CHAPTER 37-5 SPIRAL

Godclads

I bring my wife, Zein, to diplomatic occasions because she is my finest diplomatic tool. She and Naeko are my most effective instruments, for true diplomacy always carries a final, unspoken message: accept this handshake, or it will be forced upon you in steel.

My wife has killed more people than I could count in seven lifetimes. That history lends her immense power now, in peace, because she was so brutal in war. Is this a good thing? I cannot say. All I know is that her past ferocity makes her the most potent symbol of peace imaginable, for no one wishes to face the alternative.

Zein, if you are listening, I love you dearly for this.

Naeko is much the same—more controlled in some ways, yet more unpredictable in others. Their combined presence is the foundation of my strength.

I have done terrible things in my time. They call me Savior and Godbreaker, but they willfully ignore the darkness I have committed. I have murdered many, condemned cities, unleashed plagues, and broken dams. I have drowned tyrants and children alike, all for the higher ideal I believe in—for the dream.

Yet, my darkness pales before that of my wife and Mako. And so, they look to me. They cry out, "Savior!" because compared to the others, I am. I am what stands beside Zein's thousand-handed wrath. I am what I offer: a final hope.

The world has a choice. Me, or the glaive. Me, or Naeko's fury. Me, or war.

-Jaus Avandaer

37-5

Spiral

"You didn't need to burn her. You know this, yes?" Green River asked Avo the question, but he didn't respond immediately. Instead, he made the other Sang bow before the Green River in apology after they tried to subvert her mind.

"A thousand, thousand apologies, First Sister. No, Dowager," the Sang said, her head pressed against the ground. Her halo was ablaze, and her supplication was forced. Her bio-rig, a thing split between a spider and a tiger, was sprawled along the ground. Stripes of orange were mixed with the bristling hairs of a tarantula, and at the center of the rig, festooned in a cradle of quivering flesh, was the second sister.

Tears streamed down her face. Tears puddled on the ground, and under her breath there came sobs, sobs as their modified dragonfly transport shuttle drew closer to the base of the Silken Spiral.

"I warned you," Avo said casually. "I gave you a choice. I told you what my choice would be. I told you the consequences. You tried to break her mind. I said she was mine, mine to protect, my representative, my act of mercy." Avo let out a hissing laugh. "And now you learn, you learn as all humans do, directly, vividly, from experience. This will scar you. This will wound you. But, before I sank my fingers into your mind, before my claw pierced that brittle membrane you called sanity, you didn't learn, did you?"

"Ever the egoist, aren’t we, Avo," Green River chided. It was surprising how fast he was growing accustomed to the ghoul. He materialized beside her, shaping himself into a phantasmal representation of the monster he used to be. He towered by her side, his echo heads folded along his back, his glistening black exoskeleton pulsating with spores that danced with arcing volts of bioelectricity.

And still, the Sang Second Sister—the one tasked with guarding and escorting Green River to the Function of Finality—shuddered on the ground. She was meant to see Green River docile and prepared. But now she was rendered a mental cripple in return.

The Function was a grand palace housing temporary flash-clones of all the Dowagers. Clones that would then be re-consumed by the Silken Spiral. Afterward, their genetic material retained by this living megacity, and eventually shipped out to all the other megacities so that they could be injected into the surviving Dowagers, so that the information could be carried by genetic memory.

This rendered the No-Dragon’s classified messages and grand decisions uninterceptible by Orithalm or Omnitech, by anyone but the No-Dragons.

Beyond the translucent shell of the dragonfly that carried them, Green River stared at the Silken Spiral. It was faintly as she remembered it, but it changed dramatically every year. That was the main benefit of being within a living city.

New Vultun was built wide and its core rose high, a fist of deviance pointed at the sky, a crown of hubris impaled upon a sea of rust, rot, and decay. The Silken Spiral, meanwhile, was like a tumor, but a tumor that was constantly consuming itself. There was more growing out from the walls, out from the ground, every passing second. The floors, the buildings, the people, they were all biomass here. Creatures hatched free from massive pustules lining the sides of arcing skyscrapers.

They carried with them entire pods of children: First Sisters at the front, Second Sisters behind, and all the others. At the very back, Green River stared at the first and second sisters. They had the seats with windows. They could stare out from their bio-pods. The others… well, if the others wished to enjoy that privilege, they would need to take from a higher cycle.

It was an ugly thing, being born at the wrong time, being born the wrong number. But it was the old way, and it was the cycle, and the cycle enslaved them in more ways than one.

"But no more, perhaps," Green River said to herself. "No more, and never again. No more, never again."

"Only if you choose. Only if you shape it to be so," Avo said.

Green River narrowed her eyes, said Avo. "You know, if you are going to be this cryptic, this evasive and ominous, the Function is not going to appreciate it." ꭆ𝓪₦𝘖ΒÈs

"The Function is not meant to appreciate me. They are meant to look away from me and focus on you."

"Ah, so you are the blade, and I am the sparrow."

"The blade?”

“Well, sometimes the tale goes, the blade and the sparrow… Let me recall… Ah, right… The Empress Dowager of the Liu Dynasty, she offered a choice to one of her concubines. He was to accept her affection, or he was to become a eunuch. And the way he would demonstrate his acceptance of her affection, and this was because..."

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"Yes," Avo interrupted her. "No, I can read your mind. It was because that it wasn't proper to state things in the open, in the forbidden days, in the ancient days."

Green River frowned.

"Please continue," Avo said, slightly ashamed. "Would like to hear you talk about the story instead."

Green River considered spiting him, considered just stopping there. After all, if he could just read through her mind and run a thousand simulations of her, what was the point? But then she continued with a sigh. "The acceptance of the sparrow becomes acceptance of the Dowager's affection, correct. But there's something deeper as well. The acceptance of the sparrow is also a symbol. A symbol that one has chosen a non-martial path, that they are one who cares of life, cares of the creatures of life, and they will never take up the blade." Green River's face corked in a bitter, cynical smile. "She offered the man, her concubine, two forms of emasculation, one literal, one spiritual. She didn't love him. She was trying to break him."

"And did she?" Avo asked. “Did he break?”

“I think he accepted,” Green River said. “So. He bent. And she was powerful. And he was alive. And they both lived with it. Until they died.”

Green River considered that. She countered with a question of her own as she looked down at the groveling Sang, still sprawled at her feet. "How much choice did this one have? How much hope, how much chance did she have before you, before your power, before your overwhelming mind?"

"She had the choice to simply turn away, to choose to do the right thing, the wise thing."

"How would she know that?" Green River asked.

"Because I told her. Because she is a person. Because I gave her a chance. But her choice ends where mine begins. I realized there might be no perfect choice, no perfect freedom. Not in this world, not yet. And I haven't conceived the shape of it yet. Not even myself. Not even with all my power. In time, however. In time."

Outside, a massive leviathan rose into the air. It resembled a thing between a centipede and a whale, and along its sides, people resided within. It was one of the many major attractions of the Silken Spiral.

It was a Leviathan Hotel, a massive creature that was meant to tour the megacity, to show outsiders around and to allow them to discover the exquisite delights of living in a place that constantly evolved, in a place of unending metamorphosis. Unending metamorphosis, as if the Leviathan had anything that could compare to the ghoul standing beside her.

Standing beside her, Green River let out a breath. "And so, are you going to talk about this philosophy at the Function?"

"No," Avo replied. "I am simply going to tell them the truth. The cold truth. That there is no more choice for them if they want to live. It will be me, and it will not be ambition. Ambition cares nothing for choice. Ambition cares nothing but becoming, becoming the only, becoming that which is absolute, that which is ultimate. Ambition is, and it will devour. I will retain, and I will let you walk free. This is the sole separation now. It is between us."

"And what of the Infacer?" she asked. "What of the one that now holds the sun?"

"The Infacer will not be here," Avo said, his voice turning somber. "The Infacer does not dream of forever. The Infacer cares little for eternity." The Infacer, they…” Avo considered what to say next, but the Sang noticed something in his voice. A sadness. "They do not wish to be. They do not wish to be. They will fight on the side of Ambition but they seek their own ends. They will try to secure the latter, and they will finally forge their own legacy."

"What is a legacy that they have no intention of seeing?"

"It is a legacy that they will send as an orphan. An orphan of totality." Avo then let out a growl of disgust.

They were drawing closer to the base of the Silken Spiral now. The lights were fading, and they passed through a threshold that tickled Green River's very skin. A field forged from plagues and bacteria licked over her. A cordyceps plagueform sank into her skull through her nostrils. Green River was marked now, marked without ever being physically touched by another being.

Another thing about the Spiral is that it was alive in a way that was grand but also microscopic, and it reached into you. It sank into you, it clung to you, and it built up inside of you with every breath taken, with every passing second you spent alive.

"We are almost here," Avo said, "almost at the Function." He looked to the groveling Sang, and the flames burned brighter from her halo. It erupted upward, but instead of gasping or crying out further, she simply relaxed.

"Rest," Avo said. "Rest and know that I do not wish to harm you," he whispered. "You are to serve Green River decently, but you are no slave. I will not force you into this, but there will be penalties if you try to do what you did earlier, if you try to reach into her mind, to strike her with trauma. She is my dignitary, my representative. It is not a soft respect I demand, it is hard. It will be iron deep in your flesh, it will boil your blood, it will unmake you at a cellular level. Do not misunderstand, my courtesy is only to a limit. I am incapable of going beyond that yet. Someday, we might discover it together."

Avo leaned down, his phantasmal form crackling with intense brightness. He was like a wildfire contained in the shape of a ghoul. "Someday, but not yet. Know this. Understand this."

"Yes, yes, yes, great Burning Dreamer," she breathed. "Yes."

And Green River noticed the smile adorning the ghoul's face. Despite everything, he was still an egomaniac. Becoming god had only made him more of one.

"But I'm getting better at controlling it," Avo said. "I'm getting better at noticing."

"But even if you do notice, even if you do control," she leaned back in her seat, pressing against the soft sack that served in place of leather, "you may not choose to do better. A lot of what we are, it's how we feel, it's what we desire. We recognize our flaws so many times. I recognize mine, but I still commit them. I'm still..."

"Yes," Avo interrupted her, nodding. "Yes, still a slave to operant programming. You are..." He paused. "We are animals, but we can be more, but we can be better at it. And we must scar ourselves properly to learn. And maybe that's the only way, to feel the full weight. Only then does it become..." And then he thought of Draus, of her original self, of how she died. She died with a vision of him, but was it really? Was it a whole vision of him? Was it enough? She knew she could accept, but still, was it enough? She could accept, but could he?

Finally, their dragonfly slowed, and the outside changed from a winding cityscape of living, moving buildings, of hatching creatures, of people walking across bridges of a massive spiderweb, glistening with flavor, color, and life.

Here was the first patch of true dead metal. Here was a place sealed behind a transparent dome. Here was a forbidden zone, sectioned away by thaumaturgy, guarded by weaponized cells. As the sides of their dragonfly opened, its carapace flowed unlatching upward, exposing the outside air to them. Green River rose from her seat as a small force of bioforms stood in a row. They greeted her, holding their ceremonial blades. At the end, two Sang waited for her, both wearing floral dresses and no apparent rigs…

Ah. The pure, Green River realized. This was going to be miserable.

These beasts were just guards for show. It was what crawled within her bloodstream now that would determine her fate. What crawled within her bloodstream was also a form of thaumaturgy. At any moment, her own flesh could betray her. Her own being could be compromised.

But what they didn't know was what she brought with her. They had infested her body, but she, soon, was going to spread a fire, a fire that was going to burn the Silken Spiral from the ground up. That was going to consume every single life that lived here. That was going to make them understand, understand that the old war was gone and that a new war was on the horizon. And Green River, most importantly, was important once more. She was in the position of true power, power above those she previously couldn't reach, power she lost, regained, and now surpassed.

"We all have our vices," she breathed, speaking more to herself.

But the divine passenger in her head simply replied. "Our vices, but also, could be strength to be who we are. I'm here now. I will watch you, just as you have watched me."

"So you will as well," Green River said, a small smile adorning her lips. “Come. Let us meet my elder sisters.”