[Mage - Avalon] "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too!"
They're going to fuck up the negotiations, you know that.
"Probably. They'll try to kill them or something. The idea of Inheritors gives them all the creeps and they aren't the sort of consilium to accept what they see as half measures." Avalon lay sprawled out on her bed, laptop on her stomach watching the code compile on the desktop while digging around on youtube for mashups.
Which is a delicious hypocrisy on their part. They object to their own being killed for rending the veil so they'll kill those who kill to protect it? What glorious creatures you humans be. Who needs hell and demons when you creatures create new hells for yourself just by thinking?
"I'm vividly aware of that, Berlith. You supercillious ass." There was no one else in the house, except Jimmy, and he was always very good about ignoring the fact that Avalon talked to herself. She wasn't entirely sure if her brother would believe that she had a daemon in her skull chattering at her, since the rest of the times it was threads of conversations that might have been that made her talk to herself. But it was always easier to deal with Berlith by talking out loud, less bleed over between his being and hers that way, and so when no one else was around except for Jimmy or Abaddon or Lucy she tended to verbalize the conversations. And she kept them silent and private the rest of the time.
"But really, don't blame them too much. That kind of dedication upsets them fiercely, since they don't really feel that strongly about their own orders. Wonder what their mentors were like, since they don't really seem to have anyone to live up to." She lit a cigarette, pushing the laptop off onto the bed and stared up at the blank ceiling. "Too temporal, the lot of them. Too much linear time blinds them, keeps them from seeing how much worse it could have been."
Or how much better.
The images of the hanging bodies rose in her mind. Each and every one a real human unlike the simulacrum throughout the rest funhouse of horrors. The endless slow swaying of them, victims of a chess game the Saw moviemakers might have envisioned. The shrieking silent echoes of all those lives above her, descending towards her, sprinkled with empty nooses for those who might want to join them. The fractured images of what had driven each of them to that level of despair, of horror; of what might have been if they had lived and the thousand heartbreaks she had forseen in the might have beens hurt less than the sprinkling of joyous victories. Until Izzy had touched her, she had been them all, was them all, was all they might have been, never would be, had been and were at the time of their suicides. A thousand screaming egos, powerless any longer to be anything but memories.
"Or better. Yes."
You can't really change what they'll do, you know. It's not worth the time and you and I both know that it holds only further difficulty and frustration. There is no timeline where it doesn't lead to some sort of breakdown.
"You're wrong there. There is one on the outside chances arc."
That requires someone to sacrifice themselves. There's no one that will do that.
"Bullshit. It requires a sacrifice of self, not a death. I can't help much with these Inheritors, especially since they seem to be damned Messianics. But I can help make sure they don't have to come through again, make sure the Veil holds here. Make sure Jimmy doesn't have to give up his love of the Truth for Results."
For once Berlith was silent, coursing down the roads of Time and Fate himself to pry out the thread she had seen and would choose to follow. Past the thread where she died in a fight with the Inheritors - for them and against them. Past the ones where the consilium degenerated into slow apathy and become a mockery of itself. Discarding the ones where she believed in the Hieromagus, where she fought her own brother and mentors. He skipped the entire set of Might Have Beens had she never Awakened, the ones where she was put down for failing her Veils but knowing to much, the ones where Awakening hadn't fractured her linear anchor and tossed her adrift in Time, Space, and Fate.
Avalon smoked, waiting with a smile upon her face for the daemon to reach the same conclusions she had. It was a most perfect solution and goal, one she was uniquely suited because it didn't really cost her all that much where it's cost was crushing for others.
Faceless? You're going to become one of the Faceless. The mental tone was flat, disapproving, worried.
"Why not? I'm a thousand me's anyway, or a thousand thems when I touched someone else. What does it matter if my ego bleeds away until I am simply the sum of the Masques. What does it matter if it is real or Masque anyway?"
It has to be real. I'm in your head. If you and the all of you's that are in here aren't real, then neither am I.
Avalon laughed, stubbing out the cigarette. "Great, I've got the world's only Daemon on the verge of an existential crisis. It costs me nothing to give up an ego that already is fractured and as transitory as my next physical contact. Plus I think Jimmy might like teaching me Masques and helping me with Mind magic. Give us something to bond over."
"Probably. They'll try to kill them or something. The idea of Inheritors gives them all the creeps and they aren't the sort of consilium to accept what they see as half measures." Avalon lay sprawled out on her bed, laptop on her stomach watching the code compile on the desktop while digging around on youtube for mashups.
Which is a delicious hypocrisy on their part. They object to their own being killed for rending the veil so they'll kill those who kill to protect it? What glorious creatures you humans be. Who needs hell and demons when you creatures create new hells for yourself just by thinking?
"I'm vividly aware of that, Berlith. You supercillious ass." There was no one else in the house, except Jimmy, and he was always very good about ignoring the fact that Avalon talked to herself. She wasn't entirely sure if her brother would believe that she had a daemon in her skull chattering at her, since the rest of the times it was threads of conversations that might have been that made her talk to herself. But it was always easier to deal with Berlith by talking out loud, less bleed over between his being and hers that way, and so when no one else was around except for Jimmy or Abaddon or Lucy she tended to verbalize the conversations. And she kept them silent and private the rest of the time.
"But really, don't blame them too much. That kind of dedication upsets them fiercely, since they don't really feel that strongly about their own orders. Wonder what their mentors were like, since they don't really seem to have anyone to live up to." She lit a cigarette, pushing the laptop off onto the bed and stared up at the blank ceiling. "Too temporal, the lot of them. Too much linear time blinds them, keeps them from seeing how much worse it could have been."
Or how much better.
The images of the hanging bodies rose in her mind. Each and every one a real human unlike the simulacrum throughout the rest funhouse of horrors. The endless slow swaying of them, victims of a chess game the Saw moviemakers might have envisioned. The shrieking silent echoes of all those lives above her, descending towards her, sprinkled with empty nooses for those who might want to join them. The fractured images of what had driven each of them to that level of despair, of horror; of what might have been if they had lived and the thousand heartbreaks she had forseen in the might have beens hurt less than the sprinkling of joyous victories. Until Izzy had touched her, she had been them all, was them all, was all they might have been, never would be, had been and were at the time of their suicides. A thousand screaming egos, powerless any longer to be anything but memories.
"Or better. Yes."
You can't really change what they'll do, you know. It's not worth the time and you and I both know that it holds only further difficulty and frustration. There is no timeline where it doesn't lead to some sort of breakdown.
"You're wrong there. There is one on the outside chances arc."
That requires someone to sacrifice themselves. There's no one that will do that.
"Bullshit. It requires a sacrifice of self, not a death. I can't help much with these Inheritors, especially since they seem to be damned Messianics. But I can help make sure they don't have to come through again, make sure the Veil holds here. Make sure Jimmy doesn't have to give up his love of the Truth for Results."
For once Berlith was silent, coursing down the roads of Time and Fate himself to pry out the thread she had seen and would choose to follow. Past the thread where she died in a fight with the Inheritors - for them and against them. Past the ones where the consilium degenerated into slow apathy and become a mockery of itself. Discarding the ones where she believed in the Hieromagus, where she fought her own brother and mentors. He skipped the entire set of Might Have Beens had she never Awakened, the ones where she was put down for failing her Veils but knowing to much, the ones where Awakening hadn't fractured her linear anchor and tossed her adrift in Time, Space, and Fate.
Avalon smoked, waiting with a smile upon her face for the daemon to reach the same conclusions she had. It was a most perfect solution and goal, one she was uniquely suited because it didn't really cost her all that much where it's cost was crushing for others.
Faceless? You're going to become one of the Faceless. The mental tone was flat, disapproving, worried.
"Why not? I'm a thousand me's anyway, or a thousand thems when I touched someone else. What does it matter if my ego bleeds away until I am simply the sum of the Masques. What does it matter if it is real or Masque anyway?"
It has to be real. I'm in your head. If you and the all of you's that are in here aren't real, then neither am I.
Avalon laughed, stubbing out the cigarette. "Great, I've got the world's only Daemon on the verge of an existential crisis. It costs me nothing to give up an ego that already is fractured and as transitory as my next physical contact. Plus I think Jimmy might like teaching me Masques and helping me with Mind magic. Give us something to bond over."