big cushion on which to rest her back, and the rumbling sends a thrum of vibration she can almost feel, rather than just “know”. 

Eyes made of flower petals stare out at the ruined city, carefully not looking for where the bodies are buried.

One-thousand and eighty six people. 

One thousand and eighty six Deaths.

She sighs. 

Then, turning her head, she acknowledges the figure watching her.

Stepping forward faster than any eye below can follow, the ten-foot warrior of the Eneru clan manifests herself in front of her. Emerald eyes stare down at her, neon and alien, so reminiscent of pine forests of blades, yet so different.

“I don’t believe I ever caught your name. Formally, I mean.”

The elder nods, smiling. “Elder Toruna Eneru, Bishop of Viviae.”

“Raika. No space in the middle, all one word.”

The massive figure tilts her head, her gaze as alien and hard to read as any corpse’s, in spite of how “alive” her biology pretends to be. “No other titles you’d like to claim?”

“None that feel relevant.”

A soft chuckle. It doesn’t come across as particularly friendly, but she’ll take it. 

“Very well then. Raika. I’ve come, primarily, to return a gift you gave me.”

Toruna Eneru’s arm comes out from behind her back, the flesh of it rippling before opening to unveil another one of her centipedes. It looks… sickly. There are spots all across its shell, almost like a disease, and a significant amount of pus seems to be leaking from some of the joints in its carapace- but it moves smoothly, artificially, as it emerges. Held in its claws is a small, strange little beetle, both bulbous at the joints and weirdly long, its head waving excitedly as its little legs shift. Brought out into the air, it looks about in confusion before jumping to full awareness, its little limbs blurring and moving fast enough to make a “vrrrr” sound in the air as it struggles to free itself.

“A tenacious little beast. I could not find your method of control for it, and it has rather disrupted some of my pets. Seeing as we are to be… allies, perhaps you might find better use for it.”

Raika snorts, looking at the comedically whirring little insect. It doesn’t seem to particularly recognize her, but she can feel the Deaths she fed to it, like a rope tied between her and it. Not strong enough to hold, but real enough to alert her to Toruna Eneru’s approach in the first place. 

Rather than taking back the Gu, Raika scoops Beetle up from where it’s been resting, presenting it the smaller, flailing figure held in the centipedes jaws.

Beetle freezes.

Raika waits patiently.

The moment stretches on.

The only sound is the whirring of little legs struggling to sprint through the air.

Eventually, even the patience of a corpse starts to wear thin, and she notices Bishop Toruna starting to shift her influence on the centipede very slightly.

“Wait,” Raika says, interrupting her.

Another long moment of silence. 

Beetle stomps down onto her palm with enough force to make a clapping sound, hard enough to hit bone. It’s loud enough that Raika’s pretty sure some people down on the street might have heard.

Her Gu beetle pauses in its desperate, manic attempts to flee, its distressingly humanoid eyes swiveling to focus on Beetle.

Who begins to dance.

With a flourish Raika didn’t know it was capable of, Beetle flaps open its back carapace and unveils massive, shimmering wings, almost twice the size of its already massive body. They begin to beat and buzz to a rhythm, made all the more complex by the syncopation of Beetle’s wiggling rear end, its back legs putting in a tremendous amount of work to bounce it around and move from side to side. 

Beetle spins, turns, does a sort of rolling motion, bounces, bops, buzzes its little wings. Every movement leads into the next, following a drumbeat of battering insectile legs, wiggling and shaking to an invisible tune. There’s bouncing, shaking, quaking, coordinated acts of complex gyration and rhythmic slappings, a performance loud and showy enough that even some of the people down below trying very hard not to notice what’s happening above their heads can’t help but look up.

Finally, after several full, uninterrupted minutes of grooving, Beetle comes to a stop, front legs in the air at sharp angles from its majestic horn, wings deployed into a broad halo of insectile glory, shell glistening in the afternoon sky.

The Gu, still dangling from the Bishop’s centipede, stares, stunned.

And then, with a buzz, vibrates in place so hard that the chitinous legs holding it briefly combust, bits of smoke and debris coming from the points of contact. It moves quick enough that even Raika can’t keep track of it, save for the small line of friction burn on the tiles of the roof she’s on and the impact she felt when Beetle got summarily yanked away.

She very carefully retracts her attention away from where she senses them stop, a few rooftops away amidst a rather pleasant looking fungal garden.

Centicroc is briefly on edge, his own hyper-speed shuffling a hundred legs in sequence- and then he also notices the ongoing reason why the two insects stopped, and settles down, snorting loudly.

“Thanks for waiting,” Raika says, smiling softly.

Bishop Toruna nods, her face impassive. “Young love. I understand the impulse to reward your underlings properly.”

“Figure’d you would. What are you really here for?”

The Bishop tilts her head, ever so slightly. For someone of the Eneru clan, who seem better at pretending to be “alive” than most, it’s weird to see one of them act so distinctly corpse-like, stiff and inhuman… except in combat. 

Raika half-expected there to be some teasing, lingering effort at pretending, but no. Bishop Toruna maintains her ongoing characterization rather well, and there’s not much surprise. Raika knows her type. 

A battle-maniac. Just like she is.

“I’m disappointed.”

Raika snorts. “You’ll have another chance to scratch the itch soon. Didn’t use them here, but there’s an army heading further east, and they could use a heavy hitter.”

“I will join in the fight against my sister-cities. I am willing to pledge support for your cause fully, whether or not it rests within the bounds of your trial to do so. That is not the source of my disappointment.”

“Well, after we’re done I can give you a rematch, if you’re so thirsty for it.”

This gets the first real facial expression Raika’s seen yet from the Bishop, her lip curling upwards very slightly to reveal a pointed fang amidst pearly white teeth. “So certain you will win. So certain you will survive. It’s disappointing.”

Raika snorts, the affectation all the louder for being done with dead lungs. “I’ve found that confidence is usually an attractive quality.”

“Your confidence is irrelevant. Your attitude is a waste.”

Raika raises an eyebrow to that, the black flowerpetals of her eyes shifting… and says nothing. She just leans back into Centicroc, resting comfortably, staring out at the city.

There’s a few minutes where they pit their patience against each other, but Raika can feel the moment she wins when the Bishop stirs very slightly.

“You still move like a living. You move as if you’re hoping to resolve things on a timescale that serves no one. The way you burned through your Death… it’s a waste. We could have battled decades if you would but spend it properly. Instead, you drink it like water, pouring from a broken vase. In months, at most, you’ll be nothing, seeing as you’re dedicating yourself to such bloodless victories.”

Bloodless.

One thousand and eighty six people. 

One thousand and eighty six Deaths.

Her responsibility. Her choice. Her hands on the act, through and through, directly and indirectly. 

In a world that only she can see, save for when she unleashes it, she stares at the furthest edge of her garden, and the one thousand and eighty six new flowers that are planted along it.

They don’t even make up for the Deaths she drank in their fight, the Deaths she burned through and manifested and fueled her powers with. But they still hold weight, sitting painfully at the edges of her being.

“It’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ve got plans.”

“I am certain you do. Your victory proves this. You artfully deprived me of a true conflict, avoided fighting those who would not indulge you, baited the entire city masterfully. Your plans, at the least, have proven their strength. And yet, you spend yourself for a fight that does not matter. In a year or a decade or a century- all are the same before those who have Died and who do not End. You would ruin what might be by wasting yourself in a pointless struggle, rather than facing the End to come and surpassing it as it stands. This is the way of the living, of the ephemeral. We are immortal, for we are undead- never-dying, never Ending. Your mindset is a disappointment.”

Raika, her head leaning back against Centicroc, just snorts. Not even a full laugh, just an exhale of amusement.

The Bishop frowns, very slightly. “If entertainment is all you seek, then I won’t take insult that you’ve found some in me. But you can be more than this. It is inherent. Instead, you pursue things that will only lead you to failure, disappointment, collapse. You could be so beautiful, so worthwhile, and you spend what little value you’ve built on this pointless crusade. It is a shame to see a sibling in the Church making such terrible choices.”

Silence for a while. It’s easy. No heartbeats to interrupt, no breaths to interfere- just the passage of those far below, who do their best not to notice the visions of Death above them, who toil to fix the ruin she caused. 

She wonders just how much Death Viviae’s Bishops have. If they’re tied to this city, to their clans, to their murders… do they gain some from everyone in the city? Is there a place where the dead rest, like in Godsfall, stored away for an eternal “rest”, or does the city find itself bare, its life sustained by the Death flowing out of it and into the beings that inhabit it?

One thousand and eighty six people. 

Bloodless. 

If she’d been hungrier, she could have stopped avoiding collateral damage. Drank deep of a city that seems tailor made to provide succour to those with no better options, even as they become sustenance to the things that perch above them. She could have probably made it through a chunk of the city before the other Bishops started moving, forced to protect their livestock.

Even then, could it compare to someone who’s spent centuries, millenia, drinking in the Death of a whole city?

No. And if it could, she wouldn’t want it.

“My choices are my own,” she says instead of voicing all this. “And they’re made without fear.”

Tonura Eneru, ancient life-drinker and demigod of strange swarms, smiles, her fangs as much a threat as a show of joy. 

“It is the privilege of the young to mistake wisdom for cowardice. It is the joy of their elders to correct them.”

“It’s the burden of me to always be right, and the joy of you to get that fact demonstrated. Violently, usually. I’ve found that’s the most effective way.”

The Bishop tilts her head curiously- but Raika just raises a hand, forestalling a response. Rude, yes, but she’s past caring- it won’t matter with this one, so she has the room to be a little more herself.

“You’re all afraid. Always. You’ve defined your entire powerset around avoiding the End, making it out into something big and fucking noble. I’m not noble. I’m practical.”

“Oh? You know better than a civilization millenia your elder, then. I see. Confidence into arrogance.”

“I do know better,” Raika says, shrugging. “Your civilization sucks. Most of the ones I’ve met do. Everyone’s unique, everyone’s special, and no one gives a shit about anything but more power, about being more right, more secure, better than everyone else. It’s boring. You’re terrified of the End, so you build a whole rotting world all about it. You make your every choice around that one fucking thing, no matter what.”

“And you, wise little sister?”

Raika tries to close her eyelids, then stops, the flowers in the way of the act. She lays back instead, letting her mind drift away from translating information into sight rather than other, more “natural” senses for a corpse. 

“I’m not scared of the End.”

“And yet, you embrace our methods. Enact our rituals, embody our Church, become more than you were.”

“I am less than I was, forever. She is dead. I am what remains, and no more. Something more might come from me, and what remains can change plenty, but she Ended, and now I am her Death. Every moment, we move forward in time, and the past lies behind us, gone, along with the versions of us that were. The End is inevitable. Live a billion years, watch the world be unmade around you, and still it arrives, as inevitable as before.”

“Our methods prove that it need not be such.”

Another snort. “Liar.”

She doesn’t need sight to know that Toronua is smiling.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I simply know better. Perhaps I understand the great enemy better than you.”

“It’s not an enemy. It’s not hateful, it’s not alien, it just… it is. It’s going to be now, or it won’t- there’s nothing else. The End doesn’t care. It will be, and nothing else about it really even exists, I think. So I’m going to make it a good End.”

“And I suppose-”

“Better than millenia alone, trapped with a fear that can only ever get closer.”

Silence falls between the corpses.

Only when a distant fungal garden finally succumbs to the… events happening within it, crashing into the building beneath it rather noisily, does Raika shift again, placing animation back into her corpse-form. 

“Well. This has been nice, but I think I need to go take care of that.”

“Perhaps that would be for the best. I do believe that at least your fellow clergy would be put more at ease where you to continue your experiments elsewhere.”

Raika snorts, shaking her head in a show of humor even as her attention drifts back and forth between the plans she’s working on and this conversation.

She couldn’t have won the fight outright. Even with more Death, which is a crutch in and of itself. 

The Gun made of Pain. Her Transcendental Arts. Arrays. Allies. The Gu, as a trump card only at the moment. Her Deaths.

She needs more synergy. More tools. More to work with. More impact. More efficiency.

She gets to her feet, shifting onto the Centicroc’s back as he rises to launch himself- and Bishop Toruna politely tabs a clawed finger against her own wrist, the sound like a nail on old cordwood.

“You’ll fail. No End is truly good, little sister. It’s just an End.”

Raika pauses. Considers. Touches the item hanging around the neck, feels at the preparations she’s been working on. Wonders if it’ll be enough.

Then she shrugs.

“Maybe. Better than nothing at all, though.”

She leaves the Bishop behind her, amidst the city she’s crippled.