Chapter 379 - Is That We Remain

Gaaaah. Didn't make it to the three I wanted, but I know what it'll be, so there's that. Anyways! Tomorrow, I'll finish the last of the promised updates and jump into a pure editing frenzy. No brakes, no stops on the way- done or dusted. Wish me luck, but either way I'll see y'all in the morning.

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“The conflict between the desire to deny horrible wounds and the bleeding they bring and the desire to cause them anew is the central dialectic of what it means to face another.”

-Required reading in the Second Ring’s Three Academies. Author Unknown. Included in a treatise on the nature of people.

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Shin Ren feels the space around him press inward, the pressure of the space he’s in fighting against his new realm of power. It feels in turns delightful and damaging, like rubbing together two bits of sandpaper and feeling the roughness in the hands beneath. His pantheon resonates with this place- the Ruin it brings feeds directly into his heaviest shade, the Corpse Aflame, and she in turn feeds it to a smiling effigy to union, misdirection, community and its fallacies in turn, who then is purified by an altar, glowing with all the colors of Flame and with the more esoteric properties of Truth and Truth. 

Still, the energy of the place sits heavy against him, and he holds firm rather than drink too much of it or let it breach the bubble of space he’s created. Many-Grasping doesn’t seem to experience it in the same way, but she does experience it- he watches as much of the biological armor and sharpness she’s developed grows, overtaking parts of her, only for her body to seemingly pull it in deeper and rebalance itself. Triple-jointed arms remain pressed to the ground as she bows, but her head is raised high, eyes staring directly at the broken, monstrous, beautiful avatar of ruined Ruin before them.

He does not look towards where Taran circles, stepping from one patch of strange and violent growth to another. He does not think of his companions, of the sky above, of the illusion of what is and could be. He pushes his existence forward into the world, and makes it aware of him.

Slowly, the statue turns its head to face him. Its mouth opens, and for a moment, he glimpses something more than machinery and broken pieces- a sliver of flesh, grey and pink, hidden away almost instantly by the shifting effigy.

“You. I Know You.”

He nods, and the head turns down.

“You,” it says, down at Many-Grasping. “You Called For Me. You Know Me. I… Knew You.”

“And You Will Know Me Again,” proclaims the kneeling priestess, rising from a full bow to her knees. “You Are Missed. You Live Still.”

A pulse of… something, something complex, echoing out from the shadows. From the world above and the statue before them, from the reaching spikes crawling down into the world beneath comes a wave of meaning. Shin Ren is not as familiar as he could be with the language of Intent, still moving past the idea that Killing Intent is the whole of the tongue, but he can discern meaning decently, if not perfectly.

“Denial.”

“You’re not her. Not really.”

The gunbarrel eye and the chamber behind it turn to face him.

“No. I Am Not.”

“But You Are Part Of Her,” Many-Grasping returns. He feels her own cultivation pulse outwards, and finds himself surprised- it is more than it was, but it also bears a strange resonance of its own, synchronizing with the space without being subservient to it. He can’t properly sense a Dantian or meridians, though- whatever she is cultivating, it is not orthodox, at the very least. 

“I Was. Now I Am Less.”

“She’s dead too, then?” Shin Ren asks.

The figure creaks as its head tilts. Its stillness, followed by the slow, agonizing shifting of its position, shifts some of its broken components out of place, falling out of the ruin that is her right side to rain down on gunpowder sand. “I Don’t Know. I Know… Nothing. I Am.”

“Not nothing,” says a voice from one side. Taran stands beneath one of the metallic trees, gently running his hand along one of its branches. “You know this. Weaponry. Some amount of it, at least. These… shouldn’t work, most of them, but I can feel them. They don’t care. Too saturated with more than just machinery.”

“It Is All Machinery. Life. Death. Is. Is Not. Left, Right, Center- All Are Pieces Of The Same Machine.”

“Is that what you are?” Shin Ren asks, interrupting again. “A machine? Something built, programmed, made but not really alive?”

Silence in the chamber for a time. The pressure of the world above continues to press on him, and the more he pushes back, the more he calls attention to himself, the more he feels the landscape fall in towards him. As the effigy’s attention is made more present, it feels like the center of gravity, and the world above, below, from every angle falls in towards him.

Triumvirate Souls stand, enthroned in a court beyond reality, and the ruined ruin of war finds no purchase on him.

“She Is More,” Many-Grasping says, her Intent holding in it a challenge. “She Is A Fragment, But She Is Real. She Is Here. She Is More Than Machine. Proclamation. She Is.”

The effigy doesn’t seem to share in that confidence. She / It stays perfectly still, its head held at an angle like it should be in motion yet held in place. 

“There Was More. There Is Less. I Grow. I Fade. What Was Is No Longer.”

“But you do remain. Like you said- you grow. This place grows. You’ve been expanding out wildly- it’s the whole reason I arrived. You’re feeding off of the dead lands beyond the wall, becoming something new. Both sides are trying to harvest you, and the Empire doesn’t ask for destruction or conquest of landmarks without good reason. You’re still something.”

“What Was Is Less. What Is New Is More. I Fade. I Grow.”

That, Shin Ren thinks, makes more sense. A shared origin, but not a continual identity. “You’re becoming a smaller part of what you are now, aren’t you? The past, overtaken by the future. You’re the seed, but not the thing growing.”

It can’t nod, and doesn’t speak, but there is a sensation of… acknowledgement. What he says sinks in naturally to the chamber, the reality of this place accepting it as already true.

“But You Are Still Of Her,” Many-Grasping insists.

“Of Her. Not Her. Not Anymore. The Knife Took Care Of That.”

There is a flash where the gravity of the world is changed. It magnifies, multiplies, until the statue bends light around itself, the gunpowder and ash turned to a reflection of what was. It is a glimpse, but in that moment, Shin Ren sees the way that the ash and broken components first scattered, as if carved apart by a great blade that found no resistance in the supernatural architecture of the thing before him.

A question, emanating from the priestess.

“Who?”

It takes some time for a response to form, but when it does, it isn’t anything so simple as to be words, or even a sentence. It spirals out into fragments of broken meaning, into concepts too articulate for the ruined thing to communicate in full.

But there is an impression of an evergreen forest, shaped by the black spikes of the landscape they’re in- and of a man hiding in them.

Putting it to simpler terms, Shin Ren translates in his head-

“There’s A Man In The Woods. He Has A Knife.”

The words make the world around them tremble, the distant screaming of metal getting louder.

…A Feng, then. Shin Ren knows of no one else that so closely uses that imagery, even if he’s not sure of which Feng, or if it’s simply an agent of them. That’s… unsurprising, considering how closely tied they are to the Empire’s wars, or the way that they tend to always be around to “resolve” more complicated issues.

“Can you influence this place?” he asks, not bothering to dig deeper just yet. Whatever made her like this, whatever wounded that nightmare of a woman, isn’t his purview right this second. “It’s still you, even if you’re not who you used to be. The Empire wants this place destroyed or conquered, the Pack, harvested. I get the impression your priestess has a different plan.”

“Communion Of Self,” Many-Grasping transmits, speaking in hushed breaths and clicking claws.

“Lots of possibilities for us, if you can,” Taran says, off to one side. “Way things are going, though, something’s going to change.”

Some of the malformed weapons in the chamber shift, the tree at its very center shivering slightly- but while they do turn their barrels a bit more towards angles against the intruders, they don’t fully aim. A response, instinctive or directly threatening.

“Yes. Change. CHANGE.”

At that, the world is more. 

For a moment, as he hears the way that second intonation is spoken, it’s like Shin Ren can remember the ways that the world looked during his tribulation. Like remembering, all of a sudden, a sensation that your body tuned out, as if-

And then it’s gone.

“Yes. I Can Change. This Remains. I Change.”

“That Change Can Be Chosen,” intones Many-Grasping, her multi-jointed limbs rising as if in supplication- or offering.

There is silence.

And then, the screeching of the armament-caverns begins to quiet. 

The statue turns its face once more, a clicking gun-barrel focusing in on Many-Grasping.

Nothing happens for a time, and Shin Ren takes the moment to step forward into the stasis. His aura flares, the presence of his [Divine Court] proclaiming itself against reality for a moment.

“Choice Is Universal,” he says, and the words echo against reality, and click, unimpeded, into place amidst the ruined machinery of a crippled war.

“...Yes.”

Without wasting another moment, Many-Grasping reaches down to the pocket of flesh she has carried all this way, and which she has fed herself and her cultivation from. It opens like a wound, or like a mouth, and from it, her arms going far deeper than the “bag” should allow, Many-Grasping pulls forth a long, slender obelisk of black metal. There are small gaps in it, and through those, neural tissue and flesh both snap free of wherever they were connected, reaching forwards instead to the statue.

“Eat, And Be Made More.”

The statue does not rise, or open what remains of its mouth any further- but with a hiss and a tearing sound so high it almost leaves human hearing, part of it falls open near its wounds, and a space is revealed, just large enough for an obelisk to find a place to be planted. The machinery groans, and opens wider, and Shin Ren glimpses some of what he saw before, that not-quite dead flesh that adds what little life exists in this place to its makeup.

“We Are What We Eat,” whispers the corpse-statue.

Several of the plants in the chamber fall as Many-Grasping goes to rise, collapsing into useless metal and malformed art-pieces- but a few remain, and they twist and turn and grow closer to each of the figures in the space. 

A grassy field of bullets grows, each piece of ammunition showing a complexity and artistry that was missing before, and makes bell-like clinking sounds against Taran’s boots.

A blade without hilt nor handle rises, the tallest bud of a low-growing shrub, now towering nearly to Shin Ren’s height.

The gunpowder at Many-Grasping’s knees shifts like sand, and grows thick, and heavy, like mud or blood. 

In invitation, the broken and ruined thing opens itself in offering as it is offered to.

“Come, And Eat, Together At The Table.”