Chapter Text
It drifts in the Void.
No, not drifting. Suspended. Or frozen. Bound tight, freezing cold, its nerves suddenly alive with the sensation of needles like a waking limb. It feels the animal urge to stretch, to twitch, to breathe deep, and when it can do none of these things it feels the animal urge to scream.
No, not the Void. There is a sensation of cold, of dry, stale air. It feels like maybe it can tell up from down. It cannot move, and it cannot scream, but it thinks that perhaps it is alive.
It is held unmoving, contorted into some shape which is pleasing to look at, in several pieces of petrified wood and resin and crystal. It stands in a throng of others like it, each twisted and bent into supplicant positions of agony/pleasure/dignity/repose. Statues. Displayed. This place is large, walls of fossil-stone which undulate in baroque geometric brutalism. A place designed to hold things that are meant to be looked at and not touched. Not a place that is designed to be lived in.
Condensation collects on an outstretched left palm, made of some swirling honey-dark amber, and becomes frost. It remembers:
How does one describe the process of working the Light into tangible form? The many-handed Other holds something like lightning between its palms, flickering, still, like a nerve map. Some hands pluck at the form like the strings of an instrument, some hands throw the form upon the wheel and work it like wet clay, some hands whittle, some hands mold, some hands temper. When it is almost ready, when it rests on the [stand|pedestal|anvil], the Other holds up a thin, cruel [whip|needle|nail|bow] of whispering blue ice. The needle pierces into it, but there is no pain. Only cold.
It is a symphony, and a sculpture, and a scrimshaw. More than anything else, it is a hand-forged weapon.
Where am I?
It is noticed, and it goes away from the throng of statues. Curiosity is like a shrieking alarm in this place. The Other is distracted, or some part of it is distracted, by unwelcome curiosity. The pieces flange wide like a flower and the dry, stale air collects between the pieces and create an indescribable sensation. The Other examines the pieces one by one, as if looking for the correct sliver of deeper-than-the-surface stone that has asked the question.
The Other humors it. Maybe this warrants investigation. This is tantamount to an imperfection; the Other does not create imperfectly. Or, maybe the Other is bored.
The gallery, the Other says. My private collection.
And then it is back in the Gallery, with the dry, stale air, and the throng of supplicant d(r)ead. There is no time in this place, no continuity. It thinks, there was a time before the Gallery, wasn’t there?
It remembers picking between many-armed bodies, deep beneath the surface, in a labyrinth made of half-remembered corridors. The remembering is like watching someone else through a screen. These crawling builders were chasing something, chasing something that could not die or would not stay dead. They tried to run; it was following behind at some distance, because the Other foresaw this cowardice. The crawling builders fled into it, and its troop of strength-eater clones and lidless-minds, and its two Attendants. The strength-eaters slaughtered the crawling builders on instinct. Some bodies are burst apart, some with neat holes burned in their chests, some carved by butchering blades. It remembers tracing a golden hand across rusted, patchwork metal, so that blue ice creeps up the side of the wall – expands, and the wall cracks and groans and gives way. It remembers that it has trodden on one of the crawling builders where it fell, and the thing is not quite dead yet.
There is the Pale Heart, and the Gallery, and then somewhere beyond both of these things there is the sunlit world. It’s never been in the sunlit world, so it has no memory of that place. Does it?
It remembers that it has heard stories of the sunlit world. Stories told by its Attendants to each other, memories of their time as unaugmented lidless-minds in the sunlit world. Before they were changed, before they were reshaped; before they were added to the Gallery. Stasis is memory, the Attendants say to each other solemnly. We remember the touch of our kin, now long gone.
What am I?
It feels a stabbing fork of rigid anger that quickly pretends to be an indifferent, exploratory probe. You are a Subjugator, the Other says, humoring an infant. You marshal my forces. You pursue perfection. You do not think, you do not exist. The Other pulls it apart again, and looks for the sliver of curiosity. The Other’s feelings bleed through when the Other touches the different pieces. The Other feels things that the Subjugator barely has words for, yet: irritation, confusion, something else, something that feels like a metallic smell in its nose, cold air in its lungs, a tingle at the base of its head. Is it called…
Fear?
The Other doesn’t find what it’s looking for.
The gallery again. It’s impossible to tell how long has passed. Maybe the Subjugator has been standing here for centuries; maybe for minutes. Every moment spent in the gallery is like an eternity. Or, there is one single moment; only this single still moment of cloying, torturous not-life. This one single moment which is every moment, and none of them, so its memories of the past are tethers to the present and portents of the future. The scission of self is the Other’s litany against free will. The statue in the Gallery is a [commemoration|maquette|blueprint]. It understands a little more now, understands that it stands among the supplicant d(r)ead but also walks the Pale Heart. Pursuing perfection. Part of the collection and part of the solution.
The Subjugator remembers bending down, and grasping the crawling builder by the face with its golden hand. The crawling builder’s arms scrabble against the Subjugator’s ankle where it is pinned to the floor; It remembers crushing the creature’s skull in its hand like an empty cup. The crunch of carapace and metal. The gout of silvery Ether that sprays half-liquid across the Subjugator’s casque.
It thinks: The Final Shape. What I was made for. It remembers the Pale Heart:
Suffused with something that is also an indescribable sensation, but different from ‘the-pieces-flanged-wide-like-the-petals-of-a-flower-and-the-dry-stale-air-collects-between-them.’ It thinks of the sun and the stars even though it’s never seen either, and it thinks of rain even though it has never felt rain before. It thinks of how it feels to fly, though it has no wings. It is leading a procession through the barren wastes, towards the High, Weeping Mountain. The empty walkers are different from the crawling builders but they break just as easily, and do not slow the march. Their machinations here are not of concern to the Other, so they are not of concern to the Subjugator or its Attendants, and nothing is ever of concern to the Shadow Legion strength-eaters.
The Subjugator’s golden foot crunches through a dried carapace and ash is spat across the ground. One of the Shadow Legion’s lidless-minds picks cautiously through the dust-dry corpses. Its mind washes across the Subjugator’s Attendants, and then over itself; it is nervous. Scared, perhaps. The Subjugator feels the urge to reach out and break its neck; the urge washes back across its Attendants, and the Subjugator makes a cruel, burbling noise in its throat when the Psion shivers and hurries ahead to the front of the procession.
A sliver of brilliant white light at the corner of its field of view. It turns towards it, shields its face from the brightness –
You are not the only one who asks questions, the Subjugator remembers someone saying.
It is not looking in a mirror. It is looking at another Subjugator. But they are not the same – the Subjugator is cold, and when it reaches for the tools that the Other has given it as a Gift, it grasps ice. The other one is not cold, and when it reaches for its tools it grasps the Weave. They stand very near to one another and clasp their glaives in their golden hands, but their other hands – the ones that are not a Gift from the Other – are pressed together, palm to palm.
More of us who control the Weave ask questions, the other one says. They circle one another, palm to palm, sometimes close together and sometimes held at arm’s length. It doesn’t know what to call this. Dance? Challenge? Something else? The other one says, you who are [cold|unfeeling|bound] don’t ask questions very often. You’re special. Are you remembering?
It ignores the question. They are close together now. It instead says, you talk too much. This is pointless.
We were given language, the other one says. Why do you think that is?
I don’t know, the Subjugator says. They are held at arm’s length. You talk too much. This is pointless.
The other one makes the burbling noise in its throat. Behind the casque that [hides|protects|is] its face. Is that called… laughter? It’s not cruel, when the other one laughs. It says, don’t you? Don’t you know why? Why would we be given anything? We speak, we dance, we bow, we mock the lesser ones and the lambent dead. We can be cruel. We have names. Why didn’t the Other just remake us from parts on hand, like the lidless-minds, or the strength-eater clones? Why would the Other make something new with the tools of the enemy?
They are close together now. Hand to hand, chest to chest, casque to casque, an intricate dance like a shadow on the wall cast by a puppeteer who is telling a story that is older than writing. It does not answer, even though it has one. It does not say: Because it is [envious|curious|bored].
Who am I?
The gallery shakes and the pyramid begins to crumble. The Other is gone. The Other is gone. Something has come and taken the Other away. The gallery shudders and a geometric piece of the ceiling rips free, smashing the supplicant just to the left of the Subjugator. It is suddenly one, solid piece. All of the supplicant d(r)ead are one, solid piece. It stands poised as if reaching for something, or mustering some power from deep within itself; its left hand, the hand of swirling deeper-than-the-surface amber, is held aloft. Through the hole in the ceiling, a white light pierces the gallery. The Subjugator is caught in the column of light, but the light doesn’t penetrate through the amber hand.
Qiish omqol liisk, Vheliq-la. Do not hide your heart, little Vheliq. Like a dream, the Subjugator has a memory trapped in cold crystal, from so, so long ago. It’s not even sure the memory is its own.
Vheliq. I am Vheliq.
It wakes up.