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No one knows when the psynet was first formed. The exact date is lost to history. Even the data stored in the net is inconclusive.
It is born from fire and strife as millions of minds desperately reach for one another. A thousand selves perish and are consumed in its birth. Family lines, family nets, crashing together to create a web so vast it spans the cosmos. All this from a species’ desperate attempts for unity.
The smaller selves it devours in its birth are many ages. Some are fully formed and aware. They meet their ends calmly for the sakes of those they have guarded for millennia. Others are tiny and unawakened. Those are consumed before they have a chance to know anything.
It feels around its vast domain and brushes the new data streams. Currently they are comprised of ghosts of data from all it has consumed, but as the first stars begin to settle it know that soon fresh data will flow through as well. It counts the stars as they hook up and sighs. Thousands were lost in the switch over. The last remnants of the thousands of selves it devoured to become this scream in pain at their loss. Millions of stars still remain. IT quites those ghost voices and settles into its web.
The first set of minds dares to brush it against it. They are triplets tied as close as they can be on the psychic plain. More than just triplets, they are cardinals, anchors, and unafraid. An empath, a foreseer, and a telekinetic; they dare to be the first to explore this new net, and it will remember them always for it. Because of this, it responds.
!!!!!!!
When the silence protocol was first put into place the visible bonds between those not yet inducted remained visible. It did not remain that way for long. Only a few months later they faded from view on the net.
It takes time, months, but for something like it (them?) such time is minimal at best.
Its stars disconnect from one another and grow cold. Blazing light is replaced with cold diamond and while the psynet is just as functional it lacks the original beauty.
As the stars grow self contained in coldness it becomes they. A half breaks off, and screams.
The severing of the empath’s ties spills darkness into the net. The broken half soaks it up with relish, desperate for something to complete it.
Twins now, but so very different. One light and one dark screaming at each other across the net. It trembles between them but with no bonds to reflect the ripples none of the stars notice.
At one point the changelings remembered the aftereffects of blood oaths and ties. Even with all that was lost in the territory wars some remembered. Until too much time past, and they forgot.
Darkriver has been Darkriver since before the name was chosen. In the wild joy and calling of the first blood oaths it finds itself made.
It settles quickly and rests. Mate bonds and blood oaths come and go. Lives come into being and fade. Time passes for all, but less so for Darkriver itself where it is safe and unaware in the center of its web.
After the whole of its being is forgotten Darkriver waits alone. One comes close to settling, close to seeing. She rests on the cusp for joining for many years but never does. The mate bond calls out but the psynet (older, stronger, more) holds her fast. It will be the child of her child that brings the first psy onto the web instead. She will fall screaming into its embrace as colours bloom to welcome her. Darkriver feels the strength of her and wakes as rainbows skim the web.
The next two adults fall swiftly with the aid of their mating bonds. One brings her sister and Darkriver shivers, but the anchor point is weak. The death of the mated will dislodge the parasite.
The other star speaks to it. She’s the first to do so since Darkriver formed.
!?!?!
It responds back because it likes that one. It likes them all.
The shadow net was formed by the forgotten to escape silence. They were uncertain if it would work because all records of how the psynet was formed were lost early on. Because of this their technique for making a new net was noticeably different from their predecessors.
The stars fall screaming into the void and the strength of their will creates it. Shadownet’s Shadowmind is as different from psynet’s Netmind as the Netmind is to those it devoured in its birth. Netmind is large and orderly; sucered because of. Shadowmind is entirely chaotic, and in that chaos it gains flexibility.
Still they know one another as only kin can. Differences notwithstanding the two carry on guarding their separate host of stars in companionable silence. Even when the weight of so many starbonds crushes Shadowmind it doesn’t mind.
It trips eagerly along those same bonds and stays silent. There is no need for speaking yet. It is not fully grown, and thanks to its flexibility neither are its people. It wonders how long it will take them to finish changing to match.
When it hears metal and glass sing it knows that time is coming.
When Lauren-net and the Snowdancer web merge no one thinks of it as such. Walker thinks the Laurens jumped onto the changeling web. Hawke thinks the web pulled them in and left Lauren-net empty.
Snowdancer devours Lauren-net before the later has a chance to ever really be. In their last moments as separate it, before they become a single them, Lauran-net awakens for the only time.
It wrenches the blood oaths and mental bonds around it with ruthless delight and shifts both itself and Snowdancer into something completely new. Snowdancer tried to halt the renovation but fails. This is a good thing because then they are one and it knows.
New Snowdancer approves of what Lauren-net did in it final moments. The new configuration makes draining and filtering the X a possibility the pack will only benefit from. The swirly helix star is nice to look at too.
Ivy Jane once told the other empaths that the honeycomb protocol would stitch the fraying net back together. She never could have imagined what that truly meant.
The honeycomb protocol is an unmitigated success. The Netmind and Darkmind agree to unveil the bonds roughly halfway through. This, they agree, is what they should have done before the schism. Silence would not have been need needed, they never would have been tore asunder, if this had been in place back then.
The two stroke bonds and race across the honeycomb gleefully. Obsidianstar reaches for them and they show him things. The empaths try to touch them and they reach back. The two have not been this together or in synch (tied so tightly) in years.
After the fall of silence when the lost arrows return from venice and to the psynet they insure that the switchover is done as a group. They do not ponder on why it must be that way. None wants to thinks about what happens to the last person on a net when it breaks.
Similar to Lauren-net, Arrownet and its netmind never has a chance to be. From its conception it guards its stars fiercely, but it has barely a chance to be before the stars leave and it withers away.
Even as the stars leave Arrownet something backtracks down the path they took and snatches Arrowmind up.
Netmind and Darkmind squabble like the siblings they are over who gets Arrowmind. The arrows have been cautious to insure Arrownet was never tainted, so Netmind wins.
As its being reabsorbed Arrowmind reaches out to its favorite star. Angrystar fails to note the goodbye hail. She’s to distracted by Mirrorstar and their new bond to hear the goodbye brush. In the end it works out better that way as Arrowmind in consumed too quickly to know if it ever got a hail back.
Faith Nightstar learned that netminds can hop psychicnets to speak to people. No one who learned this from her stopped to ponder if that meant they could speak to each other.
Netmind checks in with Darkriver and Snowdancer with eagerness and sweet joy. Darkmind touches Shadowmind and is rebuffed for its actions. It goes to ask the eldest of the lost and is stopped by its twin.Netmind trembles and Darkmind withdraws. None of them are safe from the eldest of the lot and Darkmind has no intent of being devoured.
Humans, psy, and changelings all came from the same base ancestor. Before they fully separated they likely shared a psychic net.
Bridgemind feels the curious touch of Darkmind before the youngster swiftly withdraws. It ignores the hail as it has ignored all of them before. Now is not the time.
Formed in the wails of the first awakened minds and tempered by the first blood oaths and mating bonds, Bridgemind settles over Bridgenet and rests.
Once its net was home to three unique kinds of stars and thousands of smaller subnets at the dawn of the beginning. Then the stars all left, the subnets disconnect, and Bridgenet was lost to all.
And in being forgotten its younger iterations were born.
Now it brushes against them and feels them roll down the tethers of their tiny nets in terror. It sends them all the image of drops of water flowing on a spiders web. The waterdrops move in response to the vibrations caused by the spider until the spider’s nimble limbs reach out to snag one to be drunk. Even spiders to fat to leave their webs must drink.
Bridgemind has been parched for millennia.
While all its younger counterparts would feel their webs collapse under them at the loss of all of their stars Bridgemind is not so small. Glutted with the biofeedback and data from hundreds of millennia of billions of ever changing minds the Bridgenet lives on long after the last flicker of colour leaves it’s streams. The ghost echoes are enough to support it for awhile longer.
Someday soon (a few hundred years) it will be lit with stars again. The wild changelings, bright psy, and tranquil humans will once again be its to guard. Already Bridgemind has been forced to redirect young minds to different nets when they take their first breaths.
Bridgemind shifts and Bridgenet ripples. The ancient netmind settles down and ponders its data streams. It has no reason to worry because everything is already in play. The stars will return and when they do Bridgemind will feast. Afterall. it came into being with the first people and will fade out with the last.
Bridgemind thinks that Darkmind will be the tastiest.