185 (II)

Rhetorical [II]

Despite his shock, he questioned the Composer's request no more and made to reach his friend. Before Adam could ask him what he was doing, Shiv laid a hand on his shoulder, and a rush of divinity surged out from Shiv's soul into Adam. Shiv felt his Blessing come afire, felt a new song erupt from his insides. But it wasn't just his Blessing. Something new was happening inside Adam as well, and the musical notes that spilled out from Shiv were outlined with the same color as the Gate Lord's Unique Skill.

Shiv's Song of the Vigilant spread out around him, and the resonating waves it painted across the world in Shiv's vision became suddenly tangible. They flashed into existence within the oppressive interior of the reactor core chamber, coating every surface and constricting every Pathbearer present with their strings—strings that danced, strings that vibrated, strings that one and all flowed to a central point; a lyre that shivered to the flicking fingers of someone divine.

"Ascendants," the Composer cried out, her voice high with scorn and offense. "You've gone too far. Your debt remains unpaid. For all that you've done, for what you have stolen and what you continue trying to keep, you will face judgment."

In that moment, the wounds lining Adam's body molted away, and a massive figure rose, hatching out from Adam's azure sun. Her body loomed high in the vast chamber, and her eight legs were pressed against every corner of the room. Her contours were painted by that radiant blue, and her inner core resonated, oscillating with the colors of sunrise and sunset. She wasn't truly here, but there was an extension of her presence, an extension of her mana, that reached across from Weave, up from the Abyss, and into this prison at the heart of the Republic.

With her intrusion, the battle suddenly came to a total halt. Her song continued on, growing louder and louder, and it was only then that Shiv realized her resonating webs were coiled around the Avatars and their wardens, around the very Dimensionality that Veronica projected. The black static strained, but before the Composer's magic—further bolstered by Adam's Unique Skill—it was like an animal trapped in a net.

"Break! Scatter apart!" Veronica shouted at the webs, but they didn't obey her so easily. A few shuddering strands frayed along the edges, but the others endured, even growing thicker with every passing second the song continued.

"Composer!" Veronica bellowed. "You have no right to be here. Think about what you are doing."

Her words were echoed by her grandmother, and Katherine's form appeared once more. Yet she was barely there, nothing more than a ghost, quivering like a dying candle before the Composer's golden, glowing glory.

"Think carefully, Lady Arachnae," Kathereine began. "Think about what you are doing. This breaks the treaty between the Abyssal Faiths and the surface nations. And for what? You intrude on a private affair, a domestic affair. These are children of the Republic. They belong to us."

"A Republic that attacks its own children," the Composer shot back. The song suddenly stopped as she ceased her strumming in pure outrage. "A Republic that betrays its own towns, its own people." Shiv could not recall ever seeing the Composer so hateful, so aggrieved. "I know what your inquisition has done. And I have more than a guess with regards to what you plan to do with my parent, the Great One. You have always been deceivers, betrayers, vultures. You feed off the glory of something that never belonged to you. You exploit others to bring your Paths to greater heights. And now you continue your mistakes!"

"Our mistakes?" Kathereine echoed, voice between outrage and wry amusement. "You know not what you speak of, oh Queen of the Weak. It is because of us that there is stability at all. It is because of us that the surface, at least the near surface, remains in homeostasis, in perpetual stability, and it is because of us that you still writhe beneath the dirt. Because we hold the true threats at bay. We have established a Republic that maintains your security. And we continue holding to our truths, unlike you."

"You intend to hold the truth so long as you can continue exploiting my progenitor's power." The demigoddess of Weave pulled at the strings on her lyre again, and all around them the webs began to shiver once more. Just then, a counter-chorus came from Kathereine as a battle of rising hymns began, the Composer's countless fingers flicking across her harp, matching the Ascendant beat for beat. "And so long as you can build towards stealing the wholeness of the Great One's legacy once and for all. You speak encrusted truths and deeper falsehoods. Your tongue flicks in two ways, forked like a serpent's. Everything you have done has been for yourself. All of you have been doing this for yourself. No matter what lies you tell, no matter what excuses you bring forth, you must know that this power does not belong to you. That you cannot use it properly. That this so-called homeostasis you fight to preserve is fragile and is destined to collapse."

"What a display of desperation from the half-daughter of a corpse!" Kathereine's voice rose, and the webs surrounding the Avatars and the wardens were drawn taut. "Oh, feeble little spider, as helpless as the one she swears to protect. So many years since her father and mother fell, and even so, what is her prize? A hole in the dark and a bottomless ocean of regrets!"

The webs surrounding them began to scream, the sound of parting iron paired with the straining strings of countless instruments.

"My struggle goes on for those scorned, for those wounded by undeserving hands," the Composer's voice drilled off with its own snarl, "while you feed and feed like the gluttons you are."

"We feed and give," Kathereine sang, her voice rising high as tides of divinity clashed between them. The webs began to buckle and strain. "And where your so-called natural divinity has granted you less than a city-state, we have claimed most of a continent! We have built a power capable of standing against all corners of this world! We have protected and preserved those we call our people, while you fight and barely survive against the parasites and fools you find yourself surrounded by."

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For the briefest moment, Shiv saw the Composer flinch, and a pang of sympathy went through him. He'd noticed things about Weave during his time there as well. It was a good city, perhaps the safest and kindest city he'd ever been in. But there were flaws under the surface, and there were slips in the Composer's facade. Her sorrow at sacrificing so many of her people on a raid against the First Blood, her admission of weakness when the Dragon-Knights made flight for Gate Theborn, her inability to offer more than a few Sisters and Weaveresses when the gate was captured, and the rampant inequalities at the base of her home as well.

Weavers suffering; Weaveresses favored more than others, while plagues chewed through the fabric of her precious society…

Shiv barely managed to shake off the building loathing he felt for the Composer. Kathereine's music was insidious as all hell.

"It was folly for you to come here," Kathereine continued. "You might be a goddess by natural birthright, but you are underdeveloped. Furthermore, you are a coward with lacking ambition. You should have been a full goddess by now. You should have taken more power, taken more experience, taken all from your parent. They were right there, and yet you foolishly stayed your hand."

"I let them rest! Because they have passed, because they wish to slumber, because they do not wish to wake," the Composer snarled. "I am no vulture!"

"No, you are a victim-to-be," Kathereine sneered, "and this world has no respect for victims. If you wished to be more, then you should have been strong. At present, the only reason why you can stand before us is your demigodhood. You are no true Divinity, you are merely a thing trapped between, and a thing trapped between you shall remain. Just another bug in the System's web instead of the spider she presents herself as. Because you have neither the mettle nor the will to take what is rightfully yours. And so, what purpose is the nobility of your heart? What meaning lurks behind your actions? Your songs are farces, noise, and nothing more, for there is no weight behind those vibrating strings. The lyrics you spit will fall to silence when your people scatter and die, and you will be consigned to a footnote to Earth's history as our Republic endures eternal."

The Composer's webs were screaming at the breaking point, more than a few snapped, and just as Shiv thought the goddess was about to collapse before the Songbringer's proclamation, she brought her hand down upon all strings of her lyre at once.

Just then, Shiv caught sight of a larger shadow looming behind her—the face of another deity. Where the Composer might not have been able to break Kathereine's power alone, another force intervened.

The Challenger's illusory, war-scarred visage grinned at the Ascendants from behind the spider goddess. "Fakers fall. Vultures are feed for hawks. Rip their throats out, little spider. Keep my Insul standing…"

An explosive reverberation swept out from her core, gliding along every web. They struck the Songbringer like lashing whips, and Kathereine cried out, releasing a note of genuine pain. The melody she was humming broke, and suddenly the Composer was the dominant force once more.

"You are right about my lacking ambition. You are right about my cowardice. You are right that I am but a demigoddess. You are right that the System does not favor me. But you are blind, and you are deceived. You think power will keep you alive? My progenitor was powerful, but where did I come from? Where was I born? My womb was a sleeping corpse, and the one that stood as my parent was struck down despite their overwhelming power. You say my songs are fated to go silent? Perhaps, but no more than yours. For what future lies in wait for a culture whose supposed protectors seek to shackle their own children, that seek to betray their allies, that seek to sacrifice their people in a blood-stained ritual just to feed themselves?"

"A ritual that will guarantee our power, our station against any adversary!" Kathereine shot back. Dulcet tones rose as she struck, but the balance had been tipped. The webs around her and the other Ascendants were tightening.

"There is no guarantee!" the Composer cried out, near-hysterical with offense. A disbelieving chorus of laughter escaped from her, and her stringing notes grew somber. "There is no guarantee. This is what you refuse to accept. This is what you refuse to admit. Power is not enough. It will never be enough, for there is always another threshold. There is always another realm, another world beyond ours, denser in mana, populated by more powerful Pathbearers with greater skills."

"And that will be no matter when we—" Kathereine was cut off by the Composer.

"It will always be a matter, because you refuse to see what the System wants. It doesn't favor you. It favors the struggle you offer. It favors the chaos and change you will bring, and eventually it will tear you down. There is no true immortality if existence is war, and the System demands it to be war, war everlasting. Anything that seeks peace without its consent will be cut down. I think you know this. And I think you all simply flee from the truth."

"ENOUGH!" Kathereine cried aloud, and this time her voice was joined by Veronica's. "Begone, Lady Arachnae. We will not repeat ourselves. If you endure here, we will descend into the Abyss, and we will seek an audience with the other Faiths to discuss your breach of the collective treaty."

And at that, the Composer suddenly stopped playing, as if obeying their orders, and her strings untangled from the Pathbearers within the chamber. She detached from Adam's spirit as well. The Gate Lord staggered, and Shiv caught him before he could fall. He shook his head as if just awakening from a deep sleep. As he looked up, he blinked. "Composer, you… you came."

"You called," she said, her voice suddenly gentle and sorrowful. "I'm sorry I could not offer more."

"No," Adam gasped. He shook his head, and something almost akin to a song escaped him. "No, it's more than I expected. You... you came. You came when no one else did. I prayed. The Starhawk was silent. But you weren't. It was… Your music was beautiful."

"And it will not be enough," Kathereine and Veronica spoke in unison. A glowing incandescence was spreading out from them now, out from the other Avatars as well. They had recovered, and they were pushing back against the mana-stilling field emitted by the nuclear reactor.

Shiv felt his insides plummet once more. Oh, come the fuck on.

"You might have delayed us for a moment," Veronica said, "but there is nowhere to go. Not for them, and not for you, eventually. We will claim what is ours. We will claim the Great One. Ours is ambition. Ours is strength. And ours is the ability to protect these two from the world."

"But you don't have the time," the Composer said coldly. "You think I came here to entrap you? You think I am foolish enough to hope I can match your pantheon by myself? No. I simply needed to delay you."

"Delay us?" Kathereine asked, incredulous. "Delay us for whom?"

"For me," a deep and sonorous voice intoned.

The Songbringer released a choked, disbelieving gasp. "No. Not you."

Shiv and the Ascendants turned with surprise, but before any of them could react, a lance of pale-blue Animancy tore through the chest of the young Avatar clad in radiant armor.

And once more, Shiv heard an Ascendant scream in agony.

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