Godclads

Chapter 7-2 Honesty

"The Column contacted me. It seems you have not been entirely truthful, Walton.

What audacity, to steal from the Guilds, then from the Column itself.

All to ensure that your... creature is made greater than its meager sum.

I am not beyond my means, old friend. You forget yourself. I was once of the Tiers too. Long before my mistake. Long before my exile. Did you truly think you could hide what you have done from me? Or mask your wants beneath the objectives of the Column?

I must confess, I am no daughter of deceit like some of my sisters. My vice is born of purity: I simply want to feed the latent joy in the hearts of others.

But you know this. If not for the fact they took my joy and exiled me to this place, I would not be so easily bent to your designs, would I?

Dishonesty wounds me so. And you, Walton--Strix--seem to have been lying to me.

Our benefactors contacted me the other day. And I also spoke to your monster. You are playing a dangerous game--a parasite drinking from the veins of a hidden rebellion.

I trust that you understand what is coming for you. Zein will never forgive you for this. That Frame should have never been burned into the ghoul; you spoiled good poetry. That was for the Old Woman to take, to feed her spite, to serve as an insult toward her daughter, and provoke further folly from Highflame.

I respect this. But you know that this will cost you. Brutally. Perhaps she will offer mercy for all that you have provided. But she will exact pain from you.

But do it still you must, I suppose. Perhaps you think she will pity you. Come to see your transgression as symmetry to hers, that you are two beings of shared pain.

To see you two at such odds.

How displeased Jaus must be.

There she is, trying to avenge a long-dead lover and a dream that was never to be, seeking the death of her own flesh and blood.

And there you are, seeking vengeance for a nation long dead, using a living instrument that you've grown to see as a son.

Let me continue with my honesty, impolite though it might be.

Pitiful.

I find both of you pitiful.

I find the fact that I need the Ninth Column to make even my elder sister's trespass against me pitiful.

All of us are pitiful.

All except the creature. The ghoul. By Jaus, what have you done with it? With him?

He is beautifully at war with himself. His stalemate is uncanny; I cannot help but find myself interested. No other moves and thinks as he does. His wardwork, a reflection of yours.

Tell me, did you remake him? Change his ontology or biology? Or did you merely tease out the full potential dormant in the design of a half-finished weapon created by your former companions?"

No matter. They will learn what you have done soon enough. Too late for them, I suppose. They will have to make do with your ghoul. But such is what you wanted, is it not? The fact that their precious weapon is now bound to someone only you can influence.

Hah. We play games within games. Players and pawns both.

But the ghoul means more to you than that. Does he not?"

-An instance of "Green River" communicating with "Walton", Ninth Column

7-2

Honesty

Avo had expected silence to be the order of things as he found his seat.

In the dip leading down from steps around the entertainment system, they each found their place, Draus and he struggling to create ample space between one another.

Across from them, Kae's eyes darted between Green River and her tea, her expression stiff with bottled anxiety. The Sang, contrarily, sat supping her steeped tea without strain. Coiled across her neck, the fox grinned at Avo, the glint in its eyes like dying embers, shifting from hue to hue.

"I must start with a confession," Green River said, voice coming clear as if a blade oiled by tea, "I did not trust you." Her words were directed at Avo. Only Avo. She regarded Draus no more than a momentary glance. "Not enough to engage with you with the honesty befitting a host to her guest. For that, I apologize."

Avo bit back a growl. Draus sighed. Green River spat words like bricks and laid labyrinths of confusion in her wake. This time felt no different.

"River," Draus said, her voice taut with weariness as well, "look, the Ninth Column business? That shit? If you're gonna take us round and round down the spiral of fancy nothings, let's just have tea instead. Enjoy the silence. Stare at the fishes on the ceiling."

A flash of offense crossed over Green River's face. The fox whined. "You think so lowly of me, captain."

"Got nothin' to do with low, got everything to do with you speakin' a whole damn lot and ultimately sayin' nothin'." Draus threw back her tea like she was taking a shot. "Listen, I don't doubt you'll be sellin' us to no Guild or two-bit Syndicate, but we know each other. Your life in the past? I know that shit don't go away so easy, so I never dug further than you asked me to. Too much trouble, not much point. And frankly, up till now, we've kept business between us nice and tidy."

"Ah," Green River replied. "But it cannot be so this time." Again, she looked upon Avo. "Your father. He has not contacted you at all since your... ignition, has he?"

His reply came as a terse silence. He despised her neck. The look of it. The joinery between nu-fox and skin. Muted beneath a flow of suppressive thoughts, his beast was braying for him to do something unspeakably violent. There wasn't the need. He was tempted by the annoyance she inspired alone.

He had not touched his tea yet. He probably wasn't going to at all.

Sighing like a mother faced with an unruly child, Green River tilted her head and spoke to Kae. "Is he always this taciturn?"

It took Kae a second to register the question. "N-no. I thi--think it... uh... just might be that he does--doesn't like you."

"Oh," Green River said, humming a low note. It sounded something between a laugh and a sound of surprise. "I suppose I can engender that effect in some."

"Tired," Avo said. The Sang turned to him, her lips curving up in a smile, glad to finally be addressed. "You prevaricate. Hide details. Push. Pull. Try to get me to respond. Playing with me."

"Yes." Green River leaned back into her chair. "I deny this not. I was playing with you. For I wanted to see if anything would slip from you. As spoken, I did not trust you. I feared you knew more--was offered more--knowledge than you should have by your father. That you were being used against me somehow. But now, things have become clearer to me."

She leaned in, the eyes on her human face more predatory than her fox. "The Column is quite upset with your father, in fact. For someone so dead, he seems to be ever so competent at earning the ire of many of his so-called allies. And you, unfortunately, have been cast onto the board of this great game in place of another. That Frame was never meant to be yours. But I suppose you knew this, in your heart of hearts. And so..."

She made a gesture, her fingers twirling into an operatic hand sign as if spurring Avo toward his own conclusion.

One that he didn't want to lend words to.

"Walton got me the Frame?" Avo asked

Green River's mouth flattened into an inscrutable smile. "He did much worse than that. From what the Column has offered as fact, he betrayed his cell to the Guilds, burning their identities and positions. He used their lives as flares to draw away the behemoths. Just long enough to bind the cybernetics of divinity into an impure vessel. An impure vessel he thought lost to him after the Ninth Column attempted to... reseize their missing package."

She pushed the locus forward.

"You will ask for proof. I will leave this here. Examine it now. Later. When you so choose. You will come and see that I am not lying. The ghosts within hold contents of memory. Of your interrogation at the hands of a Ninth Column cell. And subsequent disposal over the Maw. You will also come and find that another of your suspicions was correct. Your father did have a backdoor into your mind. The memories of a subversive session are hidden there. Doubtlessly made using another one of the Strix's encoded memories." She paused. "Something he did not share with the Column. Hence our mutual distrust. I knew you were Walton's instrument. I just was unsure how much of one..."

At Green River's provocations, Avo gave away nothing. Confusion ruled the realm of his thoughts more than any other emotion. His father was still active. Such was how it sounded. But how. He watched the man die. Settled the last rites and affairs of the man himself. But even if such were true, why did Walton want this? Just to hurt the Guilds?

Then, through the chasm of his roiling mind boomed the voice of another. From within, Avo heard his blood rumble and speak.

"THIS MORTAL KNOWS NOT HER PLACE!" An outline of flowing red spread across Green River's form. He could tear all the flowing life essence from her with but a touch; fuse her ichor solid; make sculptures within the softness of her insides.

Avo's Sangeist--his Heaven of Blood--whispered from the depths of his Soul. Its desires were chained to his, its powers, still, his to command. Yet, he could ignore the growing consciousness in the Heaven no longer.

Was it aware of him, as he was of it?

His thoughts then remained unanswered. The voice faded. The presence of his Heaven stayed.

Draus was right. He needed to talk with Kae after this was done.

Green River shrugged. "Nonetheless, it seems that more than pawn in this wayward game of ours, your father has sought to ensure your position as a wildcard. Doubtless, the Column would prefer it otherwise, but with the Frame burned into your being... I suppose their hand is forced, and they must accept you as an essential asset for now, just as he so hoped."

"Have you seen him?" Avo asked. "He spoke to you?"

"Your father?" Green River said. A new expression poured across her face as she tilted her head, examining him. "How little you must know of his true nature to ask such a question?"

Avo growled. But before he could speak, Draus cut in first.

"River," Draus said. "Answers. Give... fuckin' answers. He ain't the only one tired of cryptic bullshit. I'm at my end as well. So you start tellin' us just what the hells is goin' on, who's doin' what, and everythin' else that pertains to any pertaining."

Heeding the Regular's words, the Sang plucked a pot filled with tea and refilled her cup. "Which beginning should I start at? The one that matters most to you? To the Column? To our Agnos? Or the ghoul made godling?"

"I don't know," Draus said, shaking her head, "the Column. They keep popping into this mess and so far, I ain't got no understandin' of what they're for or what they're about."

Green River smiled. "Then their Heaven remains a step ahead." She took a drink. And then set about refilling Draus' cup as well. "Theirs is a sordid business. Once to ensure the Guilds remained balanced. Policed internally. Checked by a hidden force enforcing unseen guardrails."

"So," Draus said. "They're like Incubi-Paladins?"

"Hardly," Green River said. "Paladins have no power over the Guilds themselves. You ask why no one has discovered Ninth Column. Because they are not an institution, but a collective for a common interest. Cells within cells. People manipulated to serve a plot of a greater design, playing to the whims of a single individual.

Draus sighed. "Let me guess. Jaus is alive? Pullin' our strings from the Nether?"

Green River's placid smile turned into a grin. "The wrong member of the couple. Zein Thousandhand. And he," she pointed at Avo, "has something that belongs to the Old Woman. Something she stole to spite her own daughter."

At the mention of Zein Thousandhand's name, a heavy silence settled upon the room.

"Ah, fuck," Draus muttered.

Avo understood. The sudden pallor growing over Kae's face showed that she was well aware of the implications as well.

Zein O'yaje. Zein Thousandhand. Zein, the Blade of Recursion. Zein, the Last Champion of the Ori. Zein, the Godslayer.

Zein, lover of Jaus Avandaer; mother to Veylis Avandaer, current High Seraph of Highflame.

The strangest thing about Zein was, that much like Walton, she was supposed to be dead. Dead alongside Jaus. Dead like him at the hands of her daughter, another casualty at the Betrayal of Ao.

The streams were banned. The vicarities were ordered to be scrubbed from the Nether. Few recordings remained of the Conference of Ao. Much the same could be said for the city itself.

All that the Guilds agreed on in the aftermath was that there was a betrayal. But as for who betrayed whom? Such a question remains unanswered even till the present.

All people truly knew about the incident was that, by the end of the affair, Jaus Avandaer was dead at the hands of his own daughter, that the Guilds he struggled so hard to keep at peace were shattered into another bout of war, and that his first wife had drawn blade against her flesh and blood.

And for the first time in her life, found her skills wanting against another.

"Ain't she supposed to be... dead?" Draus asked.

"Perhaps," Green River replied. "But as our ghoul can attest, the grip of death is slacker on some. Or it might be a smokescreen, and someone else is invoking her presence as a shield for their operations. It matters not. 'Zein' will want to see you, Avo. See what's become of her prize."

"Extract from me?"

Green River nodded. "Of course. It is what I would do. You are... novel, amongst your kind. But you are no trained Godclad. The power you wield does not belong to you--"

"No." Avo cut her off. He poured his tea onto the table. "Wrong."

The Sang's mouth opened and closed. "I am sorry?"

"Belong," Avo said. "No such thing as 'belong.' I have it. Won't surrender it. They can have it by my death. Only my death. As it goes."

"Ah," Green River said, comprehending his interruption. "I understand. It is hard to surrender choice when you have it, is it not." Her lip twitched, moving the smallest of inches in the briefest of seconds. Her mind spun with the same acceleration as Draus' when she was enraged. "To lose a Frame is... like having color carved from your comprehension. I cannot fault your desire to keep your power."

With a wave of her hand, the locus came alight beneath her fingers. Ghosts rose into the air, altering themselves to become phantoms. "Still, as things remain, the Column has not stripped you of the Mirrorhead operation. Which means they see use in you. A limited trust, even after what your father has done." She looked at Draus. "Or former allegiances."

"Operation," Draus said, eyes narrowing. "What's their want with Jhred Greatling?"

Green River smiled. "To see him ignite hostilities between Stormtree and Highflame again, of course. War needs a reason, does it not?"