We are not apart from the world, and the world is not apart from us. View not the sunrise as separate from the dark, or fire as foe to frost. Think not knowledge to be the adversary of ignorance or peace any different from war.

If the tapestry is a chain, and we are not prisoners, but links along its breadth.

Feel this moment. Embrace existence. Know yourself to be joined to totality.

For someday, your awareness will end, and the strings of your patterns will unravel along new paths.

But something of you will remain.

Always, always remain.

-The Mad Monk Alsyim, Fallwalker

25-2

The Knower of Totality (I)

REND CAPACITY - 58%

There is no destruction like being forgotten.

Avo’s ghosts swallowed portions of the world, siphoning away the matter of the real as sequences. When the transference was complete, they were shunted across to oblivion, trauma shattering the ghosts that bore them, unmaking materials reshaped into memory. He became as if an invasive tide crawling across existence, drinking vulnerable patterns into himself and consigning them with his debts of entropy.

It was staggering enough to behold the mind and matter bridged in such a manner, but what left Avo dry of words was how his ontology was interfacing with the world. His Embodiment of Conceptualization was more than just an errant Domain. Rather, it was rooted solely in him and expressed itself omnipresently across all the patterns of existence. In such a way, it wasn’t so different from the Domain of Chronology, but there was a finer separation between the two.

Chronology carried all other Domains. Bore them along a perpetual vector away from pursuing dissolution. Conceptualization redefined. All the Heavens he assimilated existed within him. Their canons and miracles were present but lined by Conceptualization–as if only made real in relativity to the Overheaven.

[“The death of the illusion is when the illusion consumes the world itself.”]  The quote left Kae with a breathless tone of awe. The words were borne by an ancient Ori philosopher and explorer known as Suri the Vagabond. An experience within the loci glades that became the birthplace of the Glaives marked his mind. An ego only understood the world through perception; signals, details, and feedback. To this end, what matter did the true nature of reality hold if an ego felt something different?

The metaphor was inverted with Avo, however, as his perception could now be weaponized against the world. His cognition was no longer a construct borne only of the mental. There was metaphysical weight to its presence, and his awareness was now akin to a blade that could hew at the world, that could swallow the fabric of reality within the limits of his thaumic mass.

The Domains simmering within him numbered countless, but as their patterns flowed second to his Embodiment of Conceptualization, he faced another realization. He could control the emphasis each ontological skein held. Reconstruction and reimagination were one and the same to him.

Not so different from the paths. But rather than time forming the bedrock of his dominance, imagination proved to be his clay instead. And through that, he might just be able to go further, to form new Domains or alter Heavens already assimilated.

And at Kae’s behest, such was what he did.

Not content to merely experience one hell, he adapted a canon from his Woundmother and conjoined it with his mind. The patterns of his ontology folded over each other – shifted utterly. The Heaven of Blood spread its arteries down through his mindscape and connected to the sister branches of their hell. As this was so, traumas buffeted the entropy–infused structure and pinpricks of cognition into its structure.

EMBODIMENT: (CONCEPTUALIZATION) - 144,870 THAUMS/c

->DEFINEMENT: DELUSION (IV) - “ I am another. I am a trait stolen. I am a dream believed. I am falsehood performed. I am everything beyond myself, but still myself. I am a mask of the world, and the world will be a mask of me.”

->DEFINEMENT: HYSTERIA (IV) - “I AM A MOMENT ABSOLUTE. I GRIEF-CONSUMED, JOY-DROWNED, ADDICTION-CLAIMED, RAGE-UNFETTERED. I AM A SHARED MOMENT ACROSS MOMENTS. I AM A FORCE BUILDING ON FORCE.”

->DEFINEMENT: MEMORY (IV) - “I am what was. I am shadow that hides an effigy of the truth. I am the substance that binds families and cultures. I am the weight of stories past. I am the plascrete of all that has been felt, and the reference of all that will be felt.”

->DEFINEMENT: TRAUMA (IV) - “I am self-awareness broken. I am sense lost. I am a noise without reason. I am the death of structure. I am the shattering of the pattern. I am all that has wounded you.”

FOUNDATIONAL EDICT ESTABLISHED

EMBODIMENT OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

   ->EDICT: EXO-PARACOSM - THE ARK MERGES ITS AWARENESS WITH REALITY AND BEGINS ALTERING THE PATTERNS OF EXISTENCE USING ITS OVERHEAVEN OF CONCEPTUALIZATION. ALL ASSIMILATED/SUBSUMED DOMAINS, ENTITIES, MEMORIES, AND PATTERNS CAN BE MANIFESTED ACROSS THE COGNI-MATERIAL SYNCHRONIZATION. THIS IS THE FOUNDATION FOR MIRACLES TO BE EXPRESSED. THIS EDICT CAN WEAVE AND FORM LESSER CANONS WITHIN THE AWARENESS OF THE ARK TO THE LIMIT OF THEIR ONTOLOGICAL MASS.

PARADOX: THE ARK CAN NOT BE SEVERED FROM THOUGHT WITHOUT SUSTAINING EXTREME BACKLASH

EMBODIMENT OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

   ->EDICT: PATTERN-NULLIFICATION - ENTROPY-INFUSED TRAUMAS CAN NOW STRIKE AT THE TAPESTRY’S ASPECTS THROUGH THE VECTOR OF MEMORY. STRIKING THE MEMORY OF ANOTHER BEING OR EGO WILL UNMAKE THE CONNECTED ASPECT ENTIRELY. REND IS VENTED EACH TIME A MEMORY HELD BY SOMETHING OR SOMEONE CLASSIFIED [EXTERNAL] FROM THE ARK IS DESTROYED. THIS IS THE FOUNDATION FOR REND TO BE EXPRESSED. WARNING: EGOS AND OBJECTS THAT EXIST WITHIN THEIR OWN STABLE LIMINAL PARAMETERS CANNOT BE PERMANENTLY DESTROYED THROUGH THESE MEANS.

PARADOX: THE ARK CAN NOT BE SEVERED FROM THOUGHT WITHOUT SUSTAINING EXTREME BACKLASH

“Only two edicts?”  Avo asked. His cog-feed loaded no more information and as he looked within his own tapestry, he found himself of two layers. The first came apart to intersect with all his Heavenly canons. The other festered with the Hells and induced his traumas with Rend.

[I think these two “edicts” are the foundational pillars of your ontology,]  Kae said, trying to work her way around understanding his new nature. She was as lost as he. [Your awareness is encapsulating the world. Your memories–what you mentally understand to be existence are now overriding other parts of the tapestry within the areas you can affect. And your traumas. They can null egos. But now it seems they can “aspects” of reality using a person’s awareness as a vector. I–this–we must study this. Rend! Rend first!]

REND CAPACITY - 54%

ACTIVATING CONCEPTION OF ONTOLOGY…

EDICT OF _PATTERN-NULLIFICATION_

 ->REWEAVING DOMAINS

    ->APPLYING DEFINEMENTS OF (DELUSION); (IGNORANCE); (TRAUMA) TO ASSIMILATED DOMAINS OF (CHRONOLOGY); (SPACE)

    ->GENERATING CANON…

   ->CANON: ROADS UNTRAVELED - UNMAKES A SECTION OF SPACE IN REALITY BY NULLING ITS PATTERNS OF SPACE AND CHRONOLOGY VIA MEMORIES. THE SCOPE OF THE NULLIFICATION INFLICTED IS TIED TO HOW MUCH REND THE ARK HOLDS WITHIN. THE MEMORIES BEING USED TO STRIKE THE LOCATION MUST LEAD TO AN ACTUAL LOCATION AND POSSESS SYMMETRICAL DETAILS TO TAKE EFFECT.

      ->MORTALITY: EVERYONE WHO REMEMBERS THE AFFLICTED LOCATION MUST HAVE THEIR MEMORIES. FAILURE TO ACHIEVE COMPLETE COGNITIVE OBLITERATION WILL DIRECTLY INFLICT A CORRESPONDING AMOUNT OF DAMAGE ON THE ARK’S EGO.

The patterns composing his newest canon flowed out from a myriad of sources. His Fardrifter provided its Domain of Space, while his internalized Chronology canon of Augured Roads allowed him to subject time itself to absolute annihilation. All this was made possible through the structure that was memory. Memory: a mental reflection of the world recalled now able to overwrite existence that was through him.

He could barely conceive the depths of his new capabilities. Thus, the moment called for experimentation.

Even without being resurrected, he reached out from his Liminal Frame using his bridge to the Nether. An eruption of ghosts flooded into existence, their wisping forms slithering deep under conduits of cognition and the tapestry itself. The enclave materialized within Avo’s awareness with detail unmatched, and with it changed his ontology.

Patterns were submerged under his broadening Overheaven of Conceptualization, falling subject to the dominion of his awareness. The absoluteness of his cognition devoured the world around him like a tyrant, and all within his empire became known to him.

He saw the world from shadows and light, sensed the flowing of blood and bile filling baseliner biologies. All that move betrayed to him expressions of speed, and force arrived along vectors highlighted by his Phys-Sim, now capable of taking in thaumaturgic distortions. He forged a mindscape for this City of Light, his ghosts painting all the rungs in the finest detail, marking all nulled or wounded enclavers in the span of heartbeats. When he was done, there was little difference between the world that was and the world he remembered.

Yet, more surprise was yet to come.

As the enclave was synchronized with the metaphysical mindscape forged by Avo’s awareness, faint shapes began to trickle over into reality, slipping out from ghosts as ethereal shrouds. Some of them bore pinpricks of accretions – faint hints that they possessed their own egos. The templates were as if legion surfacing from one realm to another, and many found themselves surprised, glancing at the instability of their ghost-stitched forms.

Avo himself was more fascinated without how he could peer through them, how their budding egos contained an ember of Soulfire. Then, he noticed how it wasn’t just them. Enshadowed Heavens lingered alongside them, materializing as faint shadows linked to patterns stored within Avo’s externalized mindscape via his Edict of Exo-Paracosm.

A thoughtcast rushed out from Chambers, overcome by confusion and kneeling beside Kae’s body in the tower. Phantasmal chains were rushing out from him, and between the moments, he thought he caught sight of familiar faces hovering around him. +Avo? What the fuck’s happening, consang? Are you about to explode? You’d tell me if you were gonna explode, right?+

+Don’t think I’m going to explode,+  Avo replied, absent mindedly. His reply sent Chambers stumbling, clutching his head.

+Jaus! Fuck!+  Chambers cried. The absoluteness of Avo’s thoughts couldn’t be denied–couldn’t be unheard. He had to know them. He had to know that he was being replied to. He had to know everything Avo wanted him to know. It was like an explosion of understanding going off within his Metamind, and from him Avo gleaned new self-understanding. +Why… why are you so loud now?+

+Because my mind’s a Heaven now,+   Avo answered.

The statement made Chamber pause in consideration of the implications. A second later he just chuckled and shook his head. +Sure. Of course it is.+  A laugh escaped him. He couldn’t help it. +You half-strand motherfucker. I get my shit pushed in by your not-dad and I get the big sad. High Seraph whips you, and now suddenly your mind’s even more on fire.+

Avo hissed in annoyance. He wasn’t “whipped.” The Infacer had ambushed him, and he did what he could to escape. Turning his attention to Dice, he found the girl reaching up into the phantasmal streams with curiosity. On her shoulders, her kitten batted at the wisping ghosts with its ape-like arms. Stealing a glance from their perspectives and found the ruptures around his body slowly closing.

The scab of his resurrection was reasserting itself, but from it spread branching flame-spewing fissures that climbed high beyond the clouds. It was from the clefts of these fissures that his ghosts poured forth. And it was through these means that Avo would clean himself of his remaining Rend.

Isolating all the mentally broken enclavers, a storm of splinters broke away from the bulk of his being to restore the nulled. Flashing howls of trauma and scenes exposing the inner workings of his Heavens assailed him. With it came the discomfort of embarrassment as Avo found himself lacking before the people; it was because of him they suffered so. A recompense was to be issued later. A boon of their choosing. For now, he would begin with their mending.

He reclaimed memories that belonged to him and Kae, siphoning away the devastation of naked eldritch mysteries before realigning fragments of broken egos. Sequences fragmented beyond restoration were instead rebuilt through investments of ghosts.

The eventual cost was laughable. He was reverting baseline minds, after all. Not engines of cognitive complexity. Still, ghosts were a finite resource, and spending them made him wonder if there was some way he could source them through the tapestry itself – perhaps convert them through the assimilation of other patterns.

[It… should be possible,]  Kae theorized. [You’re able to affect the tapestry within you in ways that are… total and intricate. This is beyond anything I can convey. The discoveries we can make—tests we can run!]

For once, Avo found his excitement perfectly symmetrical to the Agnos’. “Yes!”

[Yes!]

“Yes!”

Repaired minds jolted within Avo’s grasp and the restored enclavers found themselves consumed by confusion and discord. Reflexively, Avo tried to mend their physical injuries as well. But as he called upon the Woundmother’s My Blood The Harvester, My Flesh the Symphony canon, he felt the Heaven of Blood reach out to change the world, but only affect the substance of his memories instead.

“Master… I–I cannot feel their body-architecture. They are beyond my grasp!”  True to their words, the Woundmother’s Saguninity swept through Avo’s Exo-Paracosm seeking to fill wounds and knit flesh, yet found itself a figment trying to alter fact.

[Avo, try… channeling the Woundmother through your Embodiment,]  Kae suggested.

He responded thusly, and as he did, ghosts trailed like wicks ignited with Soulfire into the Heaven of Blood, and it went from being a mere shadow in existence to a manifested Heaven. Its intrusion came with a momentary combustion. Every droplet of blood shivered in exhalation, and once again, the Woundmother was — greater than ever before.

No longer was it constrained to one place. Instead, it loomed over all the bodies it needed to heal, occupying multiple points in space through thaumaturgically ascended memory.

And with ghosts and Soulfire bridged, the Heaven of Blood dipped a tendril into the supple flesh of the stunned enclavers.

EMBODIMENT: (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

->Domain: (Biology)

   ->CANON: My Blood The Harvester, My Flesh the Symphony (III)  - ALLOWS THE ARK TO GROW, BLEND, OR EXTRACT ALL MEMORIZED BIOLOGICAL ORGANISMS AND STRUCTURES THROUGH GHOSTS

       -> HUBRIS: THE ARK MUST HAVE ANOTHER SOURCE OF REMEMBERED BIOMASS THAT IS APPLICABLE TO THE ORGANISM THEY ARE TRYING TO ALTER

Ghosts flowed alongside blood and wounds and abrasions faded with the sewing of wisps. Avo found his Rend about to climb by a percent, but the shared surprise between all his patients manifested as a continuous line of cognitive symmetry, and his  Definement of Hysteria amplified his traumas.

->DEFINEMENT: HYSTERIA (IV) - “I AM A MOMENT ABSOLUTE. I GRIEF-CONSUMED, JOY-DROWNED, ADDICTION-CLAIMED, RAGE-UNFETTERED. I AM A SHARED MOMENT ACROSS MOMENTS. I AM A FORCE BUILDING ON FORCE.”

TRAUMA REDUCED TO 0.25%

[What the fuck,]  Abrel moaned. [How is that fair? How?]

[Yes!]  Kae squealed, laughing next to the increasingly despondent Greatling in maniacal triumph.

With his Rend barely increased, Avo prepared to release all his entropy with a single blow. Suddenly, his awareness changed as his traumas began to swell. His  Edict of PATTERN-NULLIFICATION  assumed its place and resonated with all the cognitive damage swelling within he and his cadres’ wards, lining the sore minds of the enclavers. Another layer formed in parallel from his Exo-Paracosm  as Avo filtered through the memories of the city’s denizens.

He was at [53%] Rend. His Metamind registered his effective area of entropic release to be over one hundred and twenty-five kilometers. That was a vast swath of space to lose, but Avo had just the idea about which part of reality he wanted to consign to oblivion.

Sending a chain of splinters beyond the walls of the enclave, the fragment traveled far into the nearness of the Sunderwilds and began to imbibe its surroundings. Matter melded with memories, and he promptly filtered the memories over into the enclavers.

The Rend was within him, so trying to destroy his own memories would do nothing to clean him of entropy. However, links of mem-data were forming between the enclavers and his designated spot. As his splinters simulated the memories of the area in real-time–taking in the creatures lurking in the dark and everything from temperature, air flow, to luminosity–details materialized formed within the enclavers’ minds, and through them materialized Avo’s newest vector to vent the sickness that once promised his end.

As the recollections settled within them, he isolated these new sequences and promptly channeled a stream of Hysteria-charged traumas through his splinters.

Nullifying the memories a single enclaver had of the location alone would leave little more than a rupture. A tear no bigger than their body. But joined as a cognitive chorus through a shared recollection and amplified by Hysteria once more, all of Avo’s Rend circulated out from his ontology through trauma injections. Passing into the minds of the enclavers, the sympathetic link connecting them to the designated space flashed with Soulfire.

The remembrance came apart in puffs of ethereal powder.

Two hundred kilometers away, a patch of existence was no more, for a chasm tore across its expanse, with its laws of time and space flayed utterly by metaphysical unbelief.

Avo’s Rend emptied. His cyclers accelerated with a glitching shiver within his Frame. And along the tapestry itself, it was as if an unseen blade had fallen upon two specific patterns without hint, rhyme, or reason.

REND CAPACITY - 0%

RESURRECTION - 100%

Whatever delay incurred upon Avo’s resurrection ended, but as the fire spilled over him, he was not thrust upward back into existence. Rather, he moved to his own accord as the liminality of his frame grew cramped, and as a mind twice-ignited, he tore back into existence with a hissing laugh of triumph.