Brent Stinebaker
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37-11 The Offering
🕑 Added 2025-08-20 15:40:55 +0000 UTCListen son and listen to me good here, being a Shackler isn't about violence, isn't about bleeding and butchering and pounding on our fellow slaves like their sacks of meat, part of it has to do with the violence, but that part is like breathing, we don't think about it too much because it is what it is.
But what makes us a Shackler, the reason why we get to eat more while we get our pick of privileges and why the gods favor us above the other lowest is simple, we are here to drink the dark inside the hearts of men, we are here to drink it deep, and we are here to fill it with order.
The sisters and brothers might rule this place, but we are the wardens, the sisters and brothers don't walk the tunnels, the sisters and brothers don't swing the clubs, or flick the whips, but they are also not here to hand out the bread to mete out whatever passes for justice in this festering dark disgusting place.
Because someone has to. Because the masters can’t dirty their fucking hands. Because we have purpose—lightless and cursed as we are.
We aren't just the ones who beat on our brethren like their sacks of meat, we beat the right people, we cow them, and we don't need to hurt the others, you remember that, and you also remember that they need to hope, they can't be so scared that they are hiding things from us, they'll have to come to us, they'll have to look at us like we are hope, hope son, hope is the finest tool of tyrants.
-Words Unspoken by Naeko’s Father
37-12
The Offering
Ruptures.
That was the first thing that Naeko noticed as he emerged in, well, where the fuck the In-Facer brought him. He found himself standing at the center of a large disc. Within those discs were spheres of soul fire. Each one projected a string of mem-data as Naeko focused upon them. And as he studied their shapes, he let out a brief gasp. Those were Heavens. He saw their names, their Domains, their total thaums per cycle. He saw the users they were attached to, and whether these users were still living or dead.
And as Naeko looked around, he hunted for his own Heaven. But from his current vantage point, he couldn't glean any aesthetic details from the shivering balls of soulfire. There were so many of them. They were lodged in place, impounded around. A vast disk fused over the Nullstar. But Naeko knew that the disk was metaphysical. The second layer to the prison that the Prefect ruled, that the Infacer now dominated.
Beyond the edge of the disk, Naeko's eyes fell on the ruptures. Once more, the ruptures were spreading. Worse, the ruptures were drawn closer and closer. It was like watching infected arteries festering with rot and existential decay glide toward Idheim, glide closer toward the sun itself. As Naeko stared into their gaps, he felt his mind shudder. His wards reacted, but the trauma he sustained was far diminished as a burning presence broke it before it could fully settle into Naeko's mind.
"Thanks, Avo," Naeko breathed.
"He wouldn't need to thank him if he weren't staring straight into the Rupture," the Infacer chided. "Understand that there are certain benefits that come with allying with the burning dreamer, but still the best option to avoid extreme trauma is to simply, well, avoid it. Don't look into the jaws of madness."
Naeko turned away from the sprawling black of the local star system, and he found himself staring at the largest sphere of soulfire there was. But this one was not impounded in a disc. Rather, it was utterly surrounded, yet free to move on its own. The Prefect still resided here, connected to that central soul, that Heaven at the epicenter. But the Infacer had rewritten them. Usurped their position, and assumed his mantle as warden tyrant of this place.
And that brought Naeko back to the forlorn years of his childhood. And no matter what life threw at the chief paladin, he knew that nothing could be worse than heading back in time to that shithole to live through that madness and misery all over again.
"You know, sometimes I like looking at ugly things. I like looking at things that hurt my sanity, just to remind myself how good I have it." And then Naeko made a deliberate point to stare at the Infacer.
The mind let out something between a scoff and a sigh. "How juvenile of you, Chief Paladin. Truly, you never grow up."
"Shit, I think that goes for us both, doesn't it," Kahn sang, Naeko said. He referred to the in-facer sarcastically. But still, they laughed.
"I suppose. Well, isn't this pathetic? Having parallels drawn between me and a traumatized ape."
"Could go the other way around," Naeko replied. "I could find it kind of fucked up that something as super intelligent as you still ended up so similar to someone as broken and hateful as me."
"Oh, Naeko, you know what your biggest problem is?"
"That I don't decide things for myself," Naeko answered wearily. "That I keep waiting for everyone else to tell me what to do. That I can't let go of my grudges. That I can't let go of the past. That I'm too angry to be happy, too sad to commit to anger, too weak to change."
"Why, you must have been spending a lot of time with the Burning Dreamer," the Infacer said, after beats of surprise. "That all sounds like something he would coach you to say. But no, not this. Not any of those problems. What you have as a vice, above all other vices, is that you think you're worse than what you are."
That took Naeko back. "What?"
"You think that you're a terrible person," the Infacer said, "when you're barely a mediocre one with angry issues. You're unnaturally good at warfare? Fine. I guess that's unique for you. I guess that's unique about you. I guess that makes you a special little ape. But so what? Thine also exists, and she has done far more heinous things than you. Vales has openly admitted that you are the kinder person. Yet you seem to cast yourself as some kind of monster. Fragile little heart, fragile little ego."
And then the Infacer paused. "But who am I to say? When I am done, I will seek the sweet release of non-existence. I am, ultimately, no more than you, in that sense. I guess that makes you right to some degree. How loathsome."
"That gonna make you change your mind?" Naeko asked, almost tauntingly. "You gonna decide to live just because you're a little bit like me now?"
"Oh, hardly. But I am going to show you. Show you the beginning of the end."
And then the burning soul, the burning sphere that constituted the Prefect grew brighter. As it rose, so too did several other Heavens impounded within its grasp. And from them spawned miracles. Miracles that unleashed beams of fire across the void. From those bright beams erupted burning hawks that tore across the void, leaving the nothingness between the stars ablaze. And with every passing second, more of those birds ruptured forth.
They tore off into the distance, and Naeko saw something moving up there. A far larger shape, but also avian. It clashed against the birds using miracles Naeko couldn't quite see. But he saw that sphere of fire lodged within its head, and he knew what he was looking at. Avo, in the form of the Strix, was sailing the Prefect's prison from a distance. He was out there lurking, and a second thereafter, a series of hyper-accelerated projectiles impacted the star.
Payloads detonated. Something collapsed inward rather than expanding out. The light of the null star began to swirl as if a soup being, as if a bowl of soup being flushed down, as if a bowl of soup circling the drain. Singularities formed, and then the In-Facer called upon another set of Heavens, and after that, the singularities shattered.
And then more attacks came, nor more attacks, that struck from all vectors. Piercing noise filled the world, but it was silenced by the Infacer. More singularity detonations expanded around the sun rather than within it, and they too were broken. They too parted into bursting pieces as domains of space and force were used against them. And just then, a massive beam struck the sun itself, but it folded around the prefix, shaped as an enormous palm manifested into being.
"Were you looking for that?" the Infacer asked.
"Yeah," Naeko replied. "That was very nice of you to show me my Heaven. You gonna give it back to me now?"
"Probably not. I have need of it, you see. But ultimately, this is the smoke screen. This is not the consequential part. They cannot get in. Voidwatch. They are moving their Deep Ones towards me, but it must first disentangle them from the net they find themselves inside."
And the patch of the void cleared up before Naeko. The image resolution was improved. And it zoomed, that stretch of space zoomed in on something happening in the distance. Between the series of ruptures, a strange three-headed dog was trying to burst through, free. But the same dog was also partially fused into the structures. Its body resembled that of a geometric rose, and its paws hung limply at the end of the flower's horns.
A moment later, the hound disappeared as a dense cluster of ruptures crashed into it. And that dense cluster became a knot, until there was less of the world and more of the Sunderwilds. It seemed like destruction and entropy were winning, the veins pulled tight around existence, like a nest.
And while Naeko observed madness happening before him, a stretch of the spreading Sunderwilds was highlighted by the Infacer. And Naeko gaze fell upon that as well. He followed that traveling trail of color until his eyes fell back on Idheim, on a mess of extending ruptures rising from the planet. Naeko had seen Idheim from orbit a few times in his life, but he never recalled it being so choked, so drowned and rent from above.
A highlighted portion continued to glide down, and the paneling rendering, the representation of the system beyond grew crisper in detail, more magnified. Soon, Naeko found himself staring past the outer atmosphere of Idheim until it finally rested on a dense cocoon made from rent.
"So what the hell are you showing me now?" Naeko asked.
"Just wait for it," the Infacer said, sounding like a parent asking their child to be patient. "Just wait."
And then the cocoon cracked open, and Naeko learned it wasn't a cocoon at all. Rather, each coiling rupture became as if an echo head, and they were connected to a large body. It looked bestial one moment, and then it turned humanoid the next. A series of rings ridged, with hands reaching at other hands, with a singularity at its very center greeted Naeko. He felt his heart skip a beat. The creature's head shifted forms. A human face pushed outward from the jaws of a gargantuan ghoul, and that face was one Naeko knew all too well. “Veylis…”
She wore Avo's head like a helmet, and then her eyes snapped open. But rather than human irises, she had the scour of a ghoul, and flames spilled out from it. Flames poured down from her face. Flames, the color of the conflagration.
"Naeko," she breathed.
The chief paladin took a step back. He wasn't sure how, or she knew he was there, but something twisted inside his gut.
"It is causality," Avo whispered within Naeko's mind. "She is tapped into the tapestry through me, and I am tapped into the paths through her."
She stared directly at Naeko as if she knew where he was. Perhaps she did know where he was.
"Veylis," he breathed.
"We see you," Avo hissed thereafter. His voice slid out from within Veylis, and the high seraph offered the ghoul she was conjoined to an annoyed stare. Her eyes couldn't quite greet the ghoul, but they pointed upward nonetheless, seeming like a woman mad about the helmet she wore. It made her seem like a woman who was mad about the helmet she was wearing. "Again," Veylis began. "Again, we stand across from each other, and now you stare at me from on high. But we remain separated."
"We've been separated for years," Naeko said, trying not to swallow. "And what the hells is this?" He stared at the in-facer, but the ball of soul fire didn't react.
Veylis continued speaking. "Would you like to see your father again," Naeko froze. "What the hells are you talking about?"
"There is no deception or confusion layered inside my statement. It is simply a question. Would you like to see your father again?" And she looked at him with the genuine expression on her face. While she did that, more ruptures spread out from behind her, more echo heads materialized and blended with the tears that lined reality.
Naeko hesitated. He shook his head, but before he could say anything, she prevented him. "You doubt us. You doubt our power. You doubt that everything is ours to decide, ours to wield." She sounded almost angry.
Then Avo laughed. "Of course, he doubts. He cannot see. He has not seen. We must show him. Show him now. Show him the depths of ambition. Not even time will stop us. Not even time will stop us for long."
And then Veylis reached inside of herself. A hand, human one moment, clawed the next, passed into a singularity. She rippled with gold. And at once her body shifted. Suddenly, Avo was on the inside. Veylis was on the out. He wore her like a monster would wear human skin. And instead of a singularity in his chest, he had something akin to a strix bound in the bleeding cavity that would hold one's heart. He clawed the strix, ripping it open. And from blood came tissue and sinew and miracles.
It formed a shape, a shape that writhed, that kicked. The blood connected the shape to the strix, holding it as if an umbilical, an umbilical, an umbilical.
Naeko couldn't walk away. There was a significance to the symbology, a meaning to the aspect of childbirth he was beholding. And then came a loud gasp. "Oh my God." And a voice that sounded almost like Naeko's, but a bit too hoarse, echoed through the world. “Oh, gods fucking gods, son, where are you, son! I remember… I rememeber…”
And Naeko was backing away now. Backing away in disbelief and horror.
Mask of the Protagonist: Turn and face the darkness of your soul. Stand strong, Samir Naeko.
"Do you know, so," Avo asked, with Veylis echoing in the backdrop, "do you believe now?"
Neako just looked on, slacked-jawed for a long moment. “What the fuck.”
Comments
James Faulkner
Tftc!
