CHAPTER 37-7 WHAT FOLLOWS THE END OF HISTORIES

“We welcome you, Jaus Avandaer. Know that you are the first Kosgan in many years to descend this place, to stand before us and be spared immediate death.”

“I am honored, O Dowagers combined, Dowagers alloyed. I have long wondered how you managed to avoid the notice of the dragons. I must compliment you. I must commend you for using your blood in such a way as sublime and uniquely human.”

“There is a symbolism in your victory, and the only cost is death and our humanity. So, you come to us, you expend so much to find us, to reach out to us, and now you are before us, what do you have to say? Oh, sage who seeks to slay the gods.”

“Not only the gods, but also the dragons. All things beyond man, all tyrants of metaphysics, will be brought low.”

“Lofty words and high aspirations. But what proof and truth lurk behind your verbal poetry.”

“There is much for me to tell you, but perhaps you can glean much if I offer you my blood.”

“Do you think we would be so foolish to allow an outsider to contaminate us? We know not how you learned to counter our curse. How you stand before us with merely a painted veil of colors on your face. A Neuter-Mask. A tradition stolen from our operatics, perhaps, a metaphysical structure to deny the curse within our blood its due.”

“I can share that with you as well. Are you aware of, forgive me, I was about to lecture you. My arrogance sometimes knows no bounds. You, of course, know that your people had eunuchs.”

“Indeed, they were a staple of earlier times, back when they were sons, fathers, and brothers. But your operatic traditions remain the same, and I think your dragons, they've not forgotten that.”

“And so, with faith, with belief, with symbolism and lore, something could be forged. Something born of the gods to counter the beast beyond even them.”

“How amusing. Then bestow your blood upon us, oh, Avandaer. We will see if it contains poison or truth, and we will judge for ourselves the worth of your promise and the weight of your life.”

-Jaus Avandaer and the Dowagers Alloyed, the Dowagers Combined

37-7

What Follows The End of Histories

As the Dowagers were melded together as an alloy of flesh, so too were time and blood conjoined within the depths of the function. The golden flames cast by Avo's alchemized conflagration were reflected in all eighteen pods. Eighteen pods holding eighteen Dowagers. Eighteen Dowagers who gazed at the floating infant, dancing upon the ghoul's extended hand. The Sang newborn let out a mewing cry. The sound was pitiful, but its effects were ultimately undoing.

Each of the Dowagers went back. There came a mixture of reactions from them. A mixture of reactions, as they were a mixture of different people.

“How could you do this?”

“Why?”

“What lie is this?”

“Green-River, sister, traitor.”

“We will see your eyes blinded.”

“We will see your tongue seared—”

“—for bringing this creature into our house.”

And they were interrupted as Avo made a single declaration. “Enough. Not her fault. She is merely the adversary. Merely the person I chose. Help me make my introduction. Look here now.”

And the infant began to gleam with golden fire. Ripples detonated from the body. Ripples that swept through the Sang. Casting wavelengths of chronology through them. But more than chronology, it was time as well. The forms of the Dowagers distorted. Some of their temporal echoes traveled forward into the future, while others lingered, pulling back, before suddenly vanishing, consumed by the ever-pursuing past.

Yet the child's echoes continued on in all directions. Forward, backward, side to side. The present, the future, and the past were all preserved within Avo's A Place Beyond. In Avo's dimension, harvested from the Sang, grown from seeds of living time.

“Look at your child. Look at your son reborn. Look at the shadow of your father. The memory of your brother. Look upon him. Look. Do not turn away.”

And he added the weight of compulsion to his thoughts. And so were the Dowagers capitulated. For they had to capitulate. For despite their changed nature, despite the complex lattice that was their biology, their minds were only one. And one mind paled before the all-consuming gestalt that was the burning dream. Eighteen Dowagers stared. Eighteen Dowagers produced. Eighteen varied responses.

Some turned away immediately. Horrified. Unbelieving. Unwilling to accept. Others sobbed. The sounds of mothers and grieving daughters revealed. But then some cried out in anger. Some clawed at their pods, reaching out for the child, yearning either to hold or strangle him. And all were affected. None were unscarred.

“I am not here to taunt you. I am here to return this to you. I have broken the curse. I have shattered the stain of dragons within your beings. But more than that, I have uncovered its true purpose.” Avo waited for the Dowagers to respond. And respond they did in harmonious discord.

Its purpose was to enslave. To use us as cattle. To use us as mere servants for their unknowable will.” The Dowagers cried in unison.

“Unknowable,” Avo said. He barely held back a chuckle and hissed with derision. “For you, perhaps. For the blind. The mortal. The merely human. Even after all you have done to yourselves. All too human…” He looked down at Green River, and she licked at herself, much like a vulpine. She rolled her eyes thereafter, unimpressed by the delusion that clenched her Dowagers. She already knew she had time to process, and more importantly, her knowledge made her feel superior. Better than even the eldest Dowager.

And for a creature of pride like Green River, that was all that mattered.

“Why show us this? Why reveal this? Why do it this way?” the Dowagers asked. They were flinching. They were flinching one and all. Every single Dowager meshed within each other, turned away from him, turned away from what he possessed and the power he now held over them. That was their true source of discomfort. The fact that someone could compel them to such misery, could hold the fate of their people, could change the very nature of their identity.

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For so long, the Sang had defined themselves by their cyclical chain, bound to the rules of the dragons, unable to free themselves even with their mastery of biology. But someone had broken past that. Someone had reached into the dragons themselves and ripped free that golden lie, that truth hidden in the muck.

“You were never meant to be just slaves,” Avo continued. “You were meant to serve a higher purpose, not only continuation, but a new boundary, a place past this one.”

“What do you mean? What does he speak of?” Some of the Dowagers looked away from Avo and sought Green River as their refuge, as a North Star. But she looked away from them and simply yawned.

“I reacted much the same, sisters, and esteemed Dowagers. The pain is only passing, but the promise, now that might be eternal.”

“What, what then did you want?” the Dowagers asked.

“I want to give this to you.” And Avo placed the male Sang down the ground. The umbilical was still connected to the child, feeding him nutrition. But his eyes were wide, a small tuft of hair clung to his head, and he let out a whimper and then a sob, and then, slowly, began to cry—cry as he turned and held down a small, chubby arm at the monster who once bore him aloft.

And it was then that Avo realized he didn't have much experience dealing with human infants. In fact, he hadn't seen so many human infants at all, with most growing in vats, and the few he encountered held by machines to avoid the rash. He never truly observed them in detail. This one showed him a few truths.

“It's like you were made to be broken,” Avo said to himself. Already he saw fractures spreading along the child's thought-stuff, psychological wounds forming and mending in an instant. Humans were made to be fragile, fragile and melt into each other, but never truly co-mingle their thoughts. It was a strange design, one that had their minds mirror the outside world. They yearned for those around them to fill them with things, warmth, comfort, peace, other emotions, ideas. Patterns went in and patterns came out. And this was the beginning. There was nothing here yet, but it was not vacant. Rather, it was filled with a willingness to mold, to take in whatever was given, and to become whatever it received.

Shaped from Avo's flames and born from a womb of time, the child only knew the ghoul as the closest thing it had to its parent. The ghoul and his realm of time reforged.

“And I will not do,” Avo whispered. “I am of the wrong shape. I am too great for you, manling.”He didn't know what to offer this thing. Actually, he likely did. He did, with all the minds that dwelled within him, with all the memories that swirled at his base. But, ultimately, it was a human child. A human child. That was forged in extraordinary circumstances. And right now, it was looking upon him as if everything was simple. As if the foundational truth of its being was still in alignment. Avo was simply parent to the child. Pattern in, but not the right one.

With a gesture, he plucked the Sang boy off the ground, and the infant's sobs turned to a giggle. The child reached out for Avo, clutching at pieces of his floating Echoheads, running small fingers through flickering flames of thought-stuff, time, and divinity. To the child, what difference a god from a parent, and what purpose a god, if not to be a parent.

As he examined the infant, he realized his cognitive capacity was full. It trailed off. It completely focused on the child. How odd that was. It didn't seem like it needed that much, but there was something here, something more than the material. Part of being parent was lore. Lore of the caretaker. Lore of the caregiver. Lore of the one that loved and was loved in return, unconditionally.

So the lore went. So canons could be formed.

“How?” the Dowagers whispered. “How? Why?”

Avo regarded them. They seemed shaken, bothered by the sight. A monster holding what should have been theirs, what is now returned to them, but not fully, not truly, and not of their own will. Avo held the infant up, and turned him. The Sang child regarded the women inside the pods, and he made a frustrated noise. He turned away, and reached for Avo again.

“Seems even so young child can still play favorites. He was born from the flame, and so he finds the flame to be his father, I suppose. But you,” Avo regarded the Dowagers. “You still feel his biology, his blood. He is bound to you. He is of your line, and of your nature. But he does not look to you. Not truly. It has been too long. Maybe he does not remember. Not like you do.”

And his words cut deep. For within the long memory of the Sang, within all that had been encoded in their blood, histories hidden from the dragons, and the hatred passed on generation after generation, cycle to cycle.

“Do you want him back?” Avo asked. “Do you want to be a family again? Have fathers, brothers, sons.”

The Dowagers didn't reply immediately, and now Green River broke from her faux-indifference and gazed upon him. This concerned her as well, ripped her attention, and compelled her to listen.

“We… we,” the Dowagers stammered, as indecision and conflict seized them at the roots of their nature, their thoughts mingled with their blood, and it was all so viscous, viscous with indecision, with fear, with tension. But they were all bound to bend, not because Avo could compel them, though that was an option, but because he offered them something beyond their dreams, beyond it. At some point, the Sang had surrendered to their nature. At some point, a cultural mythology was forged, and their shackle became who they are, a cage within a cage, as their body became their lore.

“It will not be instant,” Avo said, “but you can raise them, raise them as your forebearers did.”

Still, the Dowagers did not speak. Green River looked up.

“I do not even know what to do with them,” she said. Her admission came with a hint of sadness and a note of surprise. “I don't know. I never thought.”

“Never thought,” Avo replied. “Your dreams. In them, your boys continued to be absent or simply theoretical. If you attained the Ladder, you might have considered their return. But I think even then you wouldn't have returned them. Not even then. You don't know the shape of who they are anymore. You have forgotten the shape of yourself. Such a pity, such a tragedy, such a wound. But the dragons, your vengeance upon them was a hollow one.”

“How could you say such things?” the Dowagers called out at once.

“Because I know the nature of dragons. They were harvesting you, shaping you, growing you over and over again.”

“Growing us?” the Dowagers wailed in disbelief.

“Yes,” Avo said, “you were not meant to be slaves. You are produce, produce of time. Time only. And time absolute. They were going to make a new timeline. From your flesh. Your flesh is time’s bounty. Your blood is the bridge of a past lost.”

Avo paused as he let that sink in for a moment. The Dowagers began to clutch at themselves, hold their own bodies. It was too much, but they needed to internalize it. There was no turning away from this truth, and the blow was not finished, not yet.

“Dragons weren't made by the gods or spawned from the tapestry. Dragons were born of those who came before. And who were they? Who were the progenitors?” Avo looked at them. “You. Those of you that came before. Humanity and their minds. The Neo-Creationists, those who shaped this reality and those who broke it while fighting with their own brethren. You are a victim of a ripple from a distant bomb. A bomb so forgotten, yet still very present. A bomb still traveling into the future, eating away at our past.

“No, no, the dragons...”

“The dragons are not human. Most of them weren't even conscious. When you brought them down, when you started using them as cattle, as cyclers in return, no revenge was taken. You broke a mechanism. The only dragon that thinks is trapped on the sun. And that one intended to finish this job cares nothing for you, cares nothing for the others.”

“You're lying, you're lying,” some Dowagers cried out. The others, however, fell silent, accepting the situation with grim misery.

“I could give them consciousness if you wish,” Avo whispered. “I could give them the capacity to hurt, to feel pain, to cry like this one.” Avo shook the child slightly, and rather than weep, the infant giggled. “But I don't see the point there. But I don't think there's a point in that. Don't think you would see a point in that either. This is done. The wound has been left. But is this wound left meaninglessly, pointlessly? You are the only ones who give it lore. There is no adversary. There is only what they made you for, and what you can now do.”

And once each of the Dowagers folded in on themselves, their minds reeled with trauma. But Avo didn't let them collapse. “Look at me,” he breathed. They did. “Look upon me and know I give you back your past, and I offer you a new future. I will give you time to think, time to accept. But it is a future you will likely have to sacrifice for, bleed for, fight for. If you want fathers, sons, brothers again, then you must do this. You must help me. I cannot prevail without you. I am no dragon, but I offer the conclusion of their bargain. Give me your bodies. Let me grow a new timeline. A new refuge away from this collapsing ruin of a world. Here. A second chance at a future. Here. A second chance at being whole. Not only for you. But time itself.”

“What do you speak of?”

“I speak of a last sanctuary. One that Ambition will find difficult to reach. Each one that must be grown from your blood. Come with me.” Avo’s golden flames spread. Spread from the Function, consuming all as it crawled up the Silken Spiral. “Come. And I will show you the depths of your sacrifice. The fertility of your flesh.”