252 (II)
tamorphosis [III]
"Eldest," Uva finally whispered. "Do you have a choice at all? Can you even decide to be different?"
The Eldest didn't respond, and then more illusions of herself materialized. All of them were twisted in different ways. So of them seed far more spider-like than Umbral, sprouting additional limbs from their backs, arachnid legs piercing the ground. Psychomancy threads lded into her body, weaving her into threads, her non-Euclidean physique twisting and coiling until she seed more willow-leaf than person.
"What is choice? There is only future and present, then becoming. There is no choice. Delay, not delay. Ti is coming. You transform. It has happened, it will happen. It is happening."
She listened to their words. And then she did sothing she'd never tried before. Instead of actively fighting, instead of succumbing to her emotions, she tried reaching out to the effigies of herself, the mutations that might take her, the being she might beco, and she directed a strand of Psychomancy into them. If she could truly delve into the mind of whatever this was, whatever the Eldest represented themselves as...
Another presence stumbled into the room. "Stop!" Roland cried. His voice was weak and hoarse, and he looked close to death's door as well. He was stripped of his ruined armor, dressed instead in a ragged, blood-stained hospital gown. Every step he took threatened to see him topple, but still, he staggered closer to her. Rose imdiately stepped away from Uva and strode toward him.
"You fucking idiot," she hissed, putting a hand on his arm. "You're not supposed to be out here. You should stay in bed for weeks instead of—"
Roland silenced her by placing his hand upon her cheek and pressing his thumb to her lips. “Rose… Please. I…” He swallowed. It seed speaking taxed his worn and withered body.
He took another shaking step toward Uva. "You've done enough," Roland rasped, his voice thick with emotion as he stared intently at her. "You've done enough. Return the Starhawk to . I will continue bearing this burden."
The Starhawk’s shadow flared as he regarded his champion. "No." The god's voice was resolute like thunder, but for the first ti, Uva saw Roland defy his god.
The Lord of Blackedge swallowed heavily. “Starhawk, I beg you, you must release her. You must return to . You must. She cannot endure this much longer. We have asked too much of her!”
“And I have asked too much of you,” the Starhawk shot back. Now, his voice was dense with sorrow and unwillingness. "If I return to you, you will be nothing more than cinders, Roland. You will not survive."
"She will not survive!" Roland cried. His voice was wretched, and Uva could see the sheer tornt behind his gaze. "She will not survive," Roland repeated. "We are making a child die for . Who are we to make soone who has no need to sacrifice herself do so anyway, who is doing this out of the sheer nobility of her heart, who is willing to perish for Blackedge, for my responsibility? Please, my God, I beseech you. I beg you. Return to . I can endure. I can find a way to bring us ho once more."
The Starhawk replied, and his declaration was the sa: "No, Roland, you cannot. Even if you were healthy, hale, and willing, you could not. For we are trapped in the realm of the Outside, within the embrace of an elder god. And here we do not have any true power. My presence is like a beacon in the dark. They co toward us, and without her Psychomancy, I fear we would have been overrun long before. And without her tithes and the Dreamtaker, we would have been utterly consud by adversaries beyond our comprehension."
But Roland wouldn't accept that. He shook his head again, and the sheer pain on his face made him look ever so much like Adam. A breath escaped Uva. She saw his nobility was genuine. She realized from what waters did Adam's heroism flow downstream.
Much of what she knew about Roland Arrow was passed down to her second-hand from Shiv and Adam. She was apprehensive and even slightly antagonistic toward the Town Lord for what he did to her lover during his childhood. But here he was, begging, desperate to sacrifice himself so that she would be burdened no longer, so that she might be able to turn her attention and focus on the fighting of the Eldest.
But Uva realized it might be too late, and his sacrifice wouldn't matter at all now. Part of it was simply what the Starhawk said: he wasn't the proper Pathbearer for the situation. Even with his overwhelming power, they likely wouldn't have been able to fight off all the Stranger's fingerlings forever. But more than that, the Eldest might have been an inevitability, might have been her fate since the mont she touched that book. She still didn't want to change. She still wanted to hold on to herself. But she had to discover sothing now, for her sake and the town's. For the simple act of understanding just what kind of being was fusing with her.
A calmness asserted itself upon her. A calmness that felt as natural as it was unnerving in the aftermath of her anguish and of the Eldest's intrusion. Her focus was stronger. Her resolve was truer. The ti to panic and to be emotional was past.
Now there was only the road ahead. The road she had to face. She didn’t want much of this, but from the sound of things, the Eldest didn’t seem to have a choice either. Perhaps she wasn’t alone on this damned path.
She didn't know if her mutation was fated. What she did know was this: She would try to fight it. She would try to delve into the Eldest as they had into her. She would try to seize their mind. To reign over it. Or to do anything to ensure her own agency in the future. Most importantly, she would fight. She would struggle and strive, for Uva ttabon, as true as any other, was a Pathbearer, more so than most could dream to be.
Slowly, Uva sat up, and she saw Roland limping toward her. Halfway through, he fell to his knees, and Rose found herself too weak to properly catch him. Despite this, he didn't crash to all fours. Instead, he braced himself. He forced himself up. And there they stared at one another at a level. "I'm sorry," he forced out. He sounded profoundly broken and absolutely desperate. "This was not your price to pay. I'm sorry."
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
"Price?" Uva repeated. She shook her head slowly. "It is not a price. It is a duty we chose. You know that better than I, Town Lord. And I chose to protect this place willingly, even if desperate. Even if the tamorphosis that follows sees nothing left of , this is the duty I chose. So I will abide by the strife that must befall."
She rose before he did, even with the Eldest creeping through her soul. She was growing stronger. She had the power of three separate divine entities flowing into her, while Roland had spent himself down to the wick. But true to his nature, Roland had to rise regardless. Had to try. His hands shook. His legs quivered. Rose tried to help him, but it was Uva who reached for his hand. She pulled him back to his feet and found herself looking down at the man so similar in shape and courage to one of her closest comrades. He really was quite short compared to her.
"It seems like we all only get to choose so much of our own fate," Uva said.
Roland looked away from her, unwilling to accept the ugliness of this truth, but there was a burgeoning clarity in the Umbral. Furthermore, she felt a path opening before her. A potential ans of striding in the middle road of usurpation and self-preservation for what felt like an inevitable tamorphosis.
"Starhawk," Uva called out.
"Yes, Sister ttabon,"the god replied, his tone warm and accommodating.
"I need you to withdraw your influence from my soul for a mont. I think I'm going to establish a dialogue with the Eldest."
Everyone in the room went still. "Are you certain?" the Starhawk said. She could practically taste the god's apprehension.
Roland, however, was even less controlled. "No, no, if you do this, it might consu you utterly! Nothing of your soul would remain! There may not even be a hereafter for you!”
Uva scoffed. "Perhaps, or perhaps it will be the other way around. But regardless, I don't see a point in delaying this much longer. I need another edge against the Stranger's pawn. I need to understand how their minds work. I need to find a way out of this labyrinth, out of this wilderness. And I cannot do it as I am right now. Not even with the Starhawk's power."
"But what will beco of you if the Eldest overtakes you?" Valor asked.
"It has already overtaken ." Uva sighed. "I think. Ti does not work the sa way for them as it does for the rest of us. I think that the tamorphosis is already concluded in their opinion, and they simply wish to reach that point for as well. But I don't know what will spawn from this mutation, this union. Either sothing that carries my mories and a fignt of myself, but isn't truly , rely using as a host, a parasite."
And then Uva thought back to how the weavers reproduced. A breath escaped her. A snort of wry amusent followed.
"Uva?" Valor asked, confused as to why her mood was shifting so drastically.
"I think I have realized sothing," the Umbral muttered. "I think I understand. It might be this way because it is mapping itself off my own history as well—all the things I have done and the things I have allowed to be done by my own culture. Perhaps the Eldest wasn't real until it reached inside , just as it wasn't real until it spread beyond the other eldritch beings as well…"
A series of confused expressions greeted her. Rose looked utterly uncomfortable. "Okay, it's clear that her mind is fucking going. We need to find so other way to solve this problem, find so other way to—"
"No." It was Valor who cut her off. "No. Let her do what needs to be done. I trust her. I think she knows. I think she sees sothing we do not."
"Valor," Rose said, sounding desperate. "Look, I understand you're so ancient Pathbearer, but I've seen a lot of shit in my ti too, and right now, she sounds like every mind-broken Psychomancy victim I've ever encountered on the battlefield."
"And yet we are in a realm of madness," Valor surmised succinctly. "Perhaps that is to her benefit, rather than her disadvantage."
Rose wanted to say sothing else, but Uva waved her off. "It is decided. I am still here. I am still myself for now. I must do this. I must resolve this now; otherwise, our fates are certain to be sealed at the hands of the Stranger. Better that I face this tamorphosis on my own terms, to separate what I can affect and what I can change from what I cannot."
"Kid, if this thing eats you, we're fucked. All of us are fucked," Rose said, "and you're gonna be the most fucked of all."
"If I don't do anything, then I'm simply delaying the inevitable. We need more than what I can do now. And I need to be more. The System wants to be more. I think there is no choice between and the Eldest."
Rose fell silent. And her first words, cast telepathically into the illusory clones the Eldest had molded from her visage, were thus: "You are also bound to the System's will, aren't you? You've passed through your children. You've been stained by the System's mana. You cannot go any other way. You were once free, weren't you? And now you cannot even rember. Now you reach out to things like us, things that can make our own choices, just to capture a kindling of what you once were."
She was guessing blindly, guided by intuition. Across the link, she felt sothing that was supposed to be utterly inhuman, was still almost beyond her comprehension. But she had a na for it, and that was sorrow and regret.
"I must happen. I must be."
"So I see," Uva replied. Then, as she steeled herself, she reached deeper into the minds of the clones and felt her being brushed against sothing unfathomably great and vast. She thought she had reached new power when she beca a Heroic-Tier Pathbearer, when her strands could extend far beyond the horizon. When she could weave and thread herself into enemy minds. But now she felt as if a worm cast into a boundless ocean, and the ocean was trying to fill her utterly.
She wasn't big enough, she wasn't great enough, and if it all ca at once, she would be burst asunder. But it didn't need to all co at once. The tamorphosis was to follow, but perhaps she could make this thing last. Perhaps she could co up with a solution of her own.
She thought to the Stranger's Fingerings, the ones she had trapped and captured. She thought of how she might be able to use them. She thought of how she could direct her mind against them once she had a better understanding.
And in the depths of her consciousness, another layer of her mind began to sche and plot against the Stranger, against the Eldest, against even herself. There was a desperate plan forming, and it remained hidden there, buried deep as she made her proposal: "I wish to co to an accord, Eldest. I wish to discuss the terms of my tamorphosis. I would like to trade. Skills for you to mutate, in exchange for ti. Ti and understanding. You will happen. I… suppose we must happen. The tamorphosis must follow. And I will stop fighting it if you help understand. If you help comprehend the minds of your offspring and the nature of this place. I need to save these people. I must. Do you understand? It is how I am. Just this is who you are.”
The Eldest let out a mind-shuddering noise, and silence followed. For a beat, Uva wondered if she had done sothing to the eldritch god—until it spoke anew. “Who we are. We… It will be we. Yes. Save. No difference soon. One and the sa. One and one. Two to one…”
User Comments
0 comments from readers