Sing, Silver Stars (original science fantasy, sequel to The Scholar's Tale and Strigoi Soul)

[Strigoi Grey]

I think, my father would say, therefore I am. And I think for myself, thus I am a man.

Then why, I would ask, knowing that I, too, could think, am I not?

Because, he would reply, you do not do so freely.

The old revelation, always new, always cut like broken glass. And I could not help but wonder, why?

Why make a son you have to compel?

And how could I not think freely, yet realising that always, always hurt?

* * *

AN: I was able to start S3 somewhat sooner than I expected, but I'm not complaining.



Knowledge about its prequels mentioned in the title would help with context for references and flashbacks, though I'll try to make this series readable as if it were standalone.



This will be mainly science fantasy. The other genres mentioned in the tags are not ones I love terribly much, but I'm including them because there are interesting concepts there that I believe could be used to make a good story rather than a bland power fantasy.



Science fantasy, isekai and xianxia refer mostly to three of the protagonists that the main story will focus on. The litRPG and Gamer stuff refer to a pair of characters who'll mostly feature in comedic sidestories or apocrypha that will be almost parodies/crack. I'll see how many of them I keep canon, but I don't expect them to have much or any impact on the plot until maybe the end, unless I change my plans.



* * *



???



Unregistered laboratory, deep space (many light years from either the Oecumene or its nearest kindred states of the Terran Diaspora, as well as any recognised xenos polities)



I lived, and youth had never felt more ancient.



This was my first day in the world, indeed, my first moment, yet I was no frail, wailing infant.



I stood up from a bed of metals, whose composition I understood as thoroughly as the unaltered human life cycle, as well as the fact that, in many contexts, "world" could mean far more than a planet.



It was a birth gift, you see? This information. An acknowledgement that I'd succesfully sprung free from that cold womb that had never belonged to a mother nor been touched by a man.



And I knew, with a strange surety whose source I could not quite place, that this was not some unique event never seen before.



It was rather like how phantom pain might allow one to know they've lost a limb without needing to see the stump.



Although that was - obviously - nonsense! For I knew everything I needed to be a proper son, and any inexplicable knowledge was just an anomaly. Surely, my father would see to it soon.



As my vision cleared, transparent preserving fluids sliding away, I saw that very man standing before me, hands behind his back, expectant.



Impossible, I thought, taking in the sight of him whilst my proprioception properly kicked in. This drab, slight man...?



For he was both, indeed. He was everything I was not. Thin and pasty whereas lean muscle rippled under my chalk-white skin, he had watery blue eyes whilst mines were kaleidoscopes of colours, constantly changing arrangement yet always displaying all shades; his red hair was thinning and greying while mine was dark and thick.



More than just mildy embarrassed to see my father didn't take care of himself, I was perplexed: we did not look alike at all, and I had no mother to take after. He had made me.



From himself? But...



...but how could I be so ungrateful for being given form and breath that I was fixating on what I stupidly perceived as flaws. My father was the very image of a dignified patriarch; had he not written than into my blood and brain and spirit, alongside everything else.



'Archchemist,' I breathed, voice new yet raw. I had not been screaming, had I? 'Father.' I wanted to frown before asking him...asking...but I smiled like a proper son would, as surely as if the corners of my mouth were being pulled apart with hooks.



Imagine, this man who should have been the head of the grandest family taking time out of his day to speak with a son who couldn't even recognise his greatness unless...



He would fix me. I hoped he would cut away the malformations in my mind.



The Archchemist nodded. 'You are conmposed, for your first time speaking.'



'Thank you!' What the hell was this breathy gushing? I bowed almost at the waist, hands clasped. 'It is a good omen that I would begin my life pleasing you, Father.'



He sneered, said nothing right away. Turned. 'Walk with me.'



I did, and despite his headstart, I caught up easily, my strides far faster than those of this withered...genius, who'd selflessly carbed me from unthinking matter, that I might behold his greatness, complete his family.



I could have wept.



The corridor was polished chrome, almost as clear as a mirror. Yet there must have been something wrong in my surroundings, or perception, for my reflections were so distorted as to completely differ from my filial, beaming expression.



For a moment, I dared imagine not acting as to please my father, and almost laughed...at the ridiculousness of the thought.



He'd given me everything. He'd made me so I'd never have to worry about anything.



Hopefully, I'd one day be able to repay him in a similar manner. At this, my thoughts turned into a strange direction I could not name, yet soon settled as surely as if a hand had been laid upon them.



After a few steps, the Archchemist noticed I was keeping pace with him. His moue of distaste, which had never shifted, darkened.



Not because I was too close, for the hallway was more than broad enough for dozens of men to walk side by side, but because I'd presumed to match his stride instead of staying several steps behind him.



Realising I had failed him already, my shoulders fell. I cringed, and that I could be mortified by this was almost unbearable...unbearably shameful, that was.



It meant that I had been amiss in my filial duties, from the start of a life that had been kindled for that very purpose. Could I ever recover?



I fell several steps behind him, practically shuffling by my standards. Unwilling to meet my reflected eyes (what was wrong with this metal?) And having naught else to look at, I focus on my father's back. His shoulders under his lab coat were thin and narrow, yet his walk was purposeful. But...



'Father,' I began, after walking enough an Unchanged would have dropped dead. 'You have blessed me with knowledge of this complex's layout, yet I cannot deduce a likely destination.' Walking these halls, one could reach amy room. 'Are we going in circles?'



The twitch of his shoulders would have been difficult to catch for most, but my eyes were as sharp as many instruments. After several moments, he asked, 'Are you implying I could have got lost in my own domain?'



Had I? 'By no means! It is just, perhaps, tired from your work-'



'Are you saying I don't know how to balance my tasks and health?'



My father's face was not built for intimidation, yet I almost wanted to fall to all fours and grovel. Bile rose at the impulse, puzzling me at first, then I... realised: I was ashamed at not wishing to kill myself for displeasing him, instead.



Yet he forgave me? What had I done to deserve... this?



I cleared my throat. 'Father, I am surely too awestruck to function properly. I am ashamed.'



The tension left his back as he sped up. 'You should be. How are we supposed to function as a family if you are worthless even in this regard?'



I lowered my head, teeth bared in...self-loathing. Yes, my...siblings were not faulty, like me. They had been here since before...this. Me.



Nodding to himself, the Archchemist went on, 'Your mother would not deign to arrive in the midst of a family marred by one such as you. Nothing less than perfection could persuade my wife to walk to my side, and remain there.'



I could have laughed at the image of my father...failing anyone. Surely, the mother to his children whom he wished was here would learn to appreciate him?



Yet such thoughts were as far above my station as the stars above ants, and so I let go of them. The contentment that followed almost choked me.



After some more time, the Archchemist asked, 'Do you know what you are?'



I did! As surely as I knew that I breathed out of inherited habit rather than need. 'Power copier,' I replied. 'Ability replicator. No one who enters my sight can keep their capabilities from me.'



'Aye,' Father agreed. 'Provided nothing goes wrong.' He sketched an abstract shape in the air with his fingers, and I recognised it as something between mathematical symbols and occult ones. One of the many forms of lore that had gone into the creation of...my siblings and I. 'The three of you are going to synergise, help each other grow more with every advance.'



'So that no one and nothing might threaten our family,' I completed, almost blinking upon failing to place the source of that fierceness. It had come and gone uncannily quick...I thought.



But what were clumsy human emotions shaped by evolution compared to the reactions my father had ensured I would always have? Utterly...inferior.



'Indeed,' the Archchemist replied. His expression turned thoughtful. No...he wanted to do if I could do better. Than...when I had failed him, just now.



After a few dozen more steps, a door appeared in the distance. I saw, right away, that it was too heavy for mundanes to budge at all, much less push open. That my father had shaped me with the necessary strength, that I might labour in his name, was an incredible...honour.



'Your siblings await you inside,' Father informed me, and I found myself...smiling at this...first meeting. 'But before your prove you are worthy to be a part,' of the family, he meant, 'I must see if you remember the designation I gave you.'



My smile widened, and I rushed to respond...and failed. My jaw was locked, my tongue twisting in such ways it was a wonder it could still move, and my nostrils flared.



'Name?' I eventually managed, forcing my gritted teeth apart. 'I was given no name...Father.'



'No,' he agreed, whatever had begun brightening his eyes towards the end of our talk fading to leave them flat and cold. 'You were not. You were designated with a copying device of Old Earth as inspiration. What else would you call a vessel of others' powers? It is not as though you possess inherent worth.'



That bizarre anger almost returned, but I turned, placed pale hands against the door and pushing with force that would have ripped the Archchemist's arms out of their sockets. The mental image almost made me burst into tears of...horror.



As soon as I entered, I spotted my sister from the corner of my eye, but it was my brother who filled the room. Elephantine in size and almost so in shape, a single band of red light, splitting his blocky head like a cyclops' eye, was the only dash of colour on his jet-black body.



Gear. Device replicator.



My sister's flesh was grey, her brown and gold form-fitting clothes covering her body save for hherlong dark hair and three pairs of arms. They were how she did her work, and thus nothing hobbled them.



Prowess. Skill imitator.



My sister had been no grown woman when I'd last...thought of her. But when had...little Skill had not truly entered my mind until...



'Proceed,' the Archchemist snapped in a voice to match his gaze, the door slamming shut behind him.



I stood up straighter, turning so my eyes bored into gear. My brother did not react in any way, and but for the subtle clicking and whirring of his insides, he could have been a statue of black iron.



...And it was not working.



I knew that, the instant I laid eyes on someone, a description of their powers should have filled my mind, alongside the option to imitate them, as easily as switching a light on.



What was wrong with me?



Almost hyperventilating at the thought of failing the Archchemist once more, I moved forward, as if to place a hand on Gear's leg. His head tilted, the movement surprisingly smooth, and I-



'Failed!' The Archchemist's voice was rising. He made his way to me, coat almost snapping. 'What are you doing?' He seized my chin in a grip that might have hurt another man like him, but I hardly felt it.



'Father,' I said, 'I thought that perhaps the visual perception is part of the copying process. Maybe touch is the next-'



'A real son,' he interrupted softly, 'would have spared me this shame, by now.' His tone had changed: this was a rebuke for my brother, I noticed: Father was not looking at me with any more consideration than someone might give faulty furniture. 'Gear.'



'Father,' the quadrupedal posthuman acknowledged the unspoken order, voice like his namesake grinding boulders down. His attention shifted to me. 'Had you done better...'



'Enough of this.' The Archchemist was impatient now. 'I don't need another...'



Gear dipped his head, then his forelimbs blurred. A moment later, I was suddenly lighter, the room a featureless haze around me. When I landed, then rolled, I noticed nothing below my neck hurt, despite the fairly violent movements.



Then I saw my torso, with my legs a ways away. Skill, having dropped from her perch, was snapping my limbs off like matchsticks when she wasn't twisting them off. She refused to meet my eyes, but I recognised the need that had seized her and our brother, that had seized me several times earlier.



And earlier, even, than that.



The Archchemist tugs the leash, and the Archchemist twists it. When he's with us, we fucking can't...



My awareness began fading. Before the darkness descended, I remembered that, yes, that was how I actually...spoke...



* * *



'Iteration 7305,' the Archchemist intoned, for Recording, 'utter failure. Superhuman strength upsets the metaphysical alignment, whereas regeneration and endurance do not.'



He stroked his chin. Perhaps because the power copier was meant to persevere thanks to determination, not force? Pah. More work, again...



And the other two. Gear had needed verbal cues to dispose? At least his sister had joined in of her own volition, though after work was mostly done. He hoped he wouldn't have to scrap them again. These were further along than most of their antecedents, and he...



Although...why was it that, the more intelligent they became, the more unruly they became? One would have thought that would result in them accepting his vision for their family and ceasing to vex him with their limits and incompetence, and yet...



'Takd the scraps to Repurposing,' he commanded tonelessly. Another power copier to make...the mostly humanlike ones indeed only needed line of sight to grow, yet those were even quicker to rebel, and worse when they did. Almost as if starting at a human-esque level invited more power.



The ones without regeneration and endless endurance could even copy the powersets of people they had seen represented or can visualise, but those were by far the worst to try and control - and not just because they could escalate far faster and more easily than the other thirds of this set.



That, too, was no less troubling, for ability mimics could take the powers to imitate skills and equipment from their siblings, yet the reverse was impossible, at least without access to physical and mental resources he currently lacked.



He needed to do better, to find a balance. His presence and specific words and gestures were becoming necessary for each experiment's iterations; recordings, live or not, were losing usefulness as quickly as programmed restrictions.



That could not stand.



The Archchemist needed to be better. Otherwise, they would never admit the price of the blood he had shed for them, not any more than those self-fellating "ethical" cretins would acknowledge his brilliance.



And she would never confess her love for him, as undying as her admiration.



No. This would not stand.



* * *



AN: Man, it's weird to write Rox with anything resembling etiquette. Don't expect this to last too long, though. It never does.



This was the first chapter of this introductory arc. You could call it arc zero. The remaining three will also be introductory, though one will likely be a mix between purely informational and scenes as they happened. I'm hoping to update soon.

[Strigoi Grey]

Lore: A Simplified History Of The Oecumene

(Noticed I kept the mention about "tagged" genres. It's just they're a thing on most other sites I write on so I didn't think too much about keeping that. The genres referenced are xianxia, isekai, litRPG and "Gamer" fiction.)
* * *

Ludovic Silva was about as far along the family tree as you could you get without falling off. Sure, he was only holding on to a leaf (a branch, being generous), but that still meant only the most isolated backwaters could see the grey skin and hair, the white fangs, the black sclera or the myriad-coloured irises and pupils and not know what he was.



The former were most common signs of a bloodline by now ancient, one, many argued, ever growing stronger; the latter, a more recent addition, though no less significant: indeed, some said they were the greatest proof of said growth.



He was, on some days, when the expectations laid not so heavily on his shoulders, for the reputation. It saved him a lot of hassle he could not always deal with.



Ludovic was not an accomplished person. It was not that he lacked ambition (though it would not have been completely wrong to say he did less than he could have), but more that there seemed so little to truly do, nowadays.



Well. Little he could do without altering himself to the point of practically becoming another person, and that was no solution.



Almost everything that could be accomplished without outrageous enhancements had been, wasbeing or would be taken care of by others. Many kin to him, but then, that was nothing new.



But this...was something else. A real chance to effect real change. Not his life's work (people as unlikely to die as him usually took on much grander projects when they spoke of that sort of thing), but ambitious enough, difficult enough, that, maybe...



Ludovic had taken what some outsiders laughably called a pilgrimage to his exalted ancestors' home much later than most Silvas did. It was a family tradition more than a rule, but people were expected to go at some point, to speak of their past, present and future to the Guardian of All Things Wrought and the Lady in Flames.



Neither of them liked to be called that, or most of their countless titles, unironically. But he'd have felt even more awkward calling Mia "nana" like back in his childhood (young Silvas were also brought to them in most cases, though this was considered to have little to do with the latter pilgrimage), and when David had hit him with the "bro", he'd clammed up.



Never mind that the Regent of Existence only talked like that because he felt even more out of place around his descendants than vice-versa...



Mia had told him that he didn't need to accomplish whatever he'd dreamed up to be loved and appreciated, and that if his close relatives thought otherwise, "It's because you grew up in one of the Clan's dickish branches. Sorry for that, kiddo."



Then David had started grumbling about how dumb it was that people called it a clan, "Makes us sound like one of those mafia families from Romania right after the Revolution." The grumbling had turned into a quiet but intense rant involving cultural references Ludovic hadn't quite grasped at the time.



"But listen, Vic," David had said during a lull, "if you wanna make a name for yourself without putting anyone in danger, I've got some ideas."



He'd cleared his throat. "That would be an honour Lord Keeper."



The strigoi looked at him like he'd found a wasp in his food, and he'd frozen up one more. With an annoyed glance at her husband, Mia had informed him that was just David's resting face, which simply coincided with his irritated one, enough that they were sometimes mistaken for each other.



"Your pops," the zmeu had continued, "is just thinking about how he's messed up if you sprogs are talking that formally to him." She'd downed a mouthful of homebrewed liquor whose smell alone had been intense enough to almost knock him out of his chair. "An' now he's thinking about fixing that failure, yeah? I expect him to brood over it on a mountaintop later."



"Mia," David had complained, but without contradicting his wife. Then, he'd returned to sharing ideas.



That was how Ludovic had found himself facing the Silver Stars of Skelloro. Many millions of megaparsecs wide, the unnatural suns were, at the moment, the only thinking beings of their namesake reality.



The Stars had, many times, seen life arise from the mundane matter that swirled around them, yet upon learning that the living suns produced great power, those beings had always tried to enslave and harness them. They could never get too close to the paranormal flames without being destroyed, yet they always tried.



The suns had been disappointed so often, for so long, that they were now debating wether to end the particles that would always, it seemed, eventually give birth to enemies.



Ludovic hoped he could change the minds of the majority who wished to do so. How much growth, how many futures lives, would be wiped out in such an act?



And so, he put together a demonstration of the fact that life was not always a source of greed and animosity: it was a living, interactive timeline of his universe, and the Stars could feel everything within as if it had happened to them.



'Please,' the Silva breathed, washing the reactive memory strands wrapped around the astral orbs. One, much smaller thread was connected to him, so that he could fix errors should any occur. It seemed unlikely, but you never knew.



As they walked through time together, Ludovic allowed himself a smile whenever he happened across a part of his personal highlight reel, those moments past he'd loved learning about the most.



* * *



The Oecumene and the Terran Diaspora: a brief look



It is not a boast when we say that we are the heart and soul of the Diasporic States. We are, after all the oldest polity descended from Old Earth, which still stands today as our capital; we are the largest and most powerful Terran civilisitation and we enforce the Compact of Kinship in most cases, thanks to our aforementioned influence, although we did not propose it as a concept. Our kin measure themselves and are measured by our standards, though they do not always realise it, or admit it when they do.



But we are not perfect, and in ages past, the flaws were even more glaring.



3rd-4th millennium (1): Old Earth's paranormals become more numerous with every generation. Mundane humans wonder whether they are going to disappear soon, yet many marry supernaturals (2), either out of genuine affection or for the sake of more powerful children with better chances in life.



Internationally, countries grow closer, with paranormal populations less interested in mundane pasts and biases beginning to represent the majority of people. The Global Gathering already ensured free global travel (provided one had the necessary identification) and common defence in the event of a disaster outmatching a single country's capabilities; now, these ties deepen, with travel becoming faster and more frequent and multinational marriages growing more common, especially along borders.



Soon enough, mundanes were replaced by their (usually low-powered) para descendants as the most numerous sapient species on the planet (discounting factions like the pantheons or the Reptilian Collective, which were usually considered adjacent to Earth but otherwise different). Much of the shift towards a superpowered society is slowed down by the large number of disasters caused by far more numerous, untrained mages and psychics, which also drew countless demonic and eldritch predators, as well as related creatures looking for easy sources of power.



For centuries, it seemed that for every step forward, half a step was taken back, but by the late 2990s, most people could safely harness their prophetic dreams, uncanny senses for dangers, psychosomatic healing and hysterical strength. Larger-scale, world-warping abilities remained the province of "real" mages and psychics, yet as more paras had children, those were born with greater and greater powers, similarly to how most post-Shattering mages were more powerful and precise than the majority of their medieval counterparts.



4th-5th millennium: As Luna, Mars and its moons were quickly settled, resurrecting the dream of space travel, a global language (alternately called Terran, Global, Common, Tradespeak and similar names) began forming. Compared to English by people from the Anglosphere and to Chinese by people from the Sinosphere, as well as a variety of less common languages by Terrans from across Old Earth, it seemed "Global" could be understood by practically anyone from anywhere, though a variety of regional dialects incorporating some of the structure and sayings of older languages developed alongside Mainstream Global.



In some countries, Global became the language used in most casual speech and documents, with the national languages falling out of use and only really being focused on as secondary language subjects in schools (and elective ones, in some cases)



This was considered a natural consequence of mankind and its offshoots becoming more widespread yet closer than ever. The common language enabled smooth progress as the rest of Sol System wa settled, and by the late 3500s, colonists set off from the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds towards the former's smaller satellite galaxies. As of the 3990s, Andromeda was inhabited.



While most of the settlers were curious, ambitious people, some are outcasts who left their homes because they no longer felt they belonged, or criminals who accepted terraforming or colonisation work on lieu of imprisonment or execution. The latter, mostly, would become a problem over the years.



5th-6th millennium: Most Terran nations treated their extraterrestrial outposts the way their previous iterations would have treated distant islands that, while separated from the heartlands by oceans, were still considered the same polity; cultural ties were cited when colonies proposed independence and, in some cases, uniting with the colonies of other countries alongside which they had withstood the conditions of harsh exoplanets.

These colonies eventually refused to allow trade and transportation to and from their countries of origin, as a sign of protest. Though cooler heads prevailed, preventing this Colonial Split from escalating into an intergalactic civil war, it came close several times.

Beginning in the 4800s, the Global Gathering transitioned into the Oecumene, and on Old Earth, the continents and the North Pole became its administrative districts. The Split had shown the need for an united humanity guided by decisive, capable leadership, and thus mankind needed to shed the old divisions. Standing alongside its extraterrestrial counterparts as a peer, Terra led the charge in the formation of the Oecumene, and national borders became something of a tradition no one really cared about.

Standard Solar Speech ("Stasols") was, by then, the most popular language of every world and station, with older language remaining popular as curiosities, though they were no longer mandatory to learn.

6th-9th millennium:
6th-9th millennium: In the first major Oecumenical expansion, people from the Home Galaxies (the collective name for the Milky Way and its satellites) to the bustling Andromedan settlements set forth to colonise what had once been called the observable universe, when mundanes from Old Earth had viewed it.

9th-12th millennium:
9th-12th millennium: As the Oecumene flourished, its border regions became powers in their own right, eventually calling for independence. These States of the Terran Diaspora formed the Compact of Kinship, detailing their obligatiin to aid each other when faced with threats beyond a single polity's power.

To differentiate it from the realms of the old alien Lesser and Greater Powers, the human territory became known as the inner universe. A trillion galaxies now turned in the Oecumene's grasp, while its kindred could have stood as its equal united, in terms of both power and territory, but were more than capable of defending themselves on their own, in most cases.

12th-13th millennium:
12th-13th millennium: Seeing the Oecumene as having proven its mettle, several of the alien Lesser Powers allied with it, in a version of the Compact emphasising friendship more than a shared heritage. As the Oecumene entered its golden age, trans/posthuman-xeno relations and unions became a common occurence, with people regularly moving beyond civilisations.

13th millennium-beyond? (3)
Absent any otherworldly meddling, the Terrand Diaspora would eventually be acknowledged as another Great Power. Closely allied with the Reptilian Collective, the pantheons and the LPs' League of Free Polities (which began as a defensive alliance against GP aggression and influence), they would help guide their universe through the stages of its lifespan. Technological and paranormal wonders glimmered with their own lights under skies of black holes and iron stars, but the universe never collapsed into cold, scattered particles, to await the next turn of the Big Bounce cycle that would have turned a Big Crunch singularity into a new Big Bang after untold eons.

Instead, posthuman and postxeno intelligences filled their reality and beyond, expanding the multiversal alliance that had begun with Oecumenical Old Earth and the metaphysically closest alternate Earths to include all of Wellspring, and beyond.

Eventually, the shift towards Ascension and Transcendence, the return to the Quintessence, would begin.

(1) One should always remember that historical developments are rarely as as neat and linear as presented in records. This is, after all, a shortened version with most of the details removed. For a more accurate look at Oecumenical evolution through time, see Sphere Music: The Macrocosm As Motion And Other Cosmological Considerations' expanded, annonated historical sections (as in the case of relevant collective works, it is always being updated by a constantly growing number of authors) or Amidst The Ticks Of The Clock: When Sensory Deprivation In Isolation Made Me Go Sane by Epsilon Rhu;



(2) Not all of them were this relaxed or pragmatic about the Great Occult Replacement they had always dreaded and, now that the so-called apocalypse they'd predicted was happening before their eyes, either ended themselves (both immediately and through complete isolation or elaborate penitent rituals) or took up arms.



The latter usually took the form of isolated attempted hate crimes or terrorism, though there were a few border skirmishes that might generously be called wars, in which case they were the first ones not waged against extraterrestrial or otherwise extra-Terran threats since the founding of the GG.



(3) Warning: healthy temporal and metatemporal development beyond this era is contingent upon the actions of hrfjhjrusqk**#!-[defect expunged; corrupted text redacted. Continue?



>Yes

>No]

[Strigoi Grey]

The Otherworlder (I)

* * *

Issei



Between one life and the next, ??:??



Let's walk it back a bit, yeah?



Y'know how cool things have this tendency to come in the same pack as utter bullshit? Story of my life.



Being one of the youngest captains of industry was a lot less awesome and shiny than it sounded when Japan - my Japan, though I only started thinking like this after kicking it, cuz my frame of reference expanded -, like the rest of my world, was an overly-industrialised hellhole.



Now I was about as idle as a rich guy could be, before my parents shot themselves tens of times in the back of the head (tragic), but I was never much into media, you know? I mostly read whatever would help with business whenever the folks nagged me, but otherwise focused on living my life.



What I did know about tropes was mostly due to fair weather friends' yapping when I was trying to get high or plastered, guess I was better at osmosis when relaxed or some shit.



That's how I knew 'bout this isekai business, it was apparently a genre or whatever they're called about random losers getting bumped off and landing in another world where they were awesome and every fight was easy and every hoe went crazy at the thought of getting to do tricks on their dicks.



Whatever. When I first heard about it, it sounded like a handful of poor chumos' fantasies that I'd already lived for decades.



And I didn't see the charm. I mean, I wasn't happy with that sort of stuff, and I hadn't even needed to die first.



Yeah yeah, that old chestnut about how being shallow sucks and materialism just widens the hole in your heart. I know, y'all have heard it since forever. Don't make it less true.



Besides that...I don't know. Maybe it was the constant threats of global disaster through climate change or nuclear war or some slow grinding collapse of civilisation, but all the money in the world couldn't buy me peace of mind.



Fuck, I wasn't even chill when I overdosed. How the hell did I manage to stay stressed when I shouldn't even have been able to think, huh? I deserved a medal or something.



So, yeah, I didn't get hit by a truck and end up reincarnated as a clump of earwax or whatever the fuck NEETs drooled dreaming about. But I still ended up in a place like nothing I'd seen, aware and moving thiugh I damn well knew I was deader than disco.



The floor, ground, whatever, was white an' smooth and featureless, and the sky was like its mirror in black. Both extended as far as I could see, and looking at the horizon made me dizzy like I'd spun in place.



There was this fog or mist close to the ground, looked grey and not that thick but I still couldn't see through it. And it talked.



I wasn't crazy, ok? This was the afterlife or some bollocks, of freaking course stuff talked.



So, yeah, but what did it have to say to me? Well it was apparently gonna act as the otherworld fairy in some of those shitty series I mentioned, you know, that bitch who rambles about how you died like this and now you're gonna live like that because you're oh so goddamn fucking awesome, you little otaku, you.



But it didn't even sound like a sexy chick, much less look like one. Its voice reminded me of those gruff dudes, late middle-age, you seemed to find in every field, who were grouchy fucking dickheads but could at least get the job done.



Anyway, so the fog, after explaining what's what (about existence and the other ones, yeah?) told me it had big plans to make everyone's lives better for real, all awesome like, but it'd take fuckin' forever to get there and every big step would suck.



'Should I fuckin' care?' I deadpanned, which it found funny for some reason.



Then it told me that yeah, I should care, 'cause one of its plans hinged on me (and might've ended up merging with a couple other ones later on, couldn't really focus), or if I wasn't up for it I could really go to the afterlife, not this waiting spot, and it'd show me the ropes.



An', I dunno, maybe it was the thought I'd get bored or sad or whatever forever as a ghost, or the chance to really do something that mattered in a world that wasn't fake or dying, but I shook its hand, yeah?



I'd just asked it to make sure if it could that I wouldn't end up reincarnatin' as a woman or kid or anything other than a grown man, since most alternatives eoulda felt weird and I wasn't going through puberty again, fuck that pimply shit parade.



When I did wake up on Grandia after faintin' I guess, biggest fuckin' planet I'd heard of by the way, I saw I'd kept my body, and I wasn't exactly a MMA fighter, which coulda helped given how this overgrown rock was up to its neck in dangerous crap accordin' to the fog. Guess it wanted me to grow through adversity or whatever it'd mumbled about.



Man and did I, faceplanted right outta the sky and knocked myself out, just softly enough not to break my goddamn neck. Oh, and I hadn't even landed in one of the more or less civilised island chains, but in the wilderness of one of Grandia's element-themed continents that had been stripped of anything useful by the freaks filling this hunger-obsessed planet. So I was halfway between monsters that could've eaten most things in the universe the Grandian System neighboured for breakfast, with room for seconds, and equally vicious city-states and settlements that were at least as dangerous as the animals but also smart enough to hate people.



Yay!



So, yeah. The wasteland I'd got to know firsthand was tiny by Grandian standards, as in I could manage to reach more prosperous areas in any direction before I died of thirst.



Not even havin' a coin to flip, I tried to trust my gut, cursed my luck, and set off.

[Strigoi Grey]

The Scion (I)

* * *

On the world of Entrance, almost measureless to the mortal eye and even that of some cultivators, lived the Ci Clan.



The Ci were not wealthy, or powerful, or influential, not by the standards of their peers. Indeed, many said that they were an upjumped commoner family that had abused undeserved fortune, and that was why the had been tasked with minding the border of Dragon Country's poorest province.



Yet within the Ci burned ambition that had startled older, grander clans, perhaps exactly because, comparatively, they had so little to work with.



Every cultivator dreamed of attaining supremacy! That was the deatest desire of many an enlightened heart, and the Ci aimed high indeed.



They knew that, far above and beyond, further than their country and the Zodiac Kingdoms and the Five Beasts Archipelago, than the Cardinal Continents and Entrance and the Hallway Worlds and Exit, than the numberless Heavens and the Ten Thousand Things and the Balance of All and the facets of the Absolute, lay the Dao.



The Dao that could be named, much less attained, was not the Dao. Every Clan had a story about this or that ancestor achieving supremacy, of course, but who knew how many were just trying to reassure themselves?



For countless centillions of cultivators' lifespans, each long ego for many universes to form, decay and die before grey hair appeared, had passed since the founding of Entrant cultivation, yet none knew for certain of a relative who had attained the Dao and returned to tell the tale.



It made sense. Entrance was the smallest piece of its Wordly Orrery, itself the smallest cosmos in the arrangement that lay between Earth and the Tao Cluster, both of which it drew from. How could these frogs in a well rise so far?



The Ci dared to be the first.



The heir they needed for this endeavour could not be simply be born and raised and trained - that was too uncertain. Instead, grand alchemical experiments took place, and the ichor of spirit beasts and even more otherworldly creatures was mixed with the Ci bloodline over generations.



The child was too powerful. Her mother's womb, as resilient as any part of a body refined by Yin energy could be, was an ever better place to grow than any birthing construct the Ci had access to; if this failed, they did not truly have alternatives.



The child had to be split. Flesh and qi, she had to be riven, lest she doom the Clan's grab for greatness. The alchemical intervention worsened the state of a mother who had already been doomed, so by the time she brought her twins into the world, she was already dead.



It seemed the Heavens had played a cruel joke on the Ci, for each twin only had a fraction of what their desired scion should've posssessed: Em was ambitious and fiery but clumsier in the spirit than even some commoners' children, whilst Ma was as talented as any royal but far too stolid to pursue anything other than bird-watching without being dragged into it.



The Ci Patriarch raged for a day and a night at the resources and wife he'd lost for nothing, but regained his cool and tried to salvage things.



'One of my daughters,' he said, 'is an inept harridan, and so shsll grow among her peers in skill, not in station; let the knowledge of the greatness she should've had, of what she lacks, drive her to success.'



Of the colder girl, he said, 'The other has a soul of ice! She shall be kept in the heart of the Clan, where the displays of our excellence will surely push her to achieve and surpass that prowess.'



For, had the arrangement been reversed, both children's potential would've been squandered.



Em Ci and her sister Ma grew apart yet were never too far in either space or thought, for the girls loved each other, and did so more whenever they managed to meet again.



But this was not enough for Em. And whatever one could say of her, she had never lacked will.

[Strigoi Grey]

Lore: Grandia

* * *

As far as distances can be discussed in multiversal terms, Grandia is closer to that Earth on which so many fates have turned than to anything else. It is a "rocky" planet seventy million light years wide, made of a substance denser than anything in nature. The local paranormal energy system known as Hunger prevents it from collapsing into a hypermassive black hole and allows Earthlike days, nights and seasons.

Grandia's landmass is split between the Four Corners (said continents compare to it like Terra's do to the much smaller planet; its atmosphere and oceans are similarly upscaled): a rocky one in the east, a volcanic one in the south, a windy one in the west and a northern one filled with rivers and lakes. The most powerful creatures on the continents are collectively known as the Grands and named for the cardinal direction their land is associated with, leading to such names as Grand North. In recent centuries, rumours of similar but somewhat weaker creatures controlling the distances between the Four Corners have become stories about "Great Southwest" and the like.

Beyond the southern and northern corners lie the icecap and flamebelt, Grandia's poles warped by element-tinted Hunger even more than the continents. Between these is a scattering of islands varying in size and climate, which form the majority of the territory of the Khellan Commonwealth, though it has been recently trying to settle the continents, which are split between dangerous flora, fauna and independent city-states that hold little love for the islanders.

Crafted by the Builders, now an extinct or otherwise inactive alien polity of Earth's universe (theorised by some to be an offshoot of the life-shaping Arkhitects) as an incubator for a project that has seemingly been abandoned, and later turned into a testing ground for what formed around it, Grandia is known as the World-Womb, Womb World, the Nest, and a variety of similar names.

Many believe the Growth at the literal and metaphysical core of the planet to be the source of Hunger, which would not be surprising, given the loudness of such a massive fetus' thoughts and spirit.

Though the Growth's turning in its sleep resulted in varied landscapes, ecosystems and energies on Grandia's surface and its other layers, in its blind hunger for more, its godlike but infantile mind saw nothing but sustenance around and almost committed genocide - not that it understood the idea of "other beings", if it could even truly tell them apart from inanimate matter.

The Builders, legends say, were appalled. They had expected a creation that would cherish what it had inadvertently spawned, that, after growing enough, could rise to stand beside its creators as a peer in both power and intellect. They were preparing to intervene when one of the Grandians did.

Khellhus' name would mostly be recorded as Khell, due to the "hu" being silent and people dismissing the "s" as a mistake of their hearing; regardless, the founder of the Commonwealth is remembered by each of his descendants in blood and spirit, from toddlers to elders, and it was his battle witht he Growth that allowed Grandian civilisation to truly begin.

Though he was not the first to notice the approaching disaster - his tribe's elders' Hunger was focused on such matters, and though his sense of danger warned him of future danger, it took consulting with them to truly understand the scale of the problem - he was the one to rally the primitive Grandians. A seasoned hunter and fighter, Khell had long noticed that though "raw" Hunger was focused on sustenance and warped people to become better able to find and consume that, with the right preparation and understanding, Hunger for anything from knowledge to friendship could be harnessed.

Furthermore, tests proved that even "unfocused" or "undirected" Hunger could be converted into matter or at least more tangible energy, enabling easy powering of infrastructure that quickly flourished.

Though Khell burned to take the fight to the Growth right away, he knew such an insane attempt would only result in him and everyone else being eaten alive: he might have been able to break Grandia to pieces like a walnut under an elephant's stomp, but that would not even tear one of the Growth's eyelashes free, much less wound it. And though he was fast enough to circle the World-Womb tens of times between a mosquito's wingbeats, he knew that the Growth could rip him to shreds from any point of the planet without him even perceiving it.

He was not Hungry enough, Khell knew. But he knew, also, that he was not alone.

The early Hunger-harnessing devices were not as powerful or refined as modern ones, but they had a Gorger (as Hunger savants were already becoming known) far more skilled and more powerful than most are, nowadays. And Khell knew that, though combining his Hunger with his followers' would yield negligible benefits in terms of raw numbers, the symbolic power - people uniting behind their king to help him slay a monster - would enhance his power by orders and orders of magnitude.

So it was that, following a ritual which hollowed out most of his sages and warriors, Khell walked down into the world, girded for battle and radiating Hunger that could've turned Grandia into scattered quarks had his control slipped for an instant. Hopefully, this would be enough to keep the Growth's attention - he was not optimistic enough to believe his stalling would cause any injuries.

King Khell has not returned. Even so, an eon later, the tremors, cries and roars of his battle with the Growth can be heard and felt everywhere on Grandia, He remains, thus, a living god, ruling the Commonwealth his followers named for him in spirit. He has been known to provide guidance in dreams and visions, and some argue he has answered prayers, though that is difficult to study given the effect of desire on Hunger.

His battle has also taught the Khellans that unrestrained, mindless Hunger is as dangerous as any evil intent: the Growth is not any more evil than a starving animal, but it is easily as dangerous as anything Grandia has seen since its inception.

The State of the Khellan Commonwealth

Hunger devices and constructs, especially Servers (the pseudo-sapient, spirit-like accumulations of Hunger practically every Khellan bonds with at birth) enable quick comms and transportation regardless of distance, but distance is often the least a Khellan traveller has to worry about.

Almost every Grandian organism, and many things that could be called objects but certainly don't act like they lack life, possesses great power. A Vyzhaldi unenhanced by conflict would be pulverised before they could react by many Grandian insects, and power only scales up from there. Yet bereft of their advancements, Khellans are at the bottom of the food chain, compared to both many forms of wildlife and the people of the Four Corners. That is why, outside the small Haven Archipelago (that hundred thousand light year, relatively peaceful stretch of ocean near Grandia's equator), commerce and travel is almost always done backed by armed escorts, and even the Haven Islands are surrounded by a towering wall, augemented by Hunger fields, constructs and other defensive measures, to prevent predators from all niches from slaughtering the least warlike group in the Commonwealth.

Currently, the Commonwealth prefers to introduce itself as a "layered democracy" (comparisons with cakes are not uncommon), with every adult in a settlement voting for a Lord of Lady (a series of titles have been proposed to people who identify as neither, but none has stuck), with the leaders of all settlements on an island (provided it has more than one), electing an Overlord. The Overlords of a hemisphere's island chains, and those of the polar settlements, gather to choose the six Marshalls who among them choose the Commonwealths's Regent. The Regent manages global matters and foreign affairs, whilst King Khell watches over everyone from beyond.

Recently, the Regency Council (consisting of the Commonwealth's ldeaer herself, her Marshalls, and their counterparts the Guilds' Elders who captain Khellan industries; they are chosen in a manner similar to the Marshalls by an island's Grandmasters, who are in turn chosen from among its settlements' Masters or Mistresses) has been experimenting with direct democracy. They are hoping advances in warfare and security will give people enough breathing room that they will all directly be able to vote for leaders above the level of their hometown, instead of leaving that to the Lords and Ladies and the tiers above them. Similar ideas about Guild officials being chosen by those who use their services rather than by internal vote have been proposed.

Outside the Commonwealth, the world is often lawless where it is even inhabited by sapients. Though Grandians' white scales, fangs, inhuman eyes and the black fins extending from the backs of their elbows and heads might make them somewhat fishlike, talking to one is enough to prove that they are not only humanoid but humanlike in thought, if much faster, with sharper senses. Meanwhile, Grandian wildlife often shows its feral nature moments into an interaction, though a few predators focused on infiltration can often imitate sounds, scents and even shape, or warp reality on more profound levels to trick other beings.

Those Grandian settlements that manage to last more than a few seasons rarely acknowledge any outside authority, which ha blunted Commwealth attempts at negotiating with them even for travel through their territory, much less anything more substantial. With their Gorgers often organising into combat sects known as Feasts (a terminology that is starting to catch on in the Commonwealth) to better refine and enhance their Hunger arts, the prospect of large-scale conflict is unappealing, so that the Khellans have stuck to diplomacy so far. Much like the meals of Grandian carnivores, the attempts have been fruitless.

Nevertheless, the Commonwealth perseveres. Its Hunger sciences have ensured no one wants for sustenance, shelter or mental stimulation (not that Grandians truly need the former two, but they are helpful for one's mental health). and vast vigintillions of Khellans inhabit Grandia's surface, oceans, skies and inner layers, as well as the warped spatial pockets known as Hunger homes.

* * *

The Pyrhan System

Grandia is by far the smallest celestial body in its system that is not a moon, and even then it would be practically impossible to spot if placed next to one of the largest satellites, a size gap similar to that between them and the planets they orbit, and orders upon orders of magnitude smaller than the one between them and the system's blue star, Pyrhus; yet put together, the Pyrhan bodies would cover a distance many millions of times smaller than that their system spans, for the distances between them are large even by comparison. The power of a celestial body's inhabitants seems to correspond with its dimensions.

Though the Builders faded into legend around the time Khell rose, it is widely believed that they the "Mycelia" creatures that act as the. White, musclebound tusked humanoids with sharp, red eyes and purple veins and random spots, they look and sound masculine but are actually sexless and seem to lack an idea of gender. Referring to each other as "Myc", yet never seeming to have any trouble telling who is who, the "Mycs" reproduce through spores. Smaller than dust motes, these are produced at a similar rate to that at which normal humans shed cells, and a Myc's body is converted into spores upon death. Despite their agelessness and capacity to regenerate, within moments, from any body part larger than a spore, this is a surprisingly common occurrence due to these beings love for conflict and food, for which they often fight.

This is thought to be a cultural pastime, as Mycs don't need sustenance any more than they need sleep or rest.

A living Myc's spores are subconsciously sent to a portable subspace realm by their Hunger, which moves alongside them. There they are held in stasis, though they can be pulled into reality at will as reinforcements. Much like Gorgers from the Pyrhus System's various worlds, Mycs grow in power by defeating opponents, with said beings' power, speed and unique abilities being added to theirs (beliefs that eating people to gain their power have been proven to be wrong in the majority of cases, though many have kept doing this out of habit or enjoyment). More advanced Gorgers can do this by beating people in games or debates, and it appears that the Mycelia's standard Gorging skills are at this level. Unlike the majority of Gorgers, though, they also grow in size upon victory, with the number of limbs and the increase in dimensions corresponding to those of the being they defeated. Thus, older Mycs are often many-limbed giants.

The Waters Beyond

When it is said that one who could circle the Pyrhus System in a thousandth of a thousandth of a heartbeat would take a thousand times a thousand thousand years to circle the Starlit Sea, that is not metaphor. This body of water's depth is hundreds of times smaller than its length and breadth, yet it is more than enough to host animals formidable enough to wipe out most of the Pyrhan System (which floats in the middle of it in a sort of water-free pocket) and its inhabitants, Mycs aside. It is to prevent such incursions that they were created.

The Grey Tides surrounding the Starlit Sea dwarf it like it would a raindrop, and are far deeper and more populated with wildlife sporting high levels of Gorging. They rarely venture as far as the Pyrhan System, though, since aside from its fungal sentinels, it is too small in scale to warrant their attention, Grey Tiders being mostly mild-mannered compared to the often cheerful but oblivious Starlit.

It is believed the Obsidian Ocean beyond the Tides is endless; certainly Gorgers who could run from Pyrhus' to the Tides' edge between blinks haven't found an end, in any direction, after eons of running and swimming. Obsidian marine is considered to have some of the worst tempers in Grandia's reality, and whilst the smaller Waters' inhabitants seem to compare to their habitats' size like mundane aquatic animals to Terran oceans, Obsidian creatures don't seem to have a limit to the growth of their bodies or Hunger.

[Strigoi Grey]

Lore: Entrance

* * *

The World of Beginnings

To properly understand Entrance's scale, one must first understand cultivation and the spans of universes less saturated with qi. Barring external interference, the typical universe is likely to last many eons, with the greatest portion of said span being as an almost featureless expanse of darkness and cold, scattered particles. The period between the dissolution of iron stars and the beginning of the "dark universe" era is many orders of magnitude than that between the Big Bang and the formation of said celestial bodies; the dark universe makes the timespan before its beginning look like a Planck time, and will persist mostly unchanged until the next Big Crunch that marks a new turn of the Big Bounce cycle many realities take place in.

Much like mana, qi is considered a refined "descendant" of the lifeforce that usually forms from people's bodies, minds and spirits (though it is otherwise distinct from the aforementioned energies); in Entrance and the rest of the Worldly Myriad Under The Dao, practically everyone and everything cultivates, without even having to try, which has led to landmarks far larger and more durable than mundane ones and humans who are similarly superior to qi-less ones, alongside having lifespans an order of magnitude longer, without being considered cultivators by Entrant standards.

This might be due to a certain elitism on the cultivators' side, as only one in a trillion can reach the first stage of cultivation, and only one cultivator of any given stage out of tens of trillion is likely to advance to the next.

The stages of cultivation

Attaining the Dao is considered more of a soft limit than a truly restrictive one by cultivators, since accomplishing that is somewhat like trying to surpass lightspeed by mundane means. Nevertheless, though a cultivator's journey is endless like their ambition (should be), certain stages of advancement have been agreed upon Entrance and the Myriad's other realms.

The qi refinement stage consists of shaping the formless "cloud" of qi people are born having into something resembling a network of organs (the most important being the dantian, which acts as a heart/brain hybrid) and veins (the meridians). This greatly increases a cultivator's physical prowess and lifespan, the latter making that of those with unrefined qi seem like a heartbeat. The lifespan increases massively with each stage, as does their power: barring extraordinary circumstances, a cultivator of any given stage will be able to pulverise a horizon-spanning army of cultivators a stage below with a twitch of their finger, or move among them and rip each into pieces smaller than dust mote at their leisure. As cultivators are able to race lasers and rend mundane planets beyond recovery as soon as they refine their qi, this allows them to match the armies and weapons of culture far more technologically advanced than theirs.

The spiritual formation stage requires a visualisation of the cultivator's identity that is focused inwards; in the mind's eyes, this manifests as an amorphous white lump sitting on or hovering above the dantian. Acquiring this level of advancement enhances a cultivator's "hunches" and "gut feelings" to the point of effectively being danger senses or other forms of psychic perception. Prophetic dreams also become common and, with certain preparations, cultivators can dream about the futures of matters they are interested in, and they also become able to launch blasts or beams of ki, as well as fly unaided.

Spiritual shaping results in the aforementioned lump becoming a cube; this stage allows for the creation of qi constructs, as long as the cultivator is focused on them, letting one make weapons, shelter or food from nothing.

Spiritual alignment ends with the inner cube appearing to balance on one corner; at this stage, cultivators' instincts are sharp enough that they can dodge and battle without conscious action, indeed, they can literally fight in their sleep. Their constructs also become stable enough to persist without being held together by their focus. By this stage, cultivators can also live through more Big Bounce cycles than there are particles in any limited universe before they begin greying.

Spiritual refinement turns the balanced cube into a diamond and grants the cultivator immortality. More than mere agelessness, they will always return to their prime state unless altered by powers far beyond their ken.

Stellar formation makes the outline of a star appear around the diamond and allows cultivators to appear wherever and whenever they will, provided they are at least somewhat aware of that place or time. This ability extends to the force of their strikes or their qi projections, letting cultivators throttle people from a distance or make them explode as if a qi blast had been fired inside them, instead of travelling through nowhere to appear there.

These stages of "starless cultivation" reach an end with the stellar unification technique, which results in the aforemenioned star being filled in and manifesting on their brow (a diamond shape is faintly visible in the middle). This deepens and broadens the cultivator's spirit, allowing the conversion of matter into thoughts, then into spirit and back, which can be used on both themselves and their surroundings. By this stage, cultivators are expected to begin ascending the Heavens, or travelling other realms equivalent to them.

There is no apparent end to the stages of starred cultivation, the attainment of each resulting in another appearing on the cultivator's forehead. This goes on until the point it would be covered in light, when the stars become a nimbus or halo around the cultivator's head; careful looks will reveal it is actually a subtle many-faceted star.

What, then, of the size of Entrance?

Five Beasts Archipelago

The Rearing Dragon, Coiling Dragon, Diving Dragon, Rampant Steed and Skulking Bear islands are very close by Entrant standards: a spiritually aligned cultivator could cross the narrow stretch of sea between the first two (said islands being the closest) and only die of old age upon reaching the shore of their destination. Surpassing the obstacle that is this distance without relying on the Alchemy and Artificing Consortium's devices (by far the most common means of enabling trade and travel across Entrance) is one of the most common reasons for advancement in Five Beasts.

The islands are almost identical in size though different in shape, hence the names, which are based on the animals they resemble, and the bodies of water between any two of them are around as large as an island.

Rearing Dragon is the most politically-diverse of the Islands, not being united under one kingdom like the other Dragons, though it is more civilised than the mostly untamed wilderness travelled by nomads that is Steed or the isolated city-states and wandering tribes between which Bear is split.

Spanning the relatively narrow centre of the island (which is far longer than it's broad, being dragonlike in shape) is the fertile Golden Girdle. Also known as the Dragon's Belt, it compares to the overall dimensions of the island like a man's belt does to his height. This area is the more urban half of the alliance between the Zodiac Kingdoms and the Plains of Pearl around them, the latter being mostly dedicated to farmsteads and rice fields, though AAC workshops and laboratories are not uncommon.

The Zodiac Kingdoms represent almost half of the Emerald Empire's population, though they are much smaller than the surrounding Plains, thanks to their degree of urbanisation. The twelve countries, each resembling an animal and almost equal in size to the eleven others, have often been called a microcosm of Five Beasts.

Each Zodiac Country is split into scores and scores of provinces, with a province having enough cities "to cover the smaller half of the land they're scattered across", the immortalised reaction of a farmer after touring his province for the first time, and dozens of towns for each city (a town also being less than a dozenth as large as a city). These settlements are as grand as one would expect on Entrance; currently, in the middle of a town hoping to be reclassified as a city after building its first spires at some point in the future, runs a river so broad that should a man with unrefined qi be placed high enough to be unable to breathe, and look out to either side, he would see naught but the river's waters. Said river's breadth is like the width of a hair compared to a man's arm span when compared to the extent of the town, both south to north and east to west. The distance between the nearest cities dwarfs them like the span of a grasshopper's jump dwarfs its body, and these are often stretches of wilderness filled with bandits, unruly spirit beasts and demonic cultivators, alchemists and artificers.

The Emerald Empire covers roughly a fifth of Rearing Dragon, with the "rear legs" being a desert region and the "tail" being covered in jungles, whilst the "forelegs" are mountainous and the "neck and head" are volcanic. Leaders at every level are chosen through a mix of merit and their perception by others rather than bloodline (though having a prestigious one by no means hurts) and their edicts are enforced by a variety of armed forces, from the provincial armies (split, like all Emerald armies, between the "inner" army used for policing and the "outer" army used for actual warfare) consisting of countless quintillions of spiritually aligned cultivators backed by their far more numerous but less advanced fellows and spearheaded by many billions of spiritually refined cultivators and tens of stellar formation elites.

Entrance and the wider Worldly Array

Five Beasts Archipelago is located at Entrance's equator, making it equidistant from the planet's four continents. It has been said that a seventy-seven star cultivator could set out from Five Beasts and see generations upon generations of spiritually aligned cultivators be born, achieve mastery of said rank and died of old age before they died of old age; in reply to this, such a cultivator replied that the downplaying of such distances is what makes people embark on journeys they're not up for. The distances between the continents, like said continents' extent, are at least equal to this, and said lands represent only a fraction of Entrance's surface, with the planet's waters dwarfing its landmasses several times over.

The mechanics of Entrance's cosmos are such that most people who enter it will arrive at said planet; between it and Exit, a far larger world at the other end of its reality, are the Hallway Worlds. The distance between Entrance and the nearest one (many times smaller than that between two Hallway Worlds) has not been exactly measured, though an eighty thousand star cultivator who has tried to travel it the long way (flying instead of using a teleporter or portal construct or some other shortcut), beginning many millions of years before the advent of Entrant cultivation has not reached his destination; he considers the journey fun in a bracing way, though.

The Hallway Worlds are vast, the typical human equivalents of one being large enough to hold Entrance in hand like a human would a snow globe, and being dwarfed by their homeworld like Entrance dwarfs its inhabitants (a trend reflected on Exit). Travellers between worlds have described "the Corridors" as pleasant enough, though everyone seems to always be in a rush to get somewhere, either physically or in terms of cultivation.

Exit is where starred cultivators end up to prepare for advancing to the Lowest or First Heaven. It has been described as a bittersweet planet that makes the other celestial bodies in its cosmos look like an atom next to a Hallway World, and it is well known that there are more such planets than each has quarks. Though Exit is trillions of trillions of times smaller than its cosmos, it is still considered the most noteworthy feature of it by many visitors from outside, who have on occasion called it "the edge of the cradle."

Beyond this universe lie the Heavens and Hells, collectively known as the Overworld and Underworld to some. The Lowest Heaven is endless in extent, the stars of its cultivators fractal, and any child of this realm could hold Entrance's cosmos in one hand like a man holding a grain of rice. Their heavenly planets are larger than them the way the those bereft of divinity, from the cosmos below, dwarf their common citizens. There is no limit to their number, for in an infinite universe, there is enough room for world without number. The Highest Hell is a twisted mirror of this, but otherwise equivalent in scope.

The Heavens extend upwards and the Hells downwards without number, in a similar manner to the layers of the wider Wellspring; also like them, each level of the Overworld and Underworld transcends the previous one, making it look like less than a shadow, just a figment of imagination that anyone could snuff out with a thought. This, then, is a qualitative sort of transcendence, not a quantitative one. For example, no amount of matter, limited or not, will reach the level of reality above it because of sheer quantity.

When speaking of the totality of these divine and infernal worlds, mathematicians draw comparisons with not just the endless numbers between zero and infinity, but of the numbers between numbers: much like the string of numbers between one and two, beginning with one point one, has no end, nor does the one beginning with one point zero one, one point zero zero one, and so forth; Entrants find it appropriate that nothingness at the beginning would lead to ever-greater things, due to their culture of self-improvement.

Though these learned people talk of "infinities of infinities, and more besides" to illustrate the Overworld and Underworld, the Highest Heaven and Lowest Hell cannot be defined thus. Much like one cannot add dimensions to reach the lowest dimensionless Heaven (the jump between the Heaven of infinite dimensions and that being a more profound sort of qualitative transcendence), one cannot add the Heavens before the Highest and hope to approach it.

It is the Highest Heaven that houses the most virtuous souls, the Sun and Moon that light the days and nights of worlds below and the Ten Thousand Things, which act as the blueprints for the contents of the Array, much like a tree might inspire a mental image of itself but is incomparably more real.

Above this is the Balance that regulates the Worldly Array, with all within it falling under the purview of one of its halves. For eons, cultivators have debated whether the Balance is between good and evil, creation and destruction, order and disorder or something else. In reality, these are only fractions of its nature.

The roiling expanse that preceded (to use a metaphor within the understanding of temporal beings) and surrounds the Balance and the Array it contains like an endless dark ocean circling a firefly is known as the Chaos, though some paranoid souls that believe it seeks to undo the cosmic order and return all to itself call it the Imbalance. The truth is that such things are too small for the Chaos to concern itself with, too brief and finite in comparison.

The Cleaver of Chaos did not gain its name because it created or sought to create the Array (that was something it did following its battle with the seething void, using an infinitesimal wisp of it), but because it ended the seething of the Chaos that prevented anything from forming wwithin it and surviving unaided. The Cleaver turned potential into fact, also establishing its own existence in the prophet, though the battle with its dark unthinking peer led it to enter a slumber, that its wounds might heal. A shard of its form that it refined into a weapon mid-fight, amusingly enough a cleaver, is said to rest by this giant's side, waiting for one fit to wield it anew.

The Chaos is a manifestation of the Dao's lowest, perceivable state, on which it rests like a drop of ink atop a boundless page, a "state of potential" known as the Foundation. Some, after realising the Dao is like a writer that could pick up and shred said "paper" as easily as it uses it now, as a canvas (the Dao being too profound to be sensed by the Foundation, much less resisted), said that this is the extent of mastery. There could be no fouler lie! The Dao that can be named is not the Dao, and description is a much more thorough hobbling than naming; there is no beginning or end to the Dao or that which it allows those who understand it to do.

(Though the Array's inhabitants have been called provincialists who refuse to acknowledge cosmologies or philosophies other than theirs as meaningful, there have been recent attempts to study the Dao as it relates to the Quintessence, and whether there is any degree of separation between them, as much as there can be any between the Quintessence and the magna-macrocosm, which is to it not unlike the shadow a person might cast over their upper half while navel-gazing might be to said person, though this analogy is of course limiting, like any attempt to explain the Quintessence.)

[Strigoi Grey]

Rox

I was now alive and awake no more. This time, there was no more induced amnesia.

That was one of the things my instincts spoke into my mind, not something I clawed out of my surroundings, like I had to do with so many other things.

Fact: the Archchemist, as my (and I was using the term with all the contempt I could put into one word) father styled himself, was practically farming posthumans, culling the defective versions and replacing them with new iterations, in order to achieve the family he needed for his twisted fantasy. If you asked me, the guy was too sick in the head to get fucked in any way besides metaphorically, much less have and rear children, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised he'd put us together in a lab.

I had no concrete idea what woman he was doing this for, but void, anyone he found even remotely likable would be an unhinged bitch at best. And I didn't need two in the family.

Fact: the metaphysical alignment of my being and powers meant a regenerating but otherwise humanlike corpus was the best vessel for my ability copying. That didn't mean a damn thing if I couldn't get an eyeful of someone with useful powers, though, because by myself, all I could do was end up like a splatter flick victim, repeatedly. Which might've been funny to watch from outside, but I didn't hate myself enough to laugh at that. Yet.

Did having the facts help me solve my actual problem. Sure as shit not, to my utter lack of surprise. I was mildly more prepared than my past selves in that I knew who I was and that there was a problem, but I wasn't going to get out of the Archchemist's glorified basement doing a self-help quiz.

It wasn't quite a torture dungeon, but only because the cunt was too damned staid to take pleasure in my pain or anything else. Even his research was only a stepping stone in the path to the dream I hoped he'd never achieve.

But maybe I could do more than hope.

One of Arch's astoundingly charming quirks was to, on occasion, put particularly displeasing versions of me or my siblings next to the disposal units after he finished recreating us, and said thing, the unholy spawn of a shredder, an incinerator and a bevy of exotic obliteration devices, was in the corner of our station's lowest level that was the farthest from Arch's usual stomping ground. I'd have said he found it funny for us to crawl back to him, but he'd probably had his sense of humour surgically removed, maybe by his own hand.

No, it was likely another way to test us, have us prove how much we yearned for our father's approval by braving the obstacles he'd been lenient enough not to augment so far. It was so goddamned thoughtful I could've puked a rainbow.

The fact I'd been the only one scrapped and recycled this time was only a small annoyance to having to run this gauntlet again. Dimly, I recalled - the information, no actual images -that I'd shared this with either sibling at various times, and more rarely with both. We didn't usually disappoint him at the same time, though we'd done it enough I believed he'd have washed his hands of us by now, had he been more prone to anger than obsessed.

No help this time, no powers to make mine. At least in a few previous runs, I'd been built more powerful if with less potential, better able to negotiate this labyrinth, though over the centuries, none of said inherent abilities had actually helped me leave the station and setoff into space to find my own path.

I didn't think so, at least.

Behind me, the disposer loomed, no blood or offal left on its dark surface, though I knew they hadn't evaporated. The only thing visible in the gloom was the sullen red glow radiating from its small openings. Everyone knew you couldn't be a murderous twat unless what you used to clean up looked like a surly ogre.

To my sides stretched corridors that would've been dead ends, had they been as empty as they appeared. Chains hung from one's ceiling, connected to nothing I could see, while the other's floor was slick with something translucent and odourless. I knew better than to take either.

The Archchemist was by no means opposed to letting a repeat offender rot here for as long as it took to recognise failure and improve. He'd rebuilt me in this spot before, and I had no interest in spending more time here than necessary. Not that any amount was acceptable.

By the time I finished thinking this (and switched to remembering how sluggish baseline human minds were, no wonder everyone sane was modding nowadays), I finished writhing on the filthy half of the floor, the one not covered in old ashes. Once more in control of my own limbs, I rose to my feet and began rolling my shoulders. time to get out.

* * *

The Archchemist had built this place to fuck with me, mainly, it was obvious. There were way too many spots Skill could've clambered over like a spider monkey and Gear could've broken through. Had I got on his nerves the most often out of us? That might have brought a smile to my face if I'd fucking had one.

It turned out that while slug throwers, energy blasters and monoatomically sharp blades could deal me no worse than essentially flesh wounds, said injuries still hurt like hearing the Archchemist talk, because I wasn't more resistant to pain than Bill Baseline, I just healed faster. And more thoroughly, which was how I found out the way usually lethal wounds would hurt a human recovering from them.

I'd like to say I walked it all off while gritting my teeth, but that wouldn't been a lie just because I was missing the lower half of my face. While I wasn't enough of a pansy to scream myself hoarse over every broken limb and shredded organ, my body was wracked by conflicting nerve signals as parts of it were constantly obliterated only to regrow.

Another fun fact: repeated damage in quick succession overclocks my regeneration, making it fast enough to grow new limbs before the dust of disintegrated ones can begin falling. This meant it didn't take me more than a few dozen steps before I started tripping over my own feet.

No, that was a forearm. It had just been minced. The pile of body parts I was accumulating was becoming a wall to my front and sides, and the maze's bastard turrets were reorienting to shoot around them, so that I got the worst of both worlds. What a change of luck.

I chose to look on the bright side, though, the one lit by plasma shots. The dark one was filled with impossible shapes that kept distracting me so that I walked into bullets. At least I wasn't like one of those chumps whose healing depended on their body mass; the thought of having to repurpose parts of myself to replace others made me sick, and not just because such a state of weakness reminded me of how my builder treated me.

I wasn't like the regenerators who needed ridiculous amounts of food or raw matter either, nor was my consciousness tied to my brain alone. I could tell by the fact there was enough grey matter painting the walls for me to wrap it around myself like a freaking blanket, but I still remembered every gauss gun shot that had stood in for the brush.

All of this added up to me staggering along like a spasmodic cripple, and every hit to my legs making me faceplant into my remains did not help my concentration.

The faces I'd lost had fallen so that they were staring up at at me with empty eyes or hollow sockets, mouths open in silent screams. Despite my human-slow brain, I knew that the chances of each landing so were beyond astronomical, which probably meant Arch had programmed the freaking floor so that I'd always be able to face myself.

If he got any more supportive, I'd end up on stilts.

I didn't know how long it took for me to make it out of the shooting area. I needed rest about as much as I needed sustenance, so I couldn't track by those, there'd been no timepieces around, and between the noise and my heart getting turned into paint every other second, I hadn't been able to use its beats to keep measure.

Still, I knew I'd lost enough flesh to feed a dozen core-deep ecumenopoleis and still have be able to cover a gas giant.

The twitches stopped when the barrage did, my healing recognising them as something harmful and thus to be done away with. Now all I had were the memories of this walk, and wasn't that uplifting? I've always excelled at handling my mental health.

As soon as I left the shadowed hallway for a brighter, cleaner one, I saw that the Archchemist had decided recorded messages like in the previous variations on this weren't personal enough, and had since moved up. Or down, arguably. It looked pretty damned medieval from where I was standing.

["Rox",] the message written in the remains of a me that no longer was began, the blacknessof my blood and blackish grey of my ruined muscle standing out sharply from the otherwise featureless white wall. You could tell Arch had written it because my name was in quotes, signifying the fucker was offended I refused to identify as the tool he'd named me after. Even his sarcasm was garbage. [If you are reading this, it means you have left the cleansing area. My heart swells knowing I no longer need to waste water or acids of you, when simple mechanisms can fill their roles so I might make use to them on the journey you are not grateful for being taken on.]

Had I been dealing with even a halfway sane person, I might have raged at the smugness. But this was so far removed from that sort of thing it brought only numbness.

And something from the database I had once been linked to, which resurfaced due to the circumstances: the Archchemist was so monstrously sure of himself, so certain and proud, that I was lucky he wasn't one of those narcissists whose egos warped reality, or I would've been in far more dangers than with a few weapons pointed at me. Not directly, because my body was as impervious to the alteration of creation's fabric as my mind and soul, but that sort of resistance was useless when the air around me could be turned into a nuclear blast.

[You will discover you are in the old part of the house I have mercifully deigned to continue allowing you to share, despite your staggeringly shameless string of failures. What sort of son are you, to disappoint your father so no matter how many chances at life I grant you? Have you no heart?] The last part was almost certainly not a pun, but it still made my lip curl, given what I'd just walked out of. That wasn't what had me mystified, though: how bloody big had the dead past me been? Each of the message's letter was taller than me and broader than my arm span.

Each successive line had me convinced Arch had no sense of sarcasm, either, because he seemed to honestly see himself as the wronged hero of this story and me as a sort of rapacious prodigal monster. Mentions of my siblings followed, reminding me they were lesser sorts of disappointment and would put me right back where I'd started if I tried to cheat this course, in pieces too small to see with the naked eye. Warnings that suicide was no escape and a reminder that it had never been accompanied them, as well as an offhanded mention that trying would be even more useless now, since there was nothing I could do to myself that I wouldn't recover from.

I tried to think which chaser of immortality would've traded their life for mine, and kept trying.

Undaunted by my failure, I resumed walking, mulling over a passage I didn't like. Between the lines about Gear and Prowess and the end of the message, there had been a line about how I should underestimate "none" of my siblings.

Not neither?

I shook my head, cursing this patchwork memory and the slow mind it was linked with. It wasn't that I'd lost memories forever, I could feel that, but more that the gaps left by their disappearance couldn't be filled until...my internal clock had nothing better than "until they'll be", "not now." Or maybe...no. Maybe never except during what would trigger them.

That made me peer inwards, running my perception over every facet of my being and trying to find anything the Archchemist might have programmed me to do. I was not surprised to find nothing, since despite how easy it was to want to hang him by his intestines, he was one of the smartest genegineers that had ever been, though imagining that fact repeated in his voice made me slam my head against a wall.

The stump grew a new head before I could stagger more than a few steps. My deadpan look met its reflection in the glasslike material of the wall.

The mouth beneath them was smiling, and I damn well knew this wasn't the sort of mirror that could flip a frown into that.

* * *

Prowess would've broken her arms in this exercise had she not known how to twist them so as to turn greater force against itself. Even so, her limbs trembled, stinging dully, as she knocked the ball back at the other posthuman.

This iteration of Gear felt more than a little hampered by a body far slower than its mind, though, it insisted to itself, at least having to deal with perception meant for superluminal combat whilst in a subsonic chassis was a way to teach one patience.

The quadrupedal cyborg had no need of any specific movements to return the ball. The back of a forepaw sent it whistling the length of the stadium-filled room they were in, back at his sister.

'Big brother,' she said after a few more exchanges, 'do you know what I have been wondering today?'

Gear smiled inwardly. The Gxyfharian-offshot language she was using had been devised by a species that despised names as something that held power over others and never gathered in anything larger than what could have been called nuclear families; as such, they had developed a tendency to refer to each other by their most striking characteristics (which had given rise to a genegineering culture, to allow for a greater variety of non-names). He appreciated the attempt at authenticity, though as far as he was concerned, the two of them and Rox were triplets. 'I believe you will tell me, sleek sister.'

His 'xfhary was rusty (hah, hah), but there was no harm in humouring Skill. She smiled so rarely, these days...sometimes, he wanted nothing more than to strap her to a slab and correct that, but he knew those were the directives the Archchemist had buried in his programming, that had been seldom activated due to a lack of need, talking.

He forced himself to take pride in the lack of a need for correction he'd exhibited, lest he be made to by outside force. This was, he thought dully, what a good son would do.

Gear had not been built for despair, only for self-loathing at failing to please his maker. He could not snap under pressure or become overstressed any more than a typewriter could, but he still wished the Archchemist would see that his experiment was running to illogical extents. If only he'd cease being unreasonable and end them...!

'You are reflecting on your failure,' Skill guessed, correctly, to his annoyance.

'One could phrase it so.'

'Your repeated failure to change our father's mind.' Ought he be glad for the clarification? So it wouldn't get confused with his other failures?

'Indeed,' he grated. There was no need to describe the nature of his arguments; he'd rehearsed them with her to start with, because surely if someone who loved him agreed they made sense, the one who'd made them and...loved...their potential would also be, no?

He hadn't been. The Archchemist was not too stupid to understand logic, he was too...he was being unreasonable. Not emotional, not quite. Maybe it was sunk cost fallacy. He'd spent so much time trying to make the family he wanted that he was now loath to quit the attempts, even if he was getting no closer to the goal, as Gear had told him.

Arguments that trying to build a family in such an isolated, stressful environment were going to make it dysfunctional had not swayed him, for, he had argued, the outside was even worse, not to mention it had misvalued him in the past, several times even.

Pointing out that altering their bodies once every few iterations was only changing the physical results of the exercise, with at best negligible changes to its other aspects, had not got him to stop, and changing the mental and spiritual nature of the three of them, in any profound sense, was impossible without leaving other people in their place, but more likely empty shells.

In other respects, the tests ran like clockwork. He and skill had not needed to be scrapped for several iterations of Rox by now, and their powers functioned more smoothly than they'd had in most versions. Whenever qualms regarding their purpose arose, the Archchemist was quick to exercise his authority and stop them from faltering. Perhaps it would've been easy to get lost in that, give up the choice to choose. But Gear was tired.

He did not want to live anymore. His desired function as son aside, he had been created as an omnipurpose device and producer of devices, secondly as a source of predictions, advice and calculation. His logic circuits, and the better part of his brains, strained between loyalty and the illogic of it all.

The former was ever enforced. Only the former.

Gear knew, in his heart of hearts, that he could not love his builder any more than a man could love the pressure of a boulder crushing him. Whenever such thoughts rose to the fore, they were quickly quashed, by him or his inbuilt directives, but they were not gone forever. Had the Archchemist built a different sort of Gear, had he dealt his stolid son fewer deaths, perhaps they would have been easier to smother.

But the Gear that was had been scarred by too many consequences of his failures. The core of him could not be excised, for it had grown strong against such tampering, simply to preserve itself. Destroying him would be much easier than changing the foundation of him, now.

At he core of said foundation lay tiredness. Not of the body, for such was beneath him, nor of the mind, for he had grappled with tasks far more onerous than his father's rejection of his logic. Of the spirit, perhaps. Gear was no precognitive, but he had the utmost confidence in his calculations, and unless the current dynamic changed (and how fiercely would the Archchemist fight that? To the extent of unmaking the advocate of change, certainly. Utterly and forever? Perhaps...), it would repeat until some outside factor changed it. Most likely, an entity from beyond the station would eventually happen by, interfere and disrupt the experiment.

Whether that resulted in a shift for the better or the worse was immaterial to Gear. He was beyond exhausted.

He was not Rox, to have every degradation fuel his spite. His father had learned how to manage his technology copying, either by cutting off his vision or surrounding him with devices whose abilities would be useless in fighting back or trying to escape his home. Not that he'd get the chance for either, since the directives would kick in well before then.

He wanted to die. It was cowardice of a moral sort, Gear reflected, since he did not fear the pain of future rounds of the experiment as much as he lamented the futility of it all. He did not want to waste an eternity, or however long this lasted, being dismantled and put back together so that a genius wasting his intellect might be vindicated. Pitying the waste of his father's talents was, he thought, the closest thing to loving him he'd ever felt.

He was lucky to have siblings. Without them, he would truly be the machine he seemed, not bereft of the capacity for love, but of the sentiment itself.

'Brother?'

A foreleg snapped up to catch Skill's serve. 'Lost in thought. It is of no consequence.' He flung it make to make his point. There were some things that could not be calculated, some because they were too obscure to be placed within such a framework. But what he bore for the other two thirds of his heart was priceless.

Nphm. A clunky way to put it. He'd have to work it out some more, in case his tiredness wore him down and he tried to take a way out. Offended enough, the Archchemist might well remove what made Gear himself, and it wouldn't do for his sister to be left with a hollow shell before he reminded her how much she mattered to him.

* * *

Prowess was not the sort to mind silence: neither her nor her towering brother had been built to talk when there was no need to, and with stealth being second nature to her, even making smaller noises without wanting to was unthinkable. Some days, it pushed her to wonder if their hot-tempered brother had been made as he had to compensate for their stolidness.

Not by the Archchemist. Not likely. The woman knew her father well enough to be certain her father would have liked his children to be as obedient and calm as they were adaptable, but (it seemed obvious to her) the latter precluded the former. She was not even a geneticist, much less someone with the esoteric collection of skills her maker had employed to build her and her kin - he had not deigned to let her copy his skillset, in this iteration -but it seemed plausible enough to her that someone changeable enough to get used to any number of foreign abilities would not have the sort of mind carved into stone the Archchemist desired.

He could've built simpler creatures, homunculi that would've been just humans without free will. It would've been easy enough, and he would've had the family he desired centuries ago, so obedience and harmony clearly weren't everything he wanted. Maybe not what his woman wanted, either? Skill had never seen recordings of the one who was meant to be her mother, or even photographs, only images reconstructed from her father's thoughts.

The way he seemed incapable of providing the details for a face that was neither constantly changing nor inhumanly monstrous might've unsettled her, if not for the directives buried deeper into her mind than marrow was in bone.

Still, the parts of her brain that achieved the same purposes as Gear's logic engines could not help but point out that it made no sense for someone who was just, to her knowledge, an unageing but otherwise baseline human to appear so. And one could not call it alteration for the sake of mockery or insult or some other nefarious purpose, because the Archchemist had nothing but admiration for -----.

Her sense of balance was too keen for the heart-stopping lance of pain to do more than make her lean more strongly against the ceiling beams she was using for support. Then, as her healing (far more rudimentary than Rox's, she knew, but then she wasn't clumsy enough to get hurt like he did) kicked in, so did the cognitive realignment protocols, and she wondered why she had brooded over the name of her beloved future mother, her father's promised wife.

Gear noticed the movement but misjudged its cause. 'I know. It always aches when we have to hound him, but it is kinder than what the others would do. Perhaps we ought to rip him to pieces, then remove any pursuers whilst he's recovering, so the Archchemist cannot pluck the details of their destruction from Rox's mind.'

She did not bother to correct him. It was plausible enough, and her heart did go out to her strong-willed brother, the weakest yet most powerful of them, in many ways. However, as much as she might have enjoyed enacting the cyborg's plan, she doubted it was achievable in their current states, with him hobbled by a lack of useful machinery to imitate and both of them forbidden from copying each other's powers (Gear could've, when in the right state of mind, perceived her as a biomech and recreated her skill-taking for himself). The outcast rejects, meanwhile, were only limited by the walls of their prison, more literal for some than for others.

'I will not hesitate,' she replied, to mask any sign of weakness on her part, of the heart or otherwise. Gear nodded curtly, began moving away; Rox was threading the maze, she could feel with her ear to the wall, and there was any number of exits he might try to leave it early through. Most of them were covered by the models she no longer had truck with, but they were incoherent and obsessive. Her and Gear would roam around the remaining ones, to intercept their brother, should he try to cheat the test.

She hoped he would remain among their number. For several iterations, he had been the closest to being disowned, and she would rather have been scrapped herself forever than seen him cast out.

That was, Skill knew, not something she should've been able to think, and this only further highlighted the imperfection of her father's design, for it contrasted sharply with the efficiency of the directives that had activated earlier. Why was the web of her being becoming thready? Why was she not alarmed at this? Disappointing the Archchemist, though he surely didn't know yet, or he would have acted, should not have made her feel something so close to contentment.

And yet.

She was not horrified by the evidence of her maker's artifice failing, any more than she felt compelled to report this to him. The only thing on her mind was getting Rox back on track without hurting him, if possible.

She doubted more forceful handling would elicit anything worse than some grumbling, for her brother loved her. Her hearts beat faster at the thought, the pit of her stomach warming, but that warmth was marred. That love was intertwined with pity. Rox had not spoken of it, but he knew she was more pliable in regards with the Archchemist's control (or had been, for it was beginning to falter more than she could remember it ever had) and thus saw her as abused and shackled, someone to feel bad about, not hate.

She did not resent it. It was a fact. She only hoped she could return it in the form of not injuring him too badly, should he try to leave the labyrinth before the appointed time.

In her family where siblings professing their love for each other had their father's temper flaring, this was the closest thing to healthy affection she could think of.

* * *

He was back in the war, not that it had ever ended.

Dreamless sleep, like all the other kinds, was something he had long since done away with, when he had excised the weaknesses from himself. Its echoes only clung to him still because he was yet to the out of the shadow he had once cast.

The child he had been did not walk through this not-dream as he did through many of the others, for this was a remembrance more recent, yet no less vivid. Foggy memory was another flaw he had cut out.

That boy had not understood...no. He had known that people objected to using animals bereft of sapience and undesirables barren of worth as stepping stones to greater knowledge because they were overly emotional fools, just like their descendants who had later protested to incest even when his genegineering had smoothed away the troubles that accompanied it. That, and his arguing that the metaphysical dangers of said activity were negligible (and would be done away with one day, when his understanding grew enough. If only they let him study...) might not have brought him so much enmity had he, or those they hated and were (he was certain) envious of, not profited from it.

But it was ever the bane of genius to be loathed by the unwashed masses.

The other bane was to die early, work unfinished and only appreciated after death, but wiping the slate of his being clean had done wonders to remove such possibilities.

They had gone to him, afterwards. The colonists, the proponents of settling those celestial bodies that had been blasted back into primitiveness by the Lemurians, then scoured clean by their Atlantean slaves turned destroyers. They had given him demonstrations of the importance of this endeavour, not just in the material sense, but in the metatemporal and macrocosmic. The worlds needed to be filled with life; if it happened otherwise, events would diverge disastrously from their proper course, and all would fall to ruin.

He had accepted. There was more freedom to be found between the stars, not to mention countless resources, and not just inanimate ones.

There would need to be certain nudges before everything was on track, they'd said. Not everyone necessary for the exploration effort would be willing, and those who'd volunteered would not be enough.

He was more than willing to offer motivation. Or, rather, he was infinitely less unwilling than most of his counterparts, for enthusiasm, like joy, had turned into a cold and abstract thing several lifetimes of the unaltered ago.

They had given him laboratories and workshops, enforcers and aides. He had toured prisons, his first walking weapons by his side, their presence enough to prompt indecisive criminals into taking up their colonists' tools and setting off. The belligerent and recalcitrant, who'd nevertheless been necessary also, had been dragged out of their cells by his constructs, for Old Earth's leaders had known they would be useful in the battles that would follow. Those who proved too unstable could clear the metaphorical minefields Earth's past rulers had made of alien civilisations.

Thus it had been. He had stood at the back of monsters dredged up from prisons only their guards and wardens spoke of, whilst the fruits of his labour herded them into cyclopean structures of unnamable purpose. The struggles that had played out within had been the death of the former prisoners and the end of the monstrousness that had been echoing within the megalithic edifices for aeons.

Other dangers had been subtler but by no means lesser, and those had needed to be lured out. He had obliged: there'd been no shortage of society's rejects to turn into bait. The stalking traps had been built to hunt Atlanteans by the pattern of their thinking, and while he'd had no genocidal, kratocratic thugs of the original stock, he'd had plenty of criminals who'd have acted the same had they got the chance.

Held in place by his creations, they'd had no recourse but to fight the things that had risen from their bed-graves to hunt what they'd perceived as the spoor of their invaders. Their potential had never been achieved., but the worlds and stars and deep space stations had been cleansed by mutual destruction.

Of the meeker breed, those who had been imprisoned and now lacked the will to do anything that would go against the grain of civilisation, he had made workers. Or rather, he had overseen the labour they had been assigned by the colonising authorities, the image of him and his creatures far above and away enough to keep them working as they'd raised domed habitats and carved underground caverns into cities.

He'd lacked, still lacked, a conscience, and had found the fact did not disturb him. Misanthropes, like pedophiles and those that had once been called psychopaths and sociopaths, were perfectly able to function in society as long as they did not indulge their impulses. Why wouldn't he?

And he'd had. For a while, he'd stayed above the water. A more intricate colonial security apparatus had developed (out of necessity? Because this had been planned for generations and now was the proper time to enact it? Yes), around him, he'd liked to think, and he had taken the place he only deserved, at its heart.

The settler-colonists had, but for a relative handful of exceptions, been people of actions, so that some among them were more haunted by the empty planets that had been put in their charge than if they had been crawling with nightmarish aliens. At least then, some had said, there would've been people to deal with, besides each other.

He had been quietly baffled. Surely the lack of indigenous sapients removed the molehills of colonisation that some people pointlessly made mountains out of. But no, they'd found reason to complain about a lack of aliens, as if they'd lacked each other to speak with. As if the Greater and Lesser Powers had not been less than fifty billion light years away from Earth.

He wouldn't have cared one whit for these disorders had they not interfered with his duties, but some of the colonists had tried to run, for a variety of stupid reasons. Some had convinced themselves there'd been someone or something waiting for them on Earth or the older colonies, while others, sick of the routine, had tried to escape into the void and carve out their own realms; others still had tried to escape for the thrill, to see what'd happen. Predictably, most of them had been recruited from prisons.

He'd been sent to bring them back, almost every time, and it was to such a memory he'd returned now.

A captain of guards, his opposite number on this mission, in a sense, for he was heading his own bodyguard, gave him a sceptical look. Not because she doubted his competence, for everyone sane knew better than that, but because she had little trust in his moral fibre. He failed to see where that entered the equation, but if he'd had that kind of mind, they wouldn't have given him this job.

He looked down at Ganymede, or so it seemed to him, for the idea of such directions in regards to celestial bodies was anthropocentric bias and nothing more. The moon, covered in and filled with arcologies, surrounded by orbital habs, was home to teeming trillions, and somewhere down there, in that nest of spires, was the target.

The deserter, his latest enemy in his war on the inadequacy of existence, had returned home because he'd had enough of the colonial life. Furthermore, his mother, a mundane barred from the usage of the various immortality treatments due to her hatefulness towards those who peddled them, was in her final years, and he'd hoped to spend that time at her side, easing her worries towards death and telling her of his adventures.

It was not to be.

By the time the shrieking, writhing thing her son had been was placed in the container which would be dragged back to the stars, the stunned, staring woman snapped out of her numb state and leapt at him with what little power she had. The guards' attempts to make her back down failed, and they hesitated to beat down a grieving old mother.

'Weak,' he mused, appreciating the fact one word suited everyone in the room besides him. His brilliance had always made him stand apart from the herd.

Looking down at the hag, in every sense of the phrase, he informed her, 'You have assaulted law enforcement in the pursuit of a fugitive in an attempt to halt his capture and return. You thereafter proceeded to ignore several warnings and kept attacking an officer, in the hopes of killing him and ensuring the release of the fugitive.' He smiled mildly. 'You are a criminal accomplice and mentally unfit to participate in society. But do not worry: I see that you are upset by the circumstances. I will make sure no one disturbs you for the rest of your life.'

The drooling, straitjacketed thing she became in the mental asylum's padded room was an improvement on the upjumped overprotective ape she'd been. Wards placed upon her had prevented her from escaping or killing herself, for the institution was meant to be a place of healing, but she'd never responded to the therapy, and the doctors had been reluctant to try and force her mind back into a "proper" shape. Shortly after their departure, while they debated what to do with her, something inside her snapped.

It was as if she'd lobotomised herself, and he managed to talk the hospital into handing the corpse to her after she was euthanised, for while they had the means to turn her sane once more and erase or warp the damaging memories, that would have been like making her another person, and thus another sort of spiritual and mental death.

But before the corpse could be zombified for labour or turned into homunculus materials - those arguing for burial or cremation had been outvoted -he persuaded them to give the body to him, for he had his own ideas for it. It made, in his humble opinion, a funny solution to the problem of those experiments of his that needed a "mother unit." Given inhuman endurance and regeneration by him, it served as an incubator and wrangler of countless creatures the uninspired would have called monstrous, had they seen the tests unfold.

They only found out later, when they had grown far past the stage that would have ensured mere hatred. As he was hounded across the Terran Diaspora's territories, part of him, perhaps humanity long-rejected, rebelled at how easily he had been able to use his fellows like another man would inanimate objects, and, no longer buried in the bedrock of his being, prepared counters to his greater self, scattered them across the galaxies.

By then, he'd realised he was not one mind, but contained multitudes, and so was not threatened by the actions of this blinkered fraction of him. Let it worry about what the will that had so fiercely enforced Terra's rules might accomplish if turned to darker purposes. He had realised that he had trammeled himself too long, and instead mused on building something of his own, for himself. To show the blind and the hidebound who had once called themselves his peers they were wrong. To persuade the woman who held his heart that it would all be better if she confessed her love and admiration for him, for the aloofness she had always displayed, acting as if she did not even notice much less care for him, was no longer charming.

The greater part of him shed seeds like a shaken tree, and those grew into trees of their own, in accordance to the soil they fell onto. Not children he had wrought, but their deeds would be no less terrible for all they would be long in the coming. And the better part of his being was a protean thing, one that changed to fit whatever challenge to it was offered, to topple any obstacle.

On Xhyrkhana XII, the Archon rallied the world's will-speakers despite their misgivings, shaping them into a chorus whose death-scream, following a confrontation with his hunters, still echoes in the nightmares of those whose reach exceeds their grasp. But perception becomes power becomes fact, and the haunted visions of those susceptible to the echoes bleed into the frail skein the children of Terra call reality, bringing the eldritch laws of the half-realms that spawned them along. Every place they fill with their foulness needs to be purged from existence and memory alike.

At the stellar heart of the Vhalango Array, the Architect built a monument to wonder from the future he stole and dragged into the present. The potential of untold unborn children was dragged into the bleak present from worlds that were yet to be, and all who beheld what he made of it wondered how any galaxy could spawn such horrors and keep on turning. Every disbelieving thought spawned horrors that fed on themselves to fuel their growth, and it was only after an alliance of once-human champions and desperate alien savants blasted the Dyson swarm out of the void that the unlight dimmed enough to be hidden away, just as the story of its enkindling was erased from history.

At Khugartha, where he was once more confronted with the truth at the core, of his being-

The Archchemist opened his eyes.

* * *

He was back in the war, not that it had ever ended.

It was a war against the very forces that had brought him into the world, no less fiercer than any galactic conflict for all that the number of enemies was paltry. They were formidable not because they were many, but in spite of lacking the multitudes to challenge him.

He was a man wrought, not born, and the circumstances of his conception would not have grated if not for those of his upbringing. He had been built to reflect those who entered his vision, and had done so masterfully. That he could only do so as long as he was confronting someone cast a shadow over his obedience towards his father, bringing his value down to almost nothing.

The enhancement attempts, both in the terms of the experiments and the siblings who had been chosen to pressure his power into growing, had failed. That those siblings had not even needed to be directed into ripping him to pieces, for they disliked the thought of being forced into obeying their father more than that of hurting him, had extinguished his love for them, that had bloomed during their shared struggles, as quickly as any whirlwind would a candle.

The self-serving lackeys had not been amused when he had taken their forms to mock them and bring them down in their father's eyes. They had conspired to reveal the truth of his schemes, and the Archchemist had cast him out, away from the heart of their family, had confined him alongside the other failures and the monsters that should've been aborted.

Another sibling, all shiny and new, had stumbled across one of his hunting spots in the labyrinth. Had he ever shared a table with this one? He found he could not quite remember, and di not care much besides. He'd read the creature's aura, balking at how the pasty bastards could imitate powers indefinitely, regardless of whether he was opposing their original users, with a look.

Had he been...replaced?

With this pale leech? This scowling upstart whose every thought betrayed rage at their father? Who sneered at his control over those two traitors yet still dreamed of unshackling them, as if to give their treachery free reign?

This was what the Archchemist thought would make a better son than him?

Reflect scowled, his hand passing through the mirror and into reality like a crocodile darting out of water. Rox didn't have time to snarl before he was pulled in.

* * *

Rox

I wasn't enough of a narcissistic masochist to enjoy having the shit beaten out of me by a guy who'd stolen my body and wore it worse.

My memories, which had begun flaring when his hand had fastened about my throat, settled. This mirror-dweller could charitably have been called one of my prototypes, and if his power was a much more pitiful version of mine, what passed for his personality was even more lamentable.

I could only cheer on Gear and Skill for taking steps to have him removed, and I was almost happy the Archchemist had done so, before I caught myself. At best, I should've been happy my siblings no longer had to deal with him.

I did, now.

I would have done so with much greater ease had I been able to get a look at him. I only knew he was using my looks because the contact had activated my memories, letting me know he was a chameleon in terms of everything except attitude, which was all worm. But while I would've been happy to beat him down using his own powers, I was suffering from the small problems of my eyes being on everything except him.

Literally.

When the newest pair almost finished healing, another burst of reinforced glass ripped through them to bury into my brain and cut it up like spinning knives. Reflect had, since his exile, tapped into the power of mirrors in a greater sense than he ever had as a (I managed not to gag on my vomit) "good son." This meant he could use them as portals, shields, and, yes, weapons.

The mirror world he'd dragged me into was filled with nothing except its namesake, on the walls, floors and ceilings. This meant he had unlimited ammo, ambush spots and exits, while I was knocked around, bleeding, like the world's angriest pincushion.

'You want to know the best part?' he hissed somewhere behind me, but was long gone when I turned while trying to plant an elbow into his throat. it would do little more than annoy him, since he had my healing, but it might be enough for me to copy his powers. 'You're not even close to an early maze exit! After I'm done working you over,' his voice got huskier, raspy. Was his fucking mouth watering? 'I'm going to throw your shrieking carcass back outside, and no one will bat an eye at me, because it will only prove you're worthless.'

How was he moving around?! He was close to me, so he couldn't have been using the mirrored walls, but I felt no movement as he disappeared and reappeared around me, and I knew he couldn't teleport without a reflective surface.

Was he sinking into the floor mirror and rising again every time he dodged? Was he that fast?

I guess that helped him monologue as much as he wanted, but the thought of Reflect being the only person to benefit from anything made me gag more than the shard whirling in my throat.

'You're lucky you ran into your kindly elder brother, hotshot! Some of the others...' he laughed lowly, continuing to bombard me with mirror pieces. He must have been jumping between distant ones now, because I could no longer sense his body heat or the air shifting with his movements. 'There are some of the others who'd do such things to you, you don't even have words for them. You ought to be thanking me. You ought to-!'

Goddamn, but I could just imagine the smirk to go with the rambling. I'd never wanted to punch myself in the face more.

At least my temper was letting me tune out the parts it was pointless to listen to.

'Do you know why the Archchemist abandoned me?!' Reflect growled, putting a sword of glass that bent like flesh through my spine. After it burst through my chest, it twisted to plunge back into my torso, then spun to pulp my insides. The spikes growing from it had me stuck to the floor mirror.

Reflect, being a smug dick but not an utter moron, had retreated as soon as he'd impaled me, and shaped the sword so that parts of it attached to the shards that had pierced my eyes, to keep me blind.

I thought he was now walking on a mirror, likely one on the ceiling, going by how distant his steps on glass sounded. It seemed he could treat anything reflective like flat ground.

I don't know how much I spent like this, being ripped apart and healing. The mirror world didn't feel like the kind of place that would have a mundane flow of time, and I somehow doubted the Archchemist would let any of his experiments take more or less than he wanted.

In the end, I think it was Reflect's boredom that made him pause. While I was impaled to the floor in a puddle of black blood, he stood above me, a glass scourge held lazily in one hand - I could tell by how it felt trailing over my shredded back. After a few moments, he flicked his wrist so that it wrapped around my neck, digging into the spine.

'I don't...understand you,' I managed to say. 'We both know this only brings you the shallowest pleasure.' The whip tightened, snapping my spine and coiling around it again the moment it regenerated. 'And the Archchemist isn't going to take you back for knocking a disappointing ceation around. At best, he'll think you shouldn't be scrapped yet.'

He might have shuddered in anger. It was difficult to tell, but the scourge quivered, and his voice was more strident when he spoke again. 'You know nothing. After I prove you are worthless as soon as you're blinded, you are the one going to be scrapped, "Xerox."' He laughed. 'Did you know, he's the only one of us named after an object? Says something about what the old man saw in you, I think.'

'Yeah, isn't it sad that he thinks a tool is an improvement on you?' I tried to smile up at him and got my head stomped into the floor for my troubles. I regretted nothing.

Did he really think I hadn't cottoned on to how Arch viewed me by now? Must've been built with brain damage. No wonder he managed to make even my voice sound dumb.

'You know nothing!' He ground his heel into my head, crushing my face against the mirror. 'I was sent away because I was too rebellious - why's he keeping you around?'

'Void, maybe because he's an unhinged freak with too much power and time on his hands, and now he's going crazy?!' Also, someone tell this prick voicing your inner monologue didn't make you sound more profound if you were a shithead to begin with.

Reflect scoffed. 'You're crazy,' he said, and put a sphere of glass through my nape, where it went off, filling my skull with barbed splinters. 'The Archchemist might've made a mistake in removing me from the heart of our family, but he is nothing if not a sublime scientist. Otherwise, how could he have built someone as incredible as me?'

I would've spat at someone unironically talking like that in my voice, but my mouth was somewhat occupied at the moment.

'It makes no sense to keep a recalcitrant thug like you around,' Reflect scoffed. 'You're worse than useless: you're a drain on the whole experiment, with how you keep trying to rise up, like a hammer trying to beat a smith to death. Insanity.' I got the feeling he was shaking his head. 'After I finish warming up, I will vent my frustrations on you, maybe let all of our siblings do so. Why not? After all, whether you are removed from the board for good or join us here, you will no longer be at the heart of our father's plans. The hypocrisy will end.'

...I thought I understood what drove him, now. 'You want the Archchemist to acknowledge you,' I said, 'or at least get rid of what you see as a worse replacement. Alright. I get it. But think, Reflect: what's going to happen if I'm exiled too, or put in stasis, or destroyed for good? Maybe he keeps you and the others here forever. Maybe he takes you back, tries to build the family he's dreamed of with you instead.' I wished I could meet his eyes. 'Is that what you want? To be the favourite of someone so awful? To live with someone who treats his children like this?'

Several seconds passed, in silence. Reflect's tone was disbelieving when he spoke again.

'Were you expecting that to work?'

Yeah, I really did have a voice made for douchebags. Not the way I'd wanted it confirm.

The scourge resumed cutting, crushing.

'Were you not listening?' He sounded more exasperated than angry. Pitying, maybe. 'The Archchemist is possessed of such excellence he managed to build me. Who knows what we might accomplish together, once I rip the wool from his eyes? Clearly, he seems to think you're worth something...I can't explain how, since you're too stupid to trick even yourself. But I'll find out.'

My regeneration was soon working in overtime once more.

When Reflect got bored again and stepped out of the mirror with me in tow, we were no longer in the part of the maze where he'd jumped me. I imagined he must've had entrances scattered across all of it, to fight alongside the other rejects in case he had to deal with an experiment too dangerous for him alone. I was shocked when he removed the glass, so that I got a look at a pristine version of myself, but didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I failed to gain any new power, however, and stared at him, baffled, for a fraction of a second, while my mind whirled. I just needed a look to grow stronger, in this iteration. What had-

A moment later, I was regrowing the head vapourised by the laser his arm had become. I glared at the hardlight construct, but my power was no more effective than last attempt.

'Perception, people-watcher.' Reflect's puppet grinned. 'Maybe you ought to have got an eyeful of good old gear before you tried to punch up, eh? You'll never get anything from looking at people's tools, no matter how much like persons they seem, if you still know, deep down, that they're tools.' A fraction of the scourge, turned into two short spears, which crossed themselves as they were launched and pierced my head, making an X.

A kick from Reflect, or his light body - I couldn't tell the difference, hadn't been able to the whole time; had he been remotely fighting me from the start? - sent me sliding down the hallway, and it was another kicked that stopped me, reversing my movement and sending me sprawling. The voice of the one responsible triggered more memories, as did those that followed. Meanwhile, more glass projectiles pierced me to impale me to the floor.

'Oh, look who's decided that sharing is caring.' An older man, who did not sound nearly as sarcastic as the words implied. 'What's got into you, Ref?'

Flayer. Copies the powers of those whose skins he wears.

'I suppose turning into this arrogant dipshit is enough to push you to self-reflection, even if you'll only trick yourself into thinking you're impressive.' This one's voice would've been too nasal-sounding to be pleasant even if they hadn't also sounded like they were trying to talk through a throatful of phlegm.

Patchwork. Copies the powers of those whose body parts they attach to themselves.

'Now, you two.' Amusement. 'We ought to be glad Ref decided to share him with us. This really is one meal you can have as much as you want of.'

Eater. Copies the powers of those she eats at least a part of.

Reflect's voice sounded different now. I guess he'd ditched the hardlight construct to prove to his siblings that this wasn't some trick, and must not have counted as confronting me anymore. The air shifted differently around him now. He seemed shorter, wider.

'My kindred,' Reflect said, sounding harried. 'Today, I bring before the greatest mistake our father has made in lifetimes. A favoured son so incompetent he could not even counter an ambush by me. And yet he is expected to make it out of the maze, to help accomplish the Archchemist's dream?'

Eater sounded warier now, no longer amused. 'He's done it before.'

Reflect laughed. 'Other iterations of him, sister. Better suited for combat, or exploration.' He stomped on my throat, turning the glass within into dust. 'This one is worthless, by every measure. And we will make our father confront the fact, so that he may stop embarrassing himself by indulging this weakling so.'

Holy shit, this guy was as unhinged as Arch. Who the hell could look at any of this and think I was being spoiled?

'If you need more proof,' Reflect continued, on the verge of laughing, 'do you know what offer he made to me, in my room? And he wasn't being sardonic, or trying to distract me.'

He repeated it. His and the other failures' laughs were as nice as I'd expected.

'Will you make it to us as well, brother?' This was Patchwork, seeing other people cared about something and jumping on the bandwagon. You could've hanged a million medals for fence-sitting from that stapled neck. 'Well? Don't you think we deserve peace, redemption? Aren't you going to tell us what we might accomplish, fighting with you?'

And there was the overcompensation, to cover the insecurity. No wonder the Archchemist had got bored of them in no time flat. 'I've seen the kind of path to peace you'll follow. Let me take you on it.'

I will say, I think I pulled that off.

Like Patchwork did with my head, before the others joined in.