Chapter 394 - Calm Before The Storm (Patreon)

Welp! The launch (and a lot of messiness surrounding it) and my family / the holidays sure do got me fucked the hell up on this release schedule! But! Good news! I have some words for ya!

On a serious note, going into the new year, my new goal is to get books 2-4 edited, artsed up, and released into kindle, and part of that means getting back to consistency. The bleeding from Patreon has primarily been due to how much my pace has slowed, I think, and how that's affected enthusiasm and people's attention. I'm intending to dive deep back into production as soon as the current storm passes. See y'all again soon! Hopefully in the next two days, so I can get at least something out for crimsmas for y'all!

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CURRENT PROJECTIONS ESTIMATE LIKELIHOOD OF DAMAGE TO PRIMARY INSTALLATIONS AT 0.03%. LIKELIHOOD OF DAMAGE TO SECONDARY INSTALLATIONS STANDS AT 17.2%. LIKELIHOOD OF FULL BLOCKADE AND COMPREHENSIVE COUNTER TO INCOMING DEATH MANIPULATION STANDS AT 88.7%. 

ALL CURRENT CAPABILITIES DEMONSTRATED BY APPROACHING FORCES DO NOT EXCEED MINIMUM THRESHOLDS FOR CHURCH BREACH-OF-PROTOCOL RESPONSES. ESTIMATED HIGHER-TIER / OBFUSCATED / HIDDEN RESOURCES REMAIN HIGH, BUT WILL INEVITABLY BE BASED AROUND THE METHODS THAT HAVE BEEN RECORDED AND CALCULATED FOR. THE UNEXPECTED IS WITHIN EXPECTATIONS. 

-Official documentation from the Department of Eschatology, Mortaria, Second District, Office of Bishop Ruk Citra

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There’s other little towns, like that one, scattered throughout the wastes. They seem to have created, or been born from, a necromantically aligned series of powers. Spells absorb ambient Death to power flesh-producing farmlands which are then transmuted into any number of other ingredients or supplies. Their wards, their magics, their constructions- all lesser forms of the wider applications of the magics thrown about by the Church. 

Splitting her focus in a dozen different directions, she does what she can to visit as many of them as she can.

It’s not nearly as direct as it used to be, back when she had multiple literal brains. Her current practice is born out of her work with arrays, designed and refined primarily by Li Shu, but adapted to her specific needs through practice. She sends her Death and will out into different arrays, which then connect to their relevant puppets, which come encoded with a massive dose of intricate, pre-designed movements and memorized enchantments. In each of them, a little bit of her mental energy fills in the spaces between those arrays, using a minimal amount of her overall capacity to improvise a sort-of realized form of a split-mind technique.

It helps that she’s not really using a brain anymore. She’s dead. She doesn’t need to route her thoughts through her neurons any more than she needs to route her sight through her eyeballs- she thinks because of her Death, not in spite of it. 

So, she just thinks more. And it costs more Death, sure, but she’s burning through lots of it anyways, and this, at least, is directly useful all the way around. With it, and with the arrays and puppet-bodies taking on the brunt of the cost, she’s already spread herself out through Mortaria’s lands, sending near-powerless parts of herself out and towards any signs of civilization.

In hidden ash valleys, she finds bunkers that dig into the ground, modernized infrastructure mimicking older catacombs. In broken mountains, cracked open and hollowed out, village structures interlock and extend out towards each other. Even on flat, arid plains, small clusters of buildings and magics can be found, far away from the more expansive structures Mortaria has created.

And there are cities, too. Vast ones, metropolises made of concrete and carved stone, of ornate metals and complex machinery. Most of them are very nearly intact, but they’re empty, abandoned, each and every one of them inhabited by a stillness somehow more profound than that of the already dead land all around. The few puppets she’s sent ahead that manage to find these ruins stop functioning before long, and it takes her a while to figure out why.

Those cities haven’t died. They’re not rotting or infested or echoing, they’re not dead, they’re gone. Finished. ENDed. Death has so saturated, and been so consumed, that it has left a void beyond void, a metaphysical reality. Undeath is one thing- this Stillness is another. 

Mortaria, like every other part of the Fallen Kingdom, is ENDing. 

They seem to almost take strength from that. 

Beyond the radioactive voids of some of the ruins, there are vast accumulations of power, wraith-flesh and conceptual energies saturating monuments and weapons that act as landmarks against the ash. Massive pylons of eldritch lightning, black spires full of clawing, sharp-edged machines that slash through the sky towards the approaching army, emplacements of artillery that devastate reality with each valley- each one has a tremendous amount of Death and Qi empowering them, and is not afraid to use either one. Concept and energy are both spent freely as they attempt to obliterate the approaching forces, failing to do little more than delay the advance. 

Which means, most likely, that’s all they’re designed to do. 

Each line of monoliths and weapons, acting like markers to retreat to or speed-bumps against enemies, is… impressive but boring. Non-cohesive. Each one is distinct, unique, and each one requires new techniques to break down- unless brute force is what’s most effective. At a guess, they’re testing the approaching army, using a methodical, mechanical approach, and trusting the landscape itself to bleed dry and weaken any invaders. 

And all throughout, the army ignores the lessers beneath them, the defenders ignore the lessers beneath them, and Raika walks among them, examining their formations, working on improving their arrays, and getting to interact with the living and unliving of this part of the Fallen Kingdom. 

In one place, she finds a small church, holding a place of prominence in the little town a puppet is passing through. Unlike other places of prayer she’s seen, often created in Mortaria’s signature brutalist architecture, this one is made entirely of wood, so old that large chunks of it have been reinforced with mold or built over with hunks of metal and stone. With the ever-marching war on the horizon behind her, Raika, wearing one of her puppets, walks in, finding the doors open and following the trail of presences.

Entering, she sees a few dozen, maybe a hundred people, all kneeling in prayer, pointing themselves at a window in the rear. At the back wall of the church, behind a pulpit, a window lies open, and through it, glinting in the distance, a strange sight can be seen. 

A single point of light, like light reflecting off of steel, from which emerge columns of smoke that rise to the atmosphere itself.

At the head of the church, a small, portly figure, their stomach distended with rotten organs and their face half-eaten, smiles at her. 

“Ah! A traveler! If you can enter such a sacred place, then surely, you must have been blessed by the Church above! Come, join us in prayer.

Raika, still clad in her puppet, which is itself clad in just a shitload of big cloaks and rags, shakes her head.

“I’m just passing through, and wanted to see if everyone is alright here. Seems you’re all… not too bothered by all the explosions, then?”

Several of the churchgoers, many in similar states of decay but most not, simply pale and haggard looking, look around at each other. Glances are exchanged, but in only a few seconds, most eyes drift back to the preacher at the front, his stole stained by ash and rot. 

“Why should we be, traveler?” asks the corpse-man, a lipless smile everpresent in his ruined face. “We stand under the auspices of the Fallen Kingdom, blessed with attention and protection from the Bishops and Arch-Bishops of the Church above. If it is our fate to perish here, then it is surely the Church’s will, and we offer our Deaths unto it, that others may be made safe and empowered. If we endure, then we offer ourselves nonetheless, that others may be made safe and empowered. Others, in turn, offer themselves unto the Church above, to have their Deaths sprinkle down unto us all, as ours will someday do for them.”

Raika tilts her head, looking around. Experience is the best teacher- she’s spent months now dealing with corpses, and it’s made reading people a hell of a lot easier. Even the strongest signatures in the church aren’t clergy material, capable of wielding their own Death against reality. They can wield the energy, sure, and the rot is clear sign that they’re compatible enough with it, but they’re not full corpses, made immobile save through will.

Several people twitch, and a few seem to hesitate, hearing what the preacher says- but none of them refute him, and all of them remain on their knees, praying. 

Doubt, sure… but certainty, too. Trust. 

“Well then, as something of a neighbor myself,” she says, “maybe I could lend a hand. Help make sure that, whatever else happens, the Church gets a little more of a chance to look at you all directly. If you let me take a peek at the arrays around town, I’ll leave you to your prayers and fuck off.”

At this, the murmurs are more audible, the uncomfortable shifting more notable. 

“Trusted by the presence of the divine is not the same as trusted to a task!” the preacher says, dull brown eyes looking out from the mutilated mess of his skull. “The Church may accept you within its bounds, allowing entry from a stranger into this holy place, but perhaps you might be amenable to proving your qualifications, before we extend such trust.”

She smiles, nodding her head. “Reasonable.”

With a flick of her wrist, corpse-flesh unravels, the illusion overtop of her puppet coming partially undone. A squiggling mass of worms writhes up, forming into a few basic runic patterns. A light array, followed by a heat array, glow independently, and then combine with a few lines of worm-flesh, leaving a small, glowing ball of comfortable heat hovering in the air.

“I’m not an expert, but I’m good enough at what I do that I can at least touch-up any arrays you might have that are starting to fray. If I see any gaps, I can fill them in.”

The smile extends out, and it occurs to Raika that maybe the pastor wasn’t smiling much at all before, and being lipless just made it very hard to tell.

“Ah! An esteemed one, brought to us in our hour of need by the auspices of the Church! Blessings upon you, wise one, and a curse upon my blind eyes which failed to see. Micha! Sarai! Come, escort our visitor- the Church blesses us all, but it blesses the productive first!”

At the pastor’s command, two members of the congregation stand up, both bowing politely to him and then a little less so to her. Not enough to be an insult, if she’s reading things properly, but enough that they’re making sure to honor their local leader more than her, which… yeah, makes sense. 

The two of them hold some of the same echoing, faint cold that lets Raika know that they’re capable of wielding at least a bit of Death. Her perspective on how much they can wield is all fucked up, though- neither one feels nearly as cold, as profound, or as “echo-ey” as Jin, and he’s… well, he’s a very impressive young man, but it’s not like he’s an expert yet. For a town like this, they’re probably strong enough to act as guards and escort both, especially when a stranger comes by offering help. 

She just nods to the two of them, then waves her hand out the door.

“Shall we?”

In a dozen different locations, the pattern repeats. Every time the approaching army advances, she’s already ahead, already exploring every inch of space she can find. Every day, the alien landscapes get more familiar, the patterns of it get less difficult to interpret. Through the eyes of puppets and the mind of a dead thing, echoing recursively with itself, she explores the world as they advance.

It’s fucking bleak.

It’s also distressingly normal.

People live in homes. People care about each other. People produce, trade, and consume goods and services. The nature of those people, those homes, and those goods and services is in flux, as has been the case everywhere she’s gone, but they’re also… kind of the same.

All that lives and thinks yearns for more, and cares about others, and hungers for similar things. 

Maybe that’s what being alive is. Caring, hungering, and yearning. Maybe not.

The Fallen Kingdom has a lot less people than the Overgrowth, than the Republic of Morae, and most certainly less than the Empire, but they still have small locations that hold activity. Massive industrial-scale farms of flesh, guided and watched over by small towns, or small communities that spring up around local churches and sources of power. Mortaria’s lands are far more barren than Viviae’s, than even Godsfall’s, but they remain more similar than they are different. 

Everywhere she goes, people are people. As alien and inhuman and different as they are, they’re people.

Everywhere she goes, things could be better.

The Fallen Kingdom has the magics and technologies to revolutionize the lives of everyone in it. The sheer amount of Death in the territories of Mortaria alone could probably power full-scale automation, like her puppets, easily, and she’s certain that there are better experts than her who could craft and enchant those same constructs. Even with the fact that their powers are tied to the concept of life and death, the profound duality at the core of what it is to exist, there’s enough power and resources already present to transform the existence of everyone around them.

And they don’t.

When she challenged the Church, Raika did what she thought would be accepted, rather than what made the most sense. A spirited debate? Direct duels? An honest, unbiased examination of the world from differing perspectives? That shit was never going to fly. But an opportunity to embarrass some of their own members? To flex their strength? To humiliate her and her ideology by force?

How could they possibly resist?

And in the meantime, the damage done to the terrain, to the civilians, to the people, those without enough power? It doesn’t matter. 

She directly caused the deaths of one thousand and eighty six people, and they called it bloodless. 

She brought an army of floating fucking islands against an entire landscape, and if not for her actively working to add defenses, the isolated little clusters of people would be wiped out, added to that prior tally. 

There are enough names, enough places, enough hidden corners and mysteries, that she could spend the next hundred years in just this little patch of wasteland and never find them all. But she doesn’t have time, but she has things she’s chosen to do, as do everyone else she’s involved, so those in power just roll over the world beneath them like it barely even matters.

On the back of an enchanted tent, larger on the inside, riding on the back of a street-sized spirit beast, Raika looks at her garden.

It’s always there, even when she hasn’t manifested it. Not like the Souls she’s eaten or her inner world (which she misses severely)- it’s more like a place in her mind. Her senses have translated into her almost-human ghost of a mind what she knows to be true. 

The garden keeps getting smaller.

She’s hemorrhaging Death. Ironically, that’s a bad thing. 

Even as she harvests energy from the clergy that don’t get out of her way quickly enough, even as she drinks deep of the war-games she’s brought about, she’s burning through her supply. Multiplying her thoughts, puppeting her constructs as directly and as carefully as she does, the arrays and modifications she’s using to protect the places they’re passing, all of it costs. That doesn’t even factor in the more direct preparations she’s doing, the weapons being crafted or ideas being perfected step-by-step. She’s intaking a constant stream of Death-aspected energies, drinking down Qi from the atmosphere around her, and even still it can’t keep up with the demands she’s placing on herself.

Now, every time an obsidian azalea-flower blooms, two more vanish from somewhere in the garden, and it gets smaller again. 

She’s been optimizing more and more as she’s learned, at least. Refining her runes and array-prowess, finding out which type of Death best fits each type of effect she wants, actively learning as she burns herself up, but she is burning herself up. 

She doesn’t slow down, though. If anything, she speeds up.

A wisp of energy taps politely on the outer bubble of her awareness, and she adjusts her attention to focus back on her “real” body. 

Tilting her head to “look” up, she faces Jin, who is smiling softly at the edge of the room of the tent she’s in. 

“We’re almost there. Are you ready?”

Raika laughs, very softly. The sound rasps, but echoes in the space around her, in the pockets of altered space filling up this section of the tent. 

“Close enough, kid. You ready?” 

He nods. “Defences are all secure. We should be pretty well protected when everything kicks off.”

“Good. You know what to do?”

“Duck, cover, keep myself from getting killed, watch carefully while you blow everybody up.”

She smiles, corpse-lips opening to pale bone. “Good. Let’s light some fireworks.”

Across the wasteland, a hundred puppets finish their work, modifying and securing the defences of a hundred little clusters of community.

At the head of an army, Raika gets up from where she was sitting, and, waving a hand, starts to pull forward the weapons she’s made of herself.

Across the distance between an upstart Bishop and Mortaria, the world begins to shimmer, then shake, then Change.