Mage Tank-Chapter 236: System Addendum #8 pt 1

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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: [Supreme General Diathemon Tyrianaeonis]

ADDENDUM NOTE: Imperative #1 - The System shall enable Delvers to ascend through the best means available.

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General Diathemon looked over the expansive field where a legion of his soldiers ran mobility drills. The Elder Lich studied their movements, pleased at the superhuman displays of speed and agility. He brought up a dark slate and peered at a readout of the nearest undead’s preserved musculature.

There was decay, of course, and significant mass had been lost to desiccation and dehydration, but the overall structure was adequate. There was a satisfactory system of mana veins capable of interfacing with the man’s mana matrix, granting him the greater portion of the power he’d earned in life. The shambling gait that had plagued the myriad undead created by his peers was absent, although some fine motor control had been lost.

Diathemon was convinced that was unavoidable, however. A Delver’s biology became redundant at a certain point, but the organic structures still provided a valuable medium for the animas. Simple movements could be managed through traditional caloric intake and expenditure, and the neurochemical processes of the brain were extraordinarily difficult to emulate entirely with spiritual constructs. Still, he was satisfied with his work.

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The core volunteers comprising the majority of his army had only seen a twenty percent degradation in motor capabilities, but it was more than made up for. After all, how many of these men and women could have run drills on the surface of the moon while alive? Without any specialized equipment, that is.

Soldiers who didn’t breathe, didn’t bleed, ignored poison and cold, never felt fear, and could still wield the magicks they knew in life. Surely that was worth a bit of sloppy handwriting and the occasional bad footwork.

The dark, armored forms rattled their way across the expanse of metallic beads that covered the thousand-mile-diameter housing for System Core 2. A pair of dimensionalists hovered overhead, making minor tweaks to the mana array that maintained a one to one match with the gravity of the planet overhead. The Lich watched their work, making mental notes for ways he could advise them on their spellcraft, then allowed his eyes to wander up to the roiling storms that served as their backdrop.

The dark half of the world. He mused on the greatest mistake of the generation before him, preparing himself for the fools he would assuredly meet in this one. Striking such a wound upon the world was like trying to end an infection in one’s arm by thrusting it into a bonfire. It was horribly effective, assuming the infection hadn’t spread and one wished to experience the most painful amputation possible. Of course, such an injury presented its own complications; ones that might be worse than the infection itself.

Death, for example.

That generation also hadn’t been treating an infection–although they’d thought they were–but the avatars were more like an immortal plague than an infection. They weren’t localized to an individual but dispersed in the environment. They tore through populations, leaving scores of dead in their wake. There was no cure, only prevention, and by the time disease had struck, it was too late.

Overall, Diathemon and his disciples all agreed that leaving half the planet uninhabitable had been a bad move. Further, the Elder Lich had firmly believed that most people understood that leaving half the planet uninhabitable had been a bad move. He’d figured that sane individuals realized taking potentially planet-killing actions was a bad move all around. He’d been naive to hold that belief.

While the generation before him had scorched half the planet, his own generation had only managed to drop a moon on it. Most of the land mass was still inhabitable, so as far as apocalypses went, it was a poor showing. Not that an apocalypse had been the goal, but it had been well within the realm of possibilities.

At least they’d saved most of the people they left behind from a slow, humiliating death at the hands of the remaining avatars. That was more like killing a plague victim so they didn’t have to suffer, without asking them first, or their families, or any medical professionals with informed opinions. They’d all be killed as well, so what did it matter?

It had taken a conclave of less than a hundred people to write that tragedy, all of whom ascended after their display of mercy. The System enabled miracles as much as it enabled atrocities. Those who’d done it believed the avatars to be contained, believed the System would be destroyed by their actions, and believed that they would ensure future generations could live without the world inevitably ending. It had been an ‘acceptable risk’. He wondered what nonsense this generation would believe to be an acceptable risk.

Diathemon sighed needlessly, embracing the mortal affectation to ease his mind. He placed a mental checkmark next to the action on the list of such habits that he kept, reminding himself of the methods he’d developed to preserve his humanity. It was easy to ignore them, as it was easy to ignore all things since untethering his soul. He ran through the list once again, ensuring he hadn’t ignored any of his precautions for too long.

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He had too much left to accomplish to risk becoming a husk like those he’d watched his closest friends become. Men and women who’d stare listlessly into the distance as time flowed around them like a stone in the riverbed. They might still be alive up there, on the other side of the planet, buried under a mile of rock and sea with their phylacteries untouched by time and their minds adrift for eternity.

The lich checked his internal clock–another habit–and peeled back from the viewport. He’d watched the practice for three hours, which he found to be a reasonable length of time, but he had no purpose in remaining a silent spectator. He cycled his mana through his body in a precise series of pulses. Twenty beats per minute, simulating a healthy heart. He could imagine the blood coursing through him, energizing and granting him the motivation to move, to do, to accomplish something, anything. The stillness of death crept back from his mind, and he swept down a hallway to meet with the enemy.

Avarice had a ‘surprise’ for him, one he must attend before the habitable surface of the planet came back into view.

Diathemon did not enjoy the kinds of surprises avatars were wont to lay upon him.

Regardless, the demon was owed its due for its part in preserving and then resurrecting his army. Thus far her demands had been reasonable. Keeping her company while she tortured her sibling was a cheap price, especially since he had time to kill and a minor case of undead-induced sociopathy.

The creature’s screams echoed down the hall as Diathemon walked, interspersed with manic cackles and despairing sobs. The emotions slid off of Diathemon, and he made no move to stimulate any empathetic response. For now, he would embrace the chill of undeath.

Diathemon entered the verdant chamber Avarice favored, floating to the ground and allowing his boots to clack across the gold and marble floors to announce his arrival. He took a wandering path through a grove of trees, quickly finding the gutted remnants of the multistory Deiphage Golem.

The golem’s barn-sized head sat on the ground like a decapitated goliath, the sphere that housed Hysteria set firmly between its jaws. Its body lay throughout the grounds of the city-sized arboretum, piles of mana-fueled robotics swarmed by humanoid insects.

Diathemon tsked internally whenever he saw Avarice’s pet slaves. At least his Delvers had volunteered for their transformation and servitude. Avarice bought lives as men bought manure for their fields.

Avarice slunk next to the golem’s head, the grasping shadows haunting bushes and coiling between tree roots. The dark and beautiful charade that served as her Icon stood amidst the twisted fingers, adjusting a series of parameters on a wall-sized slate.

The slate was an ancient thing, more advanced than the simple display Diathemon carried. It buzzed with colorful charts, projecting a three-dimensional display of Hysteria’s form, trapped within the sphere’s opaque confines. A cunning intelligence possessed it, speaking to Avarice in riddles only she understood, guiding her work as she made small changes to a hundred formulae lighting the air around her.

She adjusted a numeral, and Hysteria’s deformed face twisted in agony. The crack along the avatar’s breastbone shuddered. When it went still, Hysteria’s features swirled into a ferocious grin, and they laughed. It was the sound of madness, a keening wail of despair that sank into the lich’s dusty bones, despite his antipathy for the monstrous being.

“Lichie!” shouted Hysteria. The avatar couldn’t see outside of its containment. They always knew when Diathemon had arrived, regardless. “You know, I enjoy the company of another boney boy, but whenever you show up my sister has a habit of abusing me.”

Diathemon ignored the avatar and continued on his way toward Avarice.

“Hello? Dia? Are you mad I called you a boney boy?” asked Hysteria. “I know you hide them under skin and muscles and so on, but you’re all boney at heart! Come oooonnn, get into the bone zone over here! I could really use a hug!”

Whatever lessons Avarice expected Diathemon to glean from watching her sessions with Hysteria, he did not know. The lich was not an Ascender; he worked with the divine but had never himself touched upon the godly realms. What use could he be in trying to study an avatar’s wounds? He hadn’t even known they could be wounded. Not in any way that mattered, at least. The avatar’s manifested soul was an empty puzzle box, its contents unknowable to Diathemon.

“Greetings, Elder,” said Avarice.

Had she been anyone else, Diathemon would have read sarcasm into her address. She was far more ancient than he, but she simply sought to use the honorific he favored when speaking to others. There was a time when he was believed to be the oldest creature roaming the world. His civilization had been violently disabused of that notion a thousand years before he’d laid himself to rest.

“Avarice,” he said, nodding his head and signing his hands in the address of equals. If the avatar took offense, she didn’t show it. “What observations am I to make today?”

“Really?” shouted Hysteria, voice muffled by their prison. “She gets a hello and all I get is the room-temperature shoulder?”

Avarice’s masterwork construct made another minute adjustment to her formulas, but Hysteria did not react. A small smile spread across the Icon’s false lips.

“You have borne witness to my work, Elder,” she said. “Tell me, what do you think it is that I seek here?”

“I think,” Hysteria interjected, “that it’s an expression of your internal conflict over your desire to dominate your partner while feeling shame for expressing sexual interest in those who enjoy being a sub because you find them weak! It’s reductive, Avarice, subs are some of the strongest people around!”

Avarice adjusted a formula and Hysteria’s heckling gave way to uncomfortable moans.

Diathemon frowned, the expression hidden behind his mask. “I watch from the foot of a lightless mountain, Peeress. Whatever lies at your summit, I cannot see.”

“Then do not use your eyes.”