Mage Tank-Chapter 237: System Addendum #8 pt 2

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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: [Supreme General Diathemon Tyrianaeonis]

ADDENDUM NOTE: Imperative #2 - The System shall ensure its own survival.

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Diathemon went still, reviewing their shared sessions in his mind. “You have drained Hysteria of much mana. I have seen you extract at least one void sphere, but if you sought only wealth from your sibling’s blood, I would think you’d have declared success with your experiments.”

Avarice continued her work, showing no reaction to Diathemon’s words.

“I must assume there is something other than mana you wish to harvest,” said the lich. “Something more valuable than the currency of the Old Ones. Perhaps you seek a fragment, such as the one taken from Hysteria’s chest.”

“The edges of the wound frayed,” said Avarice, “but I do not hunger as Nothosis does. Tearing more meat from the bone is beyond me. This machine has been built to pacify; it was never intended to butcher.”

Diathemon turned to study the Deiphage Golem’s head, watching its mana flows as the construct siphoned power from the imprisoned avatar. The lich thought the moans were more distracting than the interruptions had been. “I was not involved with the Deiphage project,” he said. “I have no insights to grant you.”

“I do not wish for insights. A witness is sufficient. Your observations are fair trade for the asylum you have been granted.” Her Icon met the lich’s eyes, her own alight with excitement. It was a strange expression on the normally dispassionate creature. “Tell me what is different this day.”

Diathemon paused and looked at the floating image of Hysteria. The lich walked around it, soaking in every detail. He stopped and gestured at the small splinter missing from the avatar’s sternum.

“The fracture is two millimeters wider than it was yesterday.” He dove into his memories. “This is the first time the wound has expanded. This is the first time it has changed at all.”

“Indeed,” said Avarice. “What would cause this?”

Avarice’s tone suggested she had her own theory, but she wanted Diathemon’s thoughts before she biased him with her conclusion. The lich felt something stir in his chest and experienced a moment of painful nostalgia. It had been a long time since he’d worked with a competent lab partner. Avarice hardly counted as such, but there was a familiar tang to today’s interaction.

“Avatars are embodiments of concepts,” he began. “Wounds upon their person are performative, primarily a deception to imply weakness that does not exist. Any display of injury from Hysteria would naturally be an illusion or mental manipulation, due to the nature of their concept. However, Hysteria’s manifestation has been restricted by the Deiphage Golem, and the avatar’s magicks are negated. They have been kept in a state of perpetual drain, which has been shown to halt the regeneration of an avatar’s Deific abilities. That is the core purpose of the Deiphage project, and the mechanism whereby various avatars are kept contained within The Cage.”

Avarice nodded and gestured for him to continue.

“Thus, the presumption is that we are currently seeing Hysteria’s anima, without deceit or trickery. The embodiment of their soul in the physical realm should be as unchanging as a universal law, bending only to forces of incredible influence, typically that of gods. Even so, when a natural law is bent, it recovers the moment that influence withdraws. Hysteria’s soul should have repaired this wound in seconds.” Diathemon ran fingers over the seams of his robe while he thought.

“An avatar’s soul is conservative,” he continued. “It cannot grow in excess of its conceptual bounds. A force has kept the fragment separated, and the drain from the Deiphage golem has prevented Hysteria from releasing dominion over the fragment. Hysteria would be conceptually whole, but divided into two parts, unable to reunify or regenerate. This would explain why the fracture has been stable. But now it has widened… Curious.”

Diathemon trailed off as he studied the inscrutable symbols on Avarice’s wide slate.

“Has additional essence been lost?” he asked.

“No,” said Avarice.

“Then the widening of the crack is a distortion?” Avarice didn’t answer. Diathemon hadn’t expected her to. “It must be. In that case, Hysteria’s manifestation is changing. It’s destabilizing. They are incomplete while unable to heal, causing them to be misaligned with their embodied concept. But why? The distance to the fragment should be irrelevant. We’re getting deep into the theoretical, but so long as the whole acknowledges that it is complete, no such thing should happen.”

Diathemon’s eyes widened. “The fragment could be gone,” he said. “Somehow destroyed or banished. Hysteria’s current confinement prevents them from harvesting additional divinity through the System’s breach, suspending them in an incomplete state. Their remaining divinity is unraveling as a result.”

“Excellent,” said Avarice.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She began tweaking several formulas and the wide slate lit up in red and purple hues. The machine’s artificial voice began babbling at her in harsh, frantic sentences.

“What are you doing?” asked Diathemon.

“Yeah, sis, whatcha doin?!” Hysteria shouted, frantic.

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“The record of your hypothesis will be of extraordinary value, so long as we can support it,” she said. “This Deiphage Golem has been deployed to shred and suppress Spiritual magicks. I have disabled the safety protocols that stop it from shredding souls as well.”

Diathemon took a step away from the golem’s jaws, which began to glow brighter than the sun to his mana sight. “Even in their current state, Hysteria’s soul is unfathomably dense,” said the lich.

There was a rising screech coming from the imprisoned avatar.

Avarice smirked. “That is why I augmented the golem’s power supply with three additional void spheres.”

“Three?!” Diathemon shouted. He continued pacing back from the Deiphage Golem. The marble around it had begun to melt. “It will overload! You’ll obliterate every soul on this blasted moon!”

Avarice quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say that you had no involvement with the Deiphage project?”

“It’s billions of mana! You’re running enough power to fuel an empire through a half-broken relic!”

“I have taken that into consideration,” said Avarice. She gestured at the slate. “Your civilization was not the only one to reach a high level of technological development. Many before you achieved heights of which you couldn’t dream. The golem will not overload, I have made sure of it.”

Diathemon withdrew his staff and was on the cusp of teleporting away. His forces were spread across the moon’s surface. It would take too long to gather them all into his range. He could only grasp a fraction of them from where he stood.

He held the spell half-formed as the image of Hysteria began to break.

The orb held within the golem’s jaws–Hysteria’s prison–was too bright for his mana sight to make sense of, even when he suppressed it to the meekest of levels. But the image before Avarice was crystal clear. The fracture in Hysteria’s chest began to widen, and microfractures throughout Hysteria’s soul emerged and enlarged.

The drain from the golem tore splinters of multi-colored essence from the avatar. Such a thing made no sense to Diathemon. The golem drained mana, not soul. Where was the avatar’s essence even going?

Hysteria’s face morphed from a skeletal visage to a swollen warrior, enraged and tearing at the sphere’s edges. The man’s nails tore off and flowed away. They became an ancient woman, tears flowing down her desolate face as her skin was flayed. Then they were a teenage boy, hair and teeth dissolving under the golem’s onslaught. They became a thousand people, each being ripped asunder in a thousand ways, growing younger, growing smaller. Hysteria was an infant, then a fetus, then an embryo, growing smaller yet until they disappeared from mundane eyes.

But Diathemon could see the world in a way that few could. He watched with macabre fascination as cells undivided, the avatar’s expression reduced to the smallest unit of life, then smaller still. Organic compounds became elemental, elements were reduced to individual atoms, and then it all disappeared from Diathemon’s vision, sucked away by the golem’s insatiable pull.

Diathemon released his partially formed spell ad the construct began to power down, venting excess mana into the air in lethal amounts. The trees around them wilted and decayed. Avarice’s insectoid slaves had long since fled.

Diathemon tried to puzzle out what he’d just seen. Hysteria hadn’t merely pretended to be those people, those cells and compounds, the avatar’s magicks had been blocked. They had become those entities at the deepest level. It was emulation as profound as the most talented mimic, and perhaps grander than even that.

Were those the Delvers who had ascended, whose rise through the heavens gave birth to the avatar? If so, why were there children and unborn babes? Had Diathemon witnessed their identities flow back to their beginnings until they were erased?

Avarice broke Diathemon’s reverie and motioned for him to follow as she began to pace away. The Elder Lich approached and joined the avatar as she walked around the golem. She waved a hand and a masterful illusion withdrew from the center of the chamber, one that Diathemon had never noticed during all of his trips to this chamber. The scattered illusion revealed a Delve obelisk, monumental in size and radiating more power than Diathemon had ever seen from one of the ancient devices.

The Deiphage Golem was attached to the obelisk’s exposed interior with a mess of thick cables and wires, all heavily inscribed with dazzling weaves. The dark pillar pulled the vented mana from the air, keeping it from poisoning the rest of the arboretum.

Avarice touched the obelisk, her Icon’s hand steaming from the contact as the hands within her shadow danced with excitement.

“System Core 2,” said the avatar. “Was the delivered product satisfactory?”

Good morning, Avarice. Yes, your delivery was more than satisfactory.

Diathemon read the notification with a creeping discomfort. What had Hysteria been turned into? What use did the System have for it? He felt like he was spying on some dark cabal, whose secrets he should not know, and couldn’t understand why he was being shown these notifications in the first place.

“Were you able to secure my payment?” asked Avarice.

Of course. I hope you use it wisely.

Children are a blessing, after all.

A panel near the base of the obelisk opened, and a gleaming cube floated out of it to land in Avarice’s palm. It seized Diathemon’s attention as though the universe had become a single vector that inescapably led to the object. It was a pure white vessel of determinism, moving through time and space as the only thing that was real, the end of all paths.

The avatar looked the cube over, eyes gleaming. She licked her lips and a shadowy hand reached out to caress her treasure. As a dark finger brushed against the cube, it disappeared. But not before Diathemon had the thought to identify it.

Deific Soul Essence of the Seventh Echelon

The Elder Lich swallowed and then glanced at Avarice, who wore a self-satisfied smile. “What has just occurred?” he asked in a whisper.

Avarice took a breath and looked up to the ceiling where a real-time image of the planet hung above them. The storm still raged, but its edge had come into view with the planet’s rotation. The eastern seas of Arzia glinted in the sun.

“The death of an avatar,” she said. “And the wrath of a new god.”