Achilles went through many, many mories of Mansa Nguna as his scope expanded into territory that felt dangerous simply by virtue of how much it contained.
The things he now knew seed boundless and grand in ways that exceeded what he had anticipated when he began sifting through her integrated existence. Eons of accumulated experience compressed into seconds of processing ti as his Assimilation sorted through the archive with the efficiency of sothing that had grown considerably more practiced at this task since first consuming a Fundantal Depth Master in the early days of his imprisonnt within The Existential Lattice.
He kept looking.
He was seeking any critical mories that would explain potential dangers arising from what he had done to Mansa Nguna, any threads that connected her existence to monitoring systems or failsafes or obligations that would trigger investigation before he could establish distance and cover.
He kept on looking.
Until he found a mory that made him go very still.
Mansa Nguna was younger in this mory, the lazy gold eyes holding less of the accumulated remove that eons of scientific detachnt eventually produce in beings who spend their existence studying others rather than connecting with them. She was sitting with a man whose features shared enough with hers that the relationship required no announcent.
Her father.
He was a Gilded One of considerable power, his presence in the mory radiating authority that pressed against its edges with the particular warmth of soone who had deliberately softened what they were capable of in order to occupy the sa space as soone they loved without overwhelming them.
His hands moved with practiced gentleness as he placed a golden thread of Observable Force directly into her heart, the motion careful and precise and entirely at odds with the clinical efficiency Achilles had observed in every other interaction her mories contained.
"You will not rember this afterwards as I know you wish to be independent."
His voice carried the particular texture of soone saying sothing they needed to say regardless of whether it would be heard or retained.
"But I cannot bear to have you leave our House unprotected, so I have laid out a protection on your heart that will activate at any sign of danger your Ego feels."
The golden thread settled into place within her heart with the ease of sothing that belonged there.
"Once it activates, it will counteract any attack and give you ti to leave. And I will co to save you soon after."
He smoothed her hair back from her face with a gesture so habitual it clearly predated conscious thought, sothing done ten thousand tis across spans of ti that made the motion itself a kind of language.
"I simply cannot let you go out there without sothing of mine keeping watch over you. You are my one and only girl."
The mory ended there, as mories of tender monts often do, not with resolution but with the weight of feeling that needed no narrative conclusion.
...!
Achilles felt his mind buzz with the particular coldness of soone who had just identified a problem and was simultaneously calculating its implications and his available responses.
That protection had never activated.
She had never received an attack in the conventional sense that her father’s failsafe had been designed to detect. Her Ego and existence had not perceived danger through the channels his protection monitored because Achilles had not attacked her, he had integrated himself into her through Observable Force she welcod voluntarily, and by the ti his spores comprised enough of her foundations to constitute a threat, there was no longer sufficient independent consciousness remaining within her to register that sothing had gone wrong.
He had devoured the protection alongside her.
It sat within his integrated existence now, a golden thread among countless others, never having fulfilled its intended purpose because the danger it was designed to respond to had arrived in a form its creator had not anticipated.
The cost of Assimilating her was heavy in ways that extended beyond what he had initially asured. He had thought he could stay here, could even take on her form and leave a constructed body behind to delay investigation, could move through the Silver Philotimo with her identity as cover while he consolidated what he had gained.
But now.
BOOM!
The space he was in collapsed into a golden light as he disappeared instantly, his decision made in the fraction of a mont between recognizing the problem and the problem becoming irreversible. He did not wait because he could not afford to wait, not with a father’s protection woven into the heart of the woman he had just consud, not with the thread of Observable Force that had been placed there with the specific intention of summoning exactly the kind of power that would be arriving in response to its silence.
He ran.
WU! WU! WU!
And...
A second after he left.
BOOM!
The space above where he had been shattered with violence that communicated the difference between power being used and power being unleashed without regard for the surrounding architecture of reality. A terrifying aura of Pride and power ca barreling down through the breach with the quality of sothing that had felt a thread go silent and crossed whatever distance separated it from that silence in the span between heartbeats.
It was howling.
Not with battle intent or the cold calculation of a Gilded One engaging a threat. With pain.
"WHO?!"
The voice crashed through the shattered laboratory space with force that made the remaining fragnts of the facility dissolve entirely, authority that could not contain itself within the boundaries of controlled expression because grief had removed the container.
"WHO HAS TAKEN MY DAUGHTER?!"
BOOM!
An apocalyptic power crashed down and locked onto the coordinates where Achilles had just been standing, perception of terrifying depth scanning every aspect of the space with the desperate thoroughness of soone searching for evidence rather than rely hunting a target.
"Little Nguna!"
The voice broke on the na in ways that Gilded Ones were not supposed to break, the hierarchy and the pride and the eons of accumulated remove all aning nothing against the specific frequency of a parent calling for a child who could not answer.
"LITTLE NGUNA!"
BOOM!
User Comments
0 comments from readers