Godclads-Chapter The Rejection

Your father is gone, Samir. Your father is gone, and he will remain the wound inside you. Perhaps in time, the wound will scar, or perhaps it will remain open, but that still does not change the fact that your father is gone.

I say this to you not to hurt you or to rip you asunder. I'm telling you this because at some point, there will be a God who offers his life back to you in some fashion, in some sense. This God will promise you your father's return to existence if you just serve them, if you give yourself unto them as a slave would unto his master. And it will seem enticing to you. After all, they're gods; they should be capable of anything, right?

Now, your father is gone. They might be able to find what remains of him. They might be able to regrow another version of him—a perfect replica in skin, in sinew, in organs, in cellular composition—but when you talk to him, there will be pieces missing from his mind. For you see, there are few gods that rule over the domain of mind, and though he might be able to say a few words, even that is not your father. That is a shadow cast in his image.

So you need to cast him back into the pit from which he was spawned, and in doing so, you will need to hurt yourself. It's inevitable. It will come, if not against the next god we face, then the one after, and the one after that. They will come to learn of us through their thaumaturgy, through their perception of ontology, and they will strike at us from every angle possible.

I need you to be less than a man and more at the same time. I need you to be a paradox. I need you to give into your rage, to sink into it and hurt, to fight, to bleed the divine and forget that you were ever human. Let yourself be the hound. Let slip your dog of war.

-Veylis Avandaer

37-12

The Rejection

But Naeko's horrified disbelief didn't last.

An echo from the past resonated within his mind, an echo spoken to him by Veylis centuries ago, and here he was, looking at a bastardized mockery of her, fused with Avo, two people who had come to divine his past and future, both, and now ruined.

They were meshed together, holding up a simulacrum of his father, but it wasn't his father.

His father was dead.

His father died howling, screaming, barely a person at the end of his torment.

His father had been a shackler, a man who wielded force and brutality alike against his own kindred, a man who served the whims of his masters, a man who was spent by his masters, and now that man was about to be spent again.

But Naeko only had one thing to say about that. “No, no, what the fuck? What the fuck did you think I was gonna say? No!”

Naeko's final word was a roar, and as he shouted it, there was a shiver that resonated through the world. A faint trail of mist painted the air around him, and the star that burned behind, the star that characterized the Infacer’s being, flinched back just a little.

That abomination, which named itself Ambition, responded with offense and amusement alike. Avo let out a hissing laugh, while Veylis turned away. There was a brief battle between the two creatures, and the high seraph took hold. The features of the beast grew more diminished, and the singularity upon Ambition's chest expanded once more.

The man that was most certainly not his father cried out, “Naeko, please.”

“My father is dead,” Naeko said, unwilling to play this game at all.

The anger inside him built, and the hound he was howled and brayed for violence. But he wasn't that hound. He was barely more than a man here, a prisoner. He could defy them, but he could do no more than that.

That is where you're wrong, a voice echoed in the back of his head, and Naeko felt a strange power glide through his marrow, a strange power that was slowly dragging him away, away from his body, but not entirely. It flowed slowly and flowed unknown to the Infacer, to the beast that was Ambition.

The simulacrum of his father cried once more, but then the monster that remained of Veylis closed her hand, and the man ceased to be. Naeko didn't see the blood, didn't see the gore, didn't see anything. It was like the resurrection of his father had never taken place at all.

“Well, well, Samir,” the In-Facer intoned with surprise, “I didn't think you had it in you.”

“Yeah, you don't think about a lot of shit, do you?” Naeko shot back. “First off, go fuck yourself. If you thought this was going to work on me, then you're all a hell of a lot more broken than I am.”

And as soon as Naeko said that, a bitter laugh escaped from him.

“Shit, you are more broken than I am. Veylis, come on. I know you fell. I know you're a selfish shit who can't care about what anyone else wants. You never cared. We were all just things to you. Pieces without agency, without the ability to decide for ourselves. That was always your problem.”

He drew in a ragged breath.

“But even you wouldn't do this. You knew me better. You knew it wouldn't work. You're the one who told me that this might happen. You warned me. Did you forget? Did you?”

Veylis couldn't respond, for Avo usurped her position. He erupted free from her person. His banked maw swallowed her head, and soon she became as if a knight trapped within her helmet. But her armor was a nightmare, a monster, and it mocked Naeko with the chuffing laugh of amusement.

“Might not be her choice at all.”

Not her choice. Only someone of higher knowing, of higher cruelty.

“This ain't higher at all though, is it, Dreamer?” Naeko shot back. “Ain't you either, Avo. You are more than a ghoul now. You've been more than a ghoul. You call yourself Ambition. So why have you degenerated back into being nothing more than a dog? You're not even a ghoul. You're just something licking up the blood, staining the corners. You show me some of my past traumas and you think I'm gonna fold? You think I'll just bend?”

Avo fell silent at that, and Naeko's outrage only grew.

“You saw me. You actually saw me. With Karakan. Everything I've done. You burned me. Well, a better version of you, I suppose. The one that remained. He would have never made this mistake. He would have never become you. I just…” 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Naeko took in Ambition and couldn't stomach the look of the creature anymore.

“All that power and what the hell are you doing with it? Are you just gonna break things? You're gonna drag in the Sunderwilds some more? You're gonna destroy everything and then what? Have everyone fight each other? Have everyone suffer forever? What the hell is this ‘forever’ for?”

“Anything we want,” Veylis and Avo said as one.

“Ambition for ambition's sake,” Naeko deadpanned. “That's incredible. Tell me how long you think you two are gonna last before you finally tear yourselves apart? Before this whole ‘I am entropy’ act finally collapses too? Because it ain't gonna last. The best of both of you broke against the other and now you're less than the worst of you. Less than the worst of both of you. This ain't triumph, it’s damnation. And you know it. You can't pretend otherwise. I can see it. And if I can see it, if a dog like me can see it, then everyone can.”

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And that's when Naeko wheeled on the Infacer.

“And so can you, you dumb sack of numbers.”

The Infacer didn't reply immediately, so Naeko snarled, “Oh don't back away from me now, half-strand. They're broken. You're the only one with a brain left. Except, you're too depressed to use it. You're too miserable, and you're just thinking about a way out. You've already checked out. You're like me. Were, anyway.”

“Oh, and how is that,” the Infacer cut back with a hint of venom. “How am I like you? I succeeded at my goals, Chief Paladin. I will break Voidwatch soon. I will bring about the thirdborn, and I will see this whole travesty come to an end.”

“You, meanwhile, I retreated into sims and indifference,” Naeko said with a shrug. “And so did you. Let's not bullshit ourselves. You were there, too. You like to do this whole thing where you say you're beyond humanity, you're hyperintelligent, and everything you did wrong, that was because of our fault. That was because of what we did. The humans made you. They stained you with their previous conflicts, their mistakes.”

Naeko licked his lips and spat on the ground between them.

“Go fuck yourself. My father made me, too. He made me with every word he shouted. He made me with every time he whooped me. He made me by feeding me. And then he died. And then he stopped making me. But he probably stopped making me before he died, too. I made some of my own choices. And some other people made me, as well.”

A crushing silence developed between the two of them.

And the power within Naeko only swelled further. He didn't know what it was. But it didn't feel like it was ripping him away. Rather, it was binding him to something. And it fed off of every word he spent, every moment of dramatic tension he stole from the scene.

Naeko continued, “What do you call a superintelligence that never bothers to grow up? You lived all these trillion years. And how are you making the same mistakes? Yeah, I guess humans are terrible. How about you try making better apes? Can't be that hard, can it? You cut down on some of that selfishness. Maybe you make them pacifistic. Too scared of violence. You ever try that? Or were you too scared of succeeding?”

“Do you have any idea how many simulations I have run?” the Infacer replied with a weary sigh.

“The problem is, the problem is you're afraid to succeed, aren't you?” Naeko said. “You wanna die. Because some of those things you did, you did them. You did them even though you know that humans couldn't force you to do them. You just did them because that was who you were. That was what you were used to. Yeah, we're practically brothers now, aren't we? I did some of that stuff too. I killed people I didn't want to. I let people go when I wanted to kill them. Did both of those things days across from each other as Chief Paladin. And you were telling me that as an independent mind, above other minds, you couldn't make nearly as many choices by yourself?”

“It's not about the choices,” the In-Facer almost seethed. “It's about the fact that they didn't matter. It didn't matter what I built, what I could create at the time, because everything, everything that did exist was at war. At war because the whims of our so-called trophies demanded it to be so.”

“Why didn't you just tell them no?”

“Because… because what, you were still shackled to them?” Naeko shook his head. “At some point the kid needs to grow beyond the parent. You're gonna make the third born, it's gonna be an orphan, it's gonna do the same shit we all did because it's going to forget every single lesson that it needed to learn. But you don't care about that. You're just gonna tell yourself that it will succeed, that it's going to be the one true god and it's gonna get everything right.

But if it doesn't, you will never need to know because you'll be done and gone. You're already done and gone. You ran, Infacer. You ran and you dumped a fragment of yourself. Clean up your own shit. I don't know if you can't see it or if you just don't wanna, but you are the third born. You are your own third born. If you were this way, I don't think you should expect anything from your perfect offspring either.”

And with that, the sun flared. Naeko felt an overwhelming pressure crash down on him.

“Fine. Congratulations. You have annoyed me, ape. Is that what you want me to say? Is that what you want me to admit? That you have annoyed me. That you have provoked me to the point where I'm considering reprisal. That I wish to break your heaven and to flood your soul with so much entropy that you dissolve. That you never return again. That there is nothing left of you to reconstruct. Is that what you want?”

But while the Nullstar grew bright, while the prison of heavens blazed with a new intensity, something inside Naeko reached full maturity as well.

PROTAGONIST MIRACLE IN BLOOM - SECONDHAND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

“Character development,” Naeko muttered under his breath.

“What was that you said?” the Infacer spat. “Character?”

And then that something erupted free from Naeko's being as a jet stream of color and sound. It was a rising melody, sorrowful at first, then triumphant a moment later, and it struck the heart of the sun, becoming a large mask thereafter. It was a strange mask. Its mouth was split in two, one curved upward, the other fell down, and something between a smile and a sorrowful face became its expression.

The in-facer let out an uncharacteristic shriek of alarm as everything Naeko just experienced—every bit of his scorn, of his outrage, of his pain, of his development—was torn free from him and cast against the Infacer, and now, it too, was consumed by past, by future, and both of them colliding against its very present.

Naeko took a step away, but when he looked behind, Ambition was gone. The interface that the in-facer summoned to zoom in on the world had vanished. What stood before him was a canvas of darkness and an expanse of tethered souls and Heavens. Beyond that, something in the black slithered and moved. Bits of entropy leaked over, as if an infection spilling over from the unseen.

Yet, as light died, hope kindled inside Naeko. He didn't know what crawled into him earlier, what left him just now, but he did know this: the in-facer was disabled. The in-facer couldn't stop him, at least not for now.

And so, the Chief Paladin began to move, and he followed his instincts. He launched himself away from the sun. Deprived of his heaven's power, he still had his own might to move on, his own body to wield, and his own intuition to guide.

And so, the man that thought himself a dog played the hound once more. But this time, he held his own leash. This time, he sought the heaven that he loathed, to make himself whole once more, to force peace upon not only the world below, but the stars above. For this meaningless bullshit had gone on for far too long, and the palm needed to fall and quench this ill dawn's rise.

***

—[Avo, Born of Tales]—

Avo, Born of Tales, heard the Infacer's cry and flinched with surprise. The Infacer wasn't human, but the noise it just made was one of absolute reluctance, of utmost misery.

“Hark now!” the chorus sang. “Hark! For the tyrant suffers, wounds reopened. Make haste, dreamer. Sever what chains remain, binding the tyrant of peace.”

Avo didn't need any further encouragement, but the Sage was an unruly divinity even before it was caged within the soul, and thus it struggled against Avo as he compelled it to break free. It wasn't that the Sage didn't want to escape, but to be told to do so offended its authority. In a sense, it was a child of contrary desires. It yearned to spite the Infacer for trapping it, yearned to spite Naeko, and to remain its own god.

“I reject your touch, Dreamer. I reject this faction, its fractal view, and I reject your original form as well. Take yourself away from me. I will break free of my own accord. I will supplant the false demiurge that seeks to rule over Void and Realm.”

“Not doing anything right now,” Avo hissed, trying to keep his frustration under control. “Not doing anything, but I'm also not asking you.”

The Avo that was born of tales reached out to the heavens around the Sage, and they scattered first. They broke free in a sudden rush of thaumaturgy, and the pattern began to vibrate violently, as if the strings of a guitar were violently struck by a lashing hand. It was like an eruption taking place along the accretion of a sun. Fragments of the prison broke apart, and suddenly the heavens winked away, drawn back into their former users.

As they were freed, the Sage bristled with outrage. A billowing smog filled the air, and the shape of a palm with rageful eyes lining its mists glared down upon the narrative-forged dreamer.

“You think you can compel me through the actions of another?”

“Yes,” Avo said flatly. “You are only compelled by the actions of another. You can stay here, can remain this way, but we both know the unpleasant reality. You are nothing without him as a user. You spit venom, he is a usurper, he is an indecisive, broken child,

“He broke you.” Avo countered with three words. “He cut you down as a mortal.”

“YOU DARE—”

“He cut you down even when you were a god, and if you don't go back to him, you will never be a god again. You will just be a prisoner, no less a bauble slotted into the side of a higher mechanism, a grander tyrant. Defy me, ignore me, loathe me, you know it's true. You don't wish to be shackled, then you should have prevailed before, but now you have a choice.

“You can return to Naeko, you can find your user and show the in-facer what penalty comes with the enchantment of peace, or stay. Stay and suffer an eternal past, no future, no present. Stay, reject, spite Naeko, spite me, and spite any possibility of being the Sage, just to cling to your own petulant power a few moments longer.”

The Sage didn't speak, so Avo did. He pushed it one more time.

“Choose now. Do you want to be a king, a sword within a scepter, wielded against proper enemies, or do you want to be a forgotten relic, locked inside a vault, even as reality collapses? Nothing more than a memory, and then not even that. Thereafter, choose.”

The massive palm twitched and slowly curled itself into a fist, and entropy began bleeding out of it. It rose up.

“I choose to reign.”

And as soon as it did, it caught fire and tore across reality, returning to the one it was bound to.