Godclads

Chapter 7-4 The Deep Bazaar

“I should have carved the last memories of your mother from your mind. That was my mistake. Shaming us was yours.”

-Uthred Greatling to his eldest son, Jhred Greatling

7-4

The Deep Bazaar

Trust came hard to a Necro. It was harder still when the person hosting the lobby was enamored with withholding information and playing games. Only a fool dove into waters unfamiliar without protection, but more foolish still was offering an unprotected locus, bereft of any and all things regardable as wards or labyrinths.

He spent time scrying into the internals, prodding and pressing the outside to see how the ghosts would react. Mostly, they responded to his ghosts with supplicative acceptance, made only to answer.

Across the table, Green River was beginning to frown into her tea. “Is this truly necessary? I had better means to trap you. The practice of ghosts is not of my discipline. I would have sought to bind you by means of flesh instead.”

Avo shot her a glare and worked at half his normal pace in response to that. She wasted countless minutes spraying flowery rubble from her lips but found impatience an easy companion upon seeing him commit to basic due diligence? Life must’ve been kind to Green River before her tumble down into the Warrens.

In a lot of ways, it still was.

Half an hour passed before he found himself certain that the locus was safe. Either that, or he was facing a construct that far surpassed his skill caliber to conceptualize.

“It’s safe,” he said, mostly to Draus.

“Nova,” she said. “Gonna take a dip?”

Avo stared at Green River. “You. Go first.”

The Sang sighed. The fox yawned its pearlescent teeth like mirrored stilettos, reflecting the dancing bloom of neon along gleaming needles. “Very well. If such an act will allay your distrust, then may my service ablate your distrust.”

She could have just nodded and done it, but it seemed she had to add a flair of speech to each action she undertook.

It made her reek of politics. Which was perhaps who she was in her life amidst the Tiers. And doubtless what had her cast down from those heights.

Avo had never eaten a politician before.

A coil of phantasmal sequences extended forth, interconnected memories spewing out akin to the lengths of a chain. The link was lowered more than cast into the locus, and it looked as if Green River was fishing rather than bridging her mind.

Ghosts painted mem-data across Avo’s cog-feed. Nothing anomalous greeted him. Stable were the functions of the Sang’s thoughtstuff.

Part of him was disappointed. He had wished this all to be an obvious trap if only to be done with Green River. Nulling her mind and drinking her Essence might spark a violent response from the Column, but the relief of not hearing another lecture would have been worth it.

“Safe and secure,” Green River said. “As you can see. Lest you believe me capable of overcoming you in your preferred environment. And subduing you with such skill that I can still survive the reprisal from Jelene.”

“Always like to make yourself sound like a flat,” Draus said. “Ain’t so. Know you better than that.”

The fox squeaked with laughter at the Regular, blinking demurely as it folded along Green River’s neck. “Ah. But I am the fox in this metaphor. A predator still, but what is a fox before a tig–”

“Going to eat fox,” Avo interrupted, a growl working its way out of his throat. “Going to eat tiger. Going to eat metaphors. Going to eat your mind and make new phantasmic from your ghost. Maybe one that will help me get to the point when I’m talking. No more small talk. I’ll dive.”

+Draus,+ he said, a packaged thought injecting over across the session, +don’t link. Monitor through our sync. Be outside. Better for us. Easier for you to respond.+

Draus refilled her cup but didn’t drink. +Don’t null her on the inside. Ain’t pleased with things myself but…+

A debt was owed. The weight on her mind was familiar. And a Regular likely loathed to give words to that which incurred discomfort upon them.

Green River’s lips drew flat in a hidden grin. “I apologize if my metaphors offended you.”

His Metamind flashed as his Ghostjack came afire through the thin veil between realities. “Apologize by speaking less.”

If she entered the locus like a fisher, he stabbed his mind through the exterior like a spear. His cog-feed flickered as he sank deeper into the localized Nether. A lobby, much like a demiplane, was a place within a place. The pseudo-environment began connecting with him as a skein of ghosts tightened and fused.

INITIALIZING META-DIVE

A bright, featureless sky loomed over him as he found himself given form in a ringed courtyard. A shadow weighed on his presence; ahead along a path paved from a frozen river of ghosts mid-writhe were the gaping jaws of an open gateway to a looming tower of glass.

Looking around, familiar constructs greeted him. The flowers and greenery generated around him in a ring were replicas of one another. He had seen their like in countless public lobbies and individual palaces. Free-use mem-data. Spared one the indignity of being hunted by Guilder Exorcists for pirating intellectual property licenses.

Little work had been put into instilling this lobby with some unique characteristics. The semblance of matter was only provided to give the laity comprehensible grounding to traverse between phantasmics; they were little more than guardrails and security blankets to Avo.

Given time, he could have bent the ghosts here to his needs; the task was trivial in comparison to impediments created within the ruins of Lucille’s mind.

“Sparse, you might say. I would agree.” Green River loaded in behind him in the form of an eight-feet long fox with the face of a human grafted atop its skull. The inversion of her metaphysical design here likely meant something deep and significant, but if she was going to start talking about it in detail, Draus was going to be most disappointed with the sudden and unfortunate nulling of the Sang.

She looked him up and down. The thin sheet of flesh that was her humanity frowned. “No avatar from you? Just loose wisps of ghosts?”

“Wasteful,” Avo replied.

Mental avatars were just a habit he never picked up. Theatre was helpful if you were trying to build a reputation, like playing the role of a Necro more than being one. Extravagant avatars took cog-cap. Cog-cap better left toward buffering the needs of other tasks. Cog-cap that, when expended, saw one nulled as their wards overloaded, laying bare the suppleness of their palace to be sacked by ghosts shaped to slavering purpose.

Here he was different from Walton. His father had clung to the image of the Strix. But rather than using it to further his own legend or mystery, it was like he was complimenting the creature. Enamored with its shape or philosophy.

Comparatively, with lesser skill and no interest in the symbolic, Avo defaulted to efficiency and pragmatism. Avatars were like masks for him. He would wear them if they were needed. Costume himself to swim beneath the waves of a dream.

Right then, however, he paused, details flickering into his cog-feed as he studied the tower. Beyond the gate a merging junction of memories played like clashing holovids, their patterns cycling over and over.

The fact that it was an Auto-Seance running an active session was clear. The fact he recognized some symbols flashing within the gulf told him enough of where it led.

An infinity symbol comprised of birds with wings crafted from a meld of melted human fingers. Fingers that rained down like arrows, drawing constellations and coordinates that eventually fused into a lock at the center of an eye.

The locked gaze. The missing sight. Avo had first seen that as a mere ghoulling, scant months into his tutelage under Walton. Years passed further until his father deemed him ready to follow into its depths.

Across the vastness that was New Vultun, perhaps no environment was as secretive nor well hidden as that which was the Deep Bazaar: the only true free market of New Vultun; where Necros, Squires, and Fallwalkers mingled for product or prize beyond the ever-present glare of the city’s Exorcists.

It made sense for the Column–for anyone not of the Guilds–to store their knowledge in such a place. Most Guild-owned memories were attached with protective mem-locks. Copying knowledge over wholesale made one easy to track, and easy to kill.

But should the information be stored in a decentralized database–an archive hosted across a fluid-design set of servers–something close to evasion could be narrowly achieved.

With its existence an affront to the city’s masters, the Deep Bazaar held memory editing in high practice. Only a few arbiters held the nature of its dungeon-like depths. Even veteran Necros that dared dive deeper than most greeted it as guests, parting with jobs, products, or in defeat while all other memories of their time spent within remained behind, stripped from their minds, willing or not.

It took a special kind of effort to ensure the existence of a black market in a city like New Vultun. One cannot avoid the gaze of the panopticon at all times, but what does being seen matter if one’s presence slips across the mind of the watcher like oil?

The sight of such a session at play was surprising enough. The fact that Green River was a gatekeeper to such a place, even more so.

“You had the mem-data stored in the Deep Bazaar?” Avo asked. The voices of his ghosts were conjoined with incredulity. “You are trusted with a gateway?”

The fox and human laughed, their voices twisted in a discordant noise that made his ghosts shiver. “Nothing so intimate. I only claim what was offered by the Column. They prepared the locus. I am but the messenger.”

“Getting very tired of you leaving details out.”

She drew even closer. Her voice fell, the lyrical lint dying in favor of something flat and honest. “I am being watched, the same as you. But unlike you, they have me on tighter chains. And unlike you, some truths will see me unmade if spoken directly.”

In a bid for his goodwill, her Metamind rippled and a phantasmic arose past the murk of her flowing wards. A chain ran from inside her. A chain connected to her mind. A chain with multiple traumas linked to it.

A null switch was built into her mind.

“Ninth Column?” Avo asked.

Back in the real, he heard her exhale. “Among others. Chains from chains, Avo. All who fall to these depths from on high are made slaves in one way or another. Perhaps you should understand this better than most.”

At her words, something clicked in his mind. “Walton. He offered to dive into your mind. Break you from the null switch.”

Her following silence might as well have been a roar of affirmation.

“Maybe–” Avo began.

“Dare you pit your skill against that of the Silvers?” Green River asked.

No. No, he wasn’t near ready to dive against Ori-Thaum yet. “Fool to give your mind to them,” Avo said.

“Fool to think I had a choice,” Green River bit back. “The Column has offered me the same arrangement in his stead. I speak truth to you now that I will betray his presence if he contacts me again.”

Avo frowned. The words were not a provocation. A warning. With him as a conduit to his father. Seemed that she was protecting him yet in her own fashion.

Perhaps there was history between them as well. A dull ache flared inside Avo. A note of mistrust. He didn’t know his father nearly as well as he thought. More than that, the very act of thinking about how little he knew filled him with paranoia.

And if his father was truly one of the Low Masters as River said…

He thought no more of it. To go further risked undoing his very sense of self. He needed to be whole for now.

And soon, hunt down his father on his own terms.

“Onward, then,” Green River said. “You speak my willingness to waste time, yet here you are, prodding at my shame. How pointlessly savage of you, ghoul.”

Upon the path, she trod. Each step cast waves across the phantasmal cobblestones below. Avo trailed behind her, his focus locked on the phantasmic ahead.

There were no traps lining its exterior. He knew this. And if there was something that could threaten him beyond, it would either need to crack his wards or slip into his mind in some manner.

Both were presently unlikely. The mass of ghosts was insufficient to overwhelm him in a single instant. And he was projecting himself into the depths of this locus, pocketing himself as an extension much like his Whisper was in the real.

A one-way dive.

+Draus,+ Avo said, his thoughts threading across to the Regular, +You see this?+

+Yeah,+ Draus said. No surprise came from her. She too was familiar with its confines. +Been there a few times. Can’t quite remember the shit that runs between goin’ in and comin’ out though.+ A pause followed. +You’re a pretty gleam Necro but–+

+Can’t be ambushed there,+ Avo said, cutting her off. He knew her concerns, but she didn’t see the Nether as he did. Nothing ghost-heavy was registering across the tower’s session, and not even Ori-Thaum had succeeded in breaching the defenses of the Bazaar for long. +Kill me if there is. No sense in risking a fight. Getting nulled. Resurrection will bring me back. Avoid the problem entirely.+

An intrusive thought bled over the link. Avo frowned. +Draus. Are you thinking of using me as target practice?+

A beat followed. +I mean, I was considerin’ it. It’ll be good for the both of us–+

If Avo was still wearing his flesh, his eyes would have been narrowed. He prepared a thought, ready to reject her desire to make a corpse of him repeatedly.

And stopped to actually think about what was offered.

+Yes,+ Avo said. +Yes. We should do that.+

His response made Draus’ mind jolt to a halt. +Well, I expected needin’ to do a hell of a lot more convincin’ than that.+

+Can test Frame more. Fix bad habits. Learn drills. Improve.+ The thought might have struck her on a whim, but his current resurrective capabilities offered new opportunities for him to learn what could or couldn’t work before active combat. Something he should probably lean into more.

As the gateway into the Bazaar approached and the symbol of the locked gaze flashed over him again, Avo pushed those considerations to the back of his mind. +They will clean out your memories later too. Bazaar will notice your presence. They have better Necros than–+

+Yeah, yeah. Ain’t my first time neither, I know the drill.+

+Give the gun to Kae while that happens?+ Avo suggested. +Have her watch us?+

A dull note of disbelief flowed from Draus. +How about I use a drone instead.+

That was probably wiser. A drone didn’t forget that they were holding a gun every third second, after all.

Halted beneath the sequences of ghosts manifesting the session, Green River lifted her head and stared at Avo using her human eyes, face pointed upside down. She said nothing, choosing only to smile.

It was not in a ghoul’s nature to be unnerved or shaken, but still, she managed to test his disquiet.

They stepped through. And upon tasting the presence of foreign minds, the gate to the session responded, the path ahead swirling into something between a whirlpool and tunnel into the Deep Nether.

Avo had long thought the term “deep” was incorrect. It was less that it was hidden somewhere unreachable, and more that the myriad of minds hosting the lobbies for the Deep Bazaar were scattered far and wide, with a good mass of supporting infrastructure nesting in the minds’ of the FATELESS or unwary.

Doubtless that Chambers was also a partial host.

With the modularity of the Bazaar, what matter is a lost cell or fragment of the whole? They only brushed and remembered one another in fleeting sessions, after all, and should one be claimed in an assault, all it took was the cessation and resequencing of other sessions to reshuffle everything back to obscurity.

The only miracle at work here was how the Bazaar managed to have so many loyal to it, and how the cells could be run to such cohesion with so loose a structure.

For moments they waited, the presence of their minds a doorbell being rung. Through the folds of the whirlpool slipped a Specter. A Necro was surveying them now, operating under the employ of the Bazaar.

Like teeth connected to chains of memories, the Specters drowned both Green River and Avo with the waters of their perception.

“Prepare for marking,” the Necro said, voice a dull drone to avoid being tracked. “Standby.”

Avo did as the Necro said. No marking. No entry. A simple deal.

Through his cog-feed, he watched as the whirlpool sprayed a mist of rain inward, the waters basking him with droplets of winged apes. Around the borders of his avatar, the markers danced, a belt drawn across the accretion of his being. Through his visual display, mem-data extended from every mote-sized ape, showing their half-lives toward dissolution.

In an hour, they would be no more. For now, however, they clung to his imps, surfing the empty air using his currencies as scintillating skateboards. Beside him, Green River was enwreathed much in the same way.

“Do you understand that you forfeit all rights to your memories upon entering the Bazaar?” The Necro asked.

“Of course,” Green River said.

The Specter turned its attention to Avo.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Do you understand that all acts of aggression or open subterfuge will have you marked for nulling should you trespass against the hosts or patrons in the Bazaar?”

They affirmed this as well.

“Good,” the Necro said. “The path is open. Archive session H-29889 active. Keep your traumas dormant. Keep your links closed. Keep your Ghostjack inactive. Prepare for transition.”

Behind, the pathway to the locus narrowed, and like a counterweight, the way ahead parted into a narrow chasm. Shuttled through by the collapsing waves, they arrived within a private study molded from the opulence only seen in ancient Sang soaps.

Gold pillars with jade dragon enamel coated over the curves greeted him. Ahead, a frozen staircase led up to a radiant dais holding a long table. Animated fishes painted in the sang-style floated and swam around him, picking at his ghost, checking him to the accompaniment of rattling abacuses.

On a wickedly sharp throne made from thorn-tipped branches sat a headless nine-tailed fox. Its phantasmal fur burned like an undying candle, and a layer of wards powered by sorrow, pain, and desecration lined its exterior with scale-like armor.

A sense of familiarity ignited within Avo as he laid eyes on the broker. A flowing emanation of ghosts washed forth basking all in a single, unmistakable taste.

The taste of citrus.

Green River froze, her fox head snapping to glare at the broker while her human face began laughing softly. “What delicious deception. How far does your reach run, Strix? To subvert the very gifts offered to me by the Column itself.” Her laughter rose to a giggle. “The audacity. What audacity.”

The nine-tailed creature spoke nothing to Green River. Instead, it gave its attention to Avo. “Hello again, Avo. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you in the dark for so long. I believe you might have some questions right about now.”