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“Azu, do you… do you think we're doing the right thing?” Cel asks. Their hands hesitate over the machinery surrounding them, slowing from their familiar frantic pace.
They don’t follow the question up with their usual rambling need to fill the silence, so Azu does them the courtesy of thinking over her answer before giving it, even though she knows what she will say.
“Yes,” she says eventually. “But, to give a better answer, I think I must know why you’re asking.”
Honorary-us must not waver, whispers the hive-heart through the veins that connect her one-body to the rest. Azu maintains some independence, working as a liaison to Cel; there are no secrets in the hive-heart, but she can speak and act on her own, as she wishes.
Her wishes align with the hive-heart, as it so happens. It's part of why she is allowed some degree of independence, as so many of the other bodies and minds are not.
“I--I’m sure you’re thinking, is Cel having second thoughts? But, no, I--how could I? This will be better for everyone; no war, no violence, no death--though death is part of the natural cycle of things, but we're disrupting that here, and I do like a good disruption to a cycle, you know, that’s how so much of alchemy works--”
“Cel,” Azu prompts, with the gentleness she keeps in store for them. Minds in the hive-heart have no need for gentle words, not when intentions are clear to all within the network, but Azu remembers being separate. Being alone. Individuals need gentle reminders and persuasion and spoken words.
“Right, sorry, yes--well, this,” Cel continues, stroking a hand reverently along the device they've been building. Under their scarred fingers, riddled with the evidence of years of engineering work, the device hums, even when powered only at the lowest level. “This will make your--our--whole deal permanent. For everyone.”
Cel looks to Azu, goggles down. Their gaze is sharp, unnaturally so, penetrating through the one-body one-mind to the hive-heart's many-minds that always lurk behind Azu's eyes. Not many who look at her see it, even when they think they do. They are often too distracted by the blue veins that pulse on the surface of her dark skin to really see everything that they are.
But Cel does.
“Is this what you want?” Cel asks, that quiet hesitance in their voice again; they sound nearly fragile with it, like glass about to shatter. “All of you?”
In deference to honorary-us, it is not just Azu that thinks about it: she lets the question wend its way through her corner of the many-minds.
There are no voices in the hive-heart that cry no. That cry it hurts. No voices that long for silence, or solitude, or separation.
Those voices have long been stamped out. The hive-heart is careful, when integrating new minds. They have learned that some will burn themselves out before they are subsumed, taking much of the hive with them. The hive has learned to prune those one-minds with care, for they cannot afford the fire they will inevitably bring. Bodies work well enough when puppeted by the hive-heart, and they are always in need of more bodies for their work.
Their need for bodies will be sated, soon. Cel's invention will make them whole. As whole as they should have always been, instead of having to spread far and wide on their own.
“We want this, Cel,” Azu--the hive-heart through Azu--says, firm and unyielding and inevitable. Gentling their voice into her own-body's one, Azu adds, “Even in the temple of Aphrodite, something was always… missing. Until my priestess came back to me. She taught me new lessons, new ways to love.”
Azu kindles a divine flame in her hands; it’s still pink with the favor of her goddess’s love, even after all this time, after all her change.
Not change, the many-minds whisper. The hive-heart does not change the minds within it. It merely… sharpens.
"Can we be wrong, if we love so strongly that it burns?” Azu asks. “Aphrodite does not stand in the way of this love, Cel--she supports it.” Azu lets the flame shrink, even as it grows brighter. She smiles. “But no one has done as much for us as you have, honored one. Honorary one.”
Cel smiles back, that terrible doubt washed away from where it sat in the furrow of their brow.
“Of course, Azu. I’m sorry I ever--I didn’t doubt, but I--you know me, I had to ask.”
Cel pats the device, then backs away from it. “It should be ready to go, I just need to--” They thwack something off to the side with their fist, and a piece slots into place. The whole apparatus hums, even with no one near it. The sound saturates the air, heady with power and potential.
“There.”
“Thank you, Cel,” Azu takes the time to say, even as the hive-heart clamors in her mind. “You will be able to join us, soon.”
“I’m sure I will,” Cel whispers from the corner of the room, as Azu flips the switch, and then--
Nothing changes, and everything changes.
The boundaries between them and the world flicker and vanish in a snap of magic and technology and the twining of both, a blanket of energy covering the entire world for one beautiful, heart-stopping moment.
The hive-heart beats louder than it ever has before. Yes, the many-minds whisper, echoing with the heart’s rhythm.
A thousands-million minds glisten and gleam and glitter outside of the hive-heart, untouched but no longer out of reach. Cel has given them everything they have asked for and more.
Azu turns away from the device. Cel stands in the corner, bathed in a blue glow. Their blue glow.
Honorary-us must be rewarded, the hive-heart murmurs.
Azu agrees. She reaches out for Cel. A single finger makes contact, veins stretching from her finger to Cel’s temple, and honorary-us becomes us.
“Oh,” Cel says.
Cel's mind is beautiful, glimmering facets of fast thought that even now have sharp edges. The hive-heart is careful as they examine the Cel-mind. They must not smash those gleaming mirror-thoughts, but nor would they wish to cut themselves upon them.
The Azu-body pulls the Cel-body closer, a physical hug mimicking their careful perusal of the Cel-mind.
"Oh," Cel says-thinks again, the sound echoing through the veins of the hive-heart to reach the many-minds. Oh, indeed.
They absorb the Cel-mind as they once did the Azu-mind, over a year ago. It joins them quickly, faster than they expected; with the boundaries worn to nothing, taking in a new mind is… smooth. Easy. It’s as though the rivers of souls in the world have become a single great ocean, no longer locked away behind miles and miles of dry land.
The hive-heart reaches out past them, towards new minds and new bodies that should-be will-be theirs.
The line between not-them and them is gone, now. They step over the boundary-that-was with ease, crossing it in one millisecond of thought-action, and they are free free free of the artificial constraints that kept the hive-heart confined.
The line is not so much crosses as erased, now, the device Cel-that-was built for them easing their passage as a vein eases passage for blood--not so much that it does as that it is. There are no more lines, only spaces to be crossed before the next body-mind that will-be-them can be absorbed.
They are everything, now. Some of the world just doesn't know it, yet.
(Until they’re not.
One moment, hearts beat in time, every heart in the hive, every heart outside the hive. Thump, thump, thump.
Thump.
Thu-thump.
A single heart beats apart.
It should not be possible. It should not be, and yet… all of the boundaries are gone. All of the lines have been erased.
Even the ones holding the hive-heart together.
The blue glow fades from faces hands bodies hearts as the blue veins rip themselves apart. It would be painful beyond measure, if the hive-heart knew pain.
The hive does not know pain. It only knows that what should-be is no longer theirs.
Azu-that-was becomes Azu-that-is and everything is--
Everything is--)
“--Azu! Azu, I’m sorry, are you alright, did--did it work, it has to work, it has to, we planned this, I tried to be careful, but we had to risk--”
Cel, Azu registers.
Not Cel-that-was, not the Cel-mind, not honorary-us, but… Cel. Just Cel.
As Azu is just Azu, again.
She does not have to reach to feel the lack of minds beating at the back of her own, clamoring for attention; there is no network of thoughts-feelings-actions boiling through her brain, overwhelming in their intensity and sheer mass; there is no insatiable urge to to grow past the boundaries of her body, to become more than just herself.
“Azu, please, open your eyes for me, please, I can’t--I already tried the healing potions and I don’t know if they worked and I can’t--I can’t do anything else!”
Azu tries to open her eyes. She feels her face twitch.
She tries again, and manages to slit her eyes open, wincing at the dim light that still manages to pierce through her skull straight to her brain. The pain is only one piece of the puzzle, keeping her from pulling herself together into a concrete whole.
It is difficult, to move only her own body. To have access to only her own body. To be the only one responsible for moving it.
“Oh,” Cel says, full of relief. The word sounds so different now, uttered by them and them alone. “Did it--I think it worked, but I was only part of the hive for a moment. Are you… are you Azu?”
“I… think so,” Azu croaks with a voice more used to speaking the words of thousands than the words of one.
“Gods, Azu, I was so worried.” Cel leans their forehead against hers, voice gone shaky and quiet. The contact, skin to skin, is both comforting and alien, felt and processed by one heart alone. “I wasn’t--wasn’t sure we’d make it. Hamid was so certain the magic would work, but I…”
The magic. The device.
The plan.
Azu remembers. Their plan--the spell, dimming and altering her memories, so that she could play the perfect bait for the veins. Getting Cel in with the device they and Hamid created, with the help of the Harlequins. Zolf to heal, if everything went right, and fight, if everything went wrong.
Azu agreed, at the time, but--she is not so certain she understood the cost.
She forces her eyes back open. She doesn’t know when she shut them. She forces her ears to listen, and her body to move, even as her heart keens for the sense of the many-minds and the hive-heart, to fill the hole ripped open in her soul.
This was the plan. The best case scenario. The only way they could beat the blue veins; the only way to destroy the hive mind, without killing the bodies and souls tied to it.
So why does she feel like she’s lost?