tomes of memory | Glowfic Constellation

For the last decade, maybe the last three, the web of futures has felt strained.

For the last year, it's been worse than that. Tug a strand and you're tugged along a different one; try to focus your attention on a thread and it shivers, wiggles, splinters. Every vision dissolves before too long into sand and noise and white light. Every thread through the darkness of more than negligible width has been grabbed, glued, cut, knotted, until the one thing that protects the future is that every possibility is spread out too finely to merit interference. It's a senseless, agonizing, ever-present haze of strain and uncertainty and confusion and everyone's so angry about it (except Nethys, who seems to have some other way, and except Iomedae, whose blazing conviction that this must be done streaks through every possible future in the same vivid color).

For the last week, there is something like agony when He reaches out to touch the future. Agony and the jolting, disorienting sensation of swimming through a million possible worlds, none of them attainable, none of them a thread it is possible to follow from here to there. Everyone is playing this game, now, and anything clear enough to see is clear enough for someone to sabotage, and something they're doing - He's not sure what, He doesn't think it's Him doing it - is straining not just all of the possible futures but the web of Future itself, the relentless logic by which tomorrow follows from today and the overarching march of history is not ruled by coincidences and butterflies flapping their wings but by decisions, made by people, for reasons that will hold from a hundred different angles -

- He wouldn't have guessed that that was a thing you could strain. But apparently you can. He considers, with the attention of a hundred human minds, of course, whether any of the implications touch on any of the crucial considerations here. He concludes it doesn't change anything. He expected that Foresight would be blurred by a dozen gods tearing at the future from a dozen different angles; he knew all along this would have to be overdetermined to succeed, that it'd have to depend on nothing that could change in the tapestry of possible futures. He will not get a better thing to bet on, and He will not get the chance to bet again, so He should put all of his chips down, here.

(He doesn't need Foresight anyway. He was human, and remembers more than most about how to interpret their actions, their words, their minds. The King of Cheliax is preparing to abdicate, has drawn up detailed documents to ensure the transition goes smoothly. There will be a festival; His people will gather in the streets, waiting for Him, wanting Him, and that will give Him the sudden expansion of attentional capacity and power needed to -)

For the last hour, the future leaves searing scars when He reaches out to touch it. It's no longer fiilled with noise; it's not filled with anything, really, a blank and terrifying vacuum. It is much much worse than having one of your major senses filled with uninterpretable noise; it's more like having one of your major senses filled with TORTURE. He feels it starting, though, feels His attentional capacity expanding and His power increasing and His senses expand to include His people, all of them -

- and He can at last See enough, and -

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death-the-only-reward

He pauses (purposefully) near one of the warehouses, checking both for minds inside and whether he’s now in range of anyone who actually knows things or is in charge of things.

He's in range of some people who are successfully blocking him out and some people who are thinking about supplies and relations with the other churches and how tedious this is and how soon all the rebels will get the plague and die.

death-the-only-reward

The people blocking him are probably the important ones, and he has Detect Thoughts prepared once, which may get past their shields when the permanent version doesn't.

If the repurposed farmhouse is clear, he's going to duck around to the side where he's pretty sure no one can see him, and surreptitiously try opening doors to look for a hiding spot.

The doors aren't locked; all that's in here is hay and crates of potatoes.

death-the-only-reward

He slips inside, quietly shuts the door, and paces around trying to find somewhere he can crouch behind crates and also be in range of as many minds as possible.

Minds are contemplating supplies, offshift activities, when they'll next stage an assault on the city, whether to try to cause a smallpox outbreak in it by sending in diseased animals or something, which of their colleagues are slackers...

death-the-only-reward

He gets out a bit of paper and takes notes on anything specific he can grab with regards to their planning, even if it's speculative, and on their supply levels. And any gossip on existing interpersonal rifts, and tensions between the churches.

He dedicates about ten minutes to that, and also tries to pin down the identity of the minds blocking him, by means of anyone nearby talking to them or thinking about them.

Most of the church's more powerful clerics, apparently.

death-the-only-reward

Once Aroden thinks he's gotten all he can from this particular method, he casts the spell version, intending to focus just on whichever of the senior clerics fail to block him out this time.

This round gets some of them! They're thinking on similar topics but with more specifics. They're trying to nail down a date for a unified offensive on the city, but some of the other churches are hard to work with. The disease plan will definitely have to happen without the church of Sarenrae finding out, damned Good people and their inability to fight a war unless they're nice about it...

death-the-only-reward

Oh, that's good to know for purposes of trying to fracture the churches' alliance.

...Which Aroden isn't sure he wants to do, at least not as the main tack. He still has a suspicion that Asmodeus is involved, less because of any specific rumours of it and more because, well, it seems like the sort of thing Asmodeus would do, it's got to be in his interest right now.

During his limited six minutes of stronger Detect Thoughts, he searches for any hint that points that direction.

If Asmodeus is helping these people he's not doing it under his real name. They do occasionally contemplate what resources they can call in from far away - maybe send assassins after that damned philosopher running the resistance...

death-the-only-reward

Huh. He wonders who that is, makes a note about it as well as about the potential assassination plan. Probably he can't get anything more before the spell runs to its conclusion, and it's been maybe thirty-five minutes, so he doesn't have that much longer.

Once he's gathered what he can, he moves all the way to the opposite end of the farmhouse to see if that brings different minds within range.

It does; they're contemplating how to ask out a girl they like, where their friend is stashing his good beer, whether to accept that kind of suspicious offer of magic weapons from an unknown source who says he's sympathetic to them.

death-the-only-reward

Intriguing! He notes that down.

Once it's been forty-five minutes, and the placement of minds outside the farmhouse is conducive to it, Aroden leaves again and purposefully walk around the camp. Ideally for another ten minutes and then he'll slip out of view to turn invisible and fly back - and next time he can come straight for the farmhouse - but if anyone challenges him sooner then he'll beeline it out of there.

...Probably he should do something about the bound soldier behind the rock, if the man hasn't already squirmed his way out and given away Aroden's ruse. He scribbles a note on a bit of paper. If his flight shows him that the man is still there, he'll drop it on the head of the nearest other sentry.

Tucking the note in his pocket for now, he walks and reads thoughts and pays a lot of attention to his surroundings.

They're running about looking for somebody, probably because the sentry managed to get free somehow.

death-the-only-reward

He dashes back behind the farmhouse and hastily casts Invisibility, hopefully where no one can see him - it's quick to cast - and then Fly, and lifts off to hover above the farmhouse itself for a moment - he shouldn't stay long because if they're on alert they might be smart enough to look skyward with something that would see through invisibility, but that would require quite a lot of paranoia on their part, and he doesn't need a whole six minutes to fly back into the city.

He scans the camp for people dressed like clerics, especially a knot of them.

Scattered, searching -

death-the-only-reward

Sigh. He's probably not going to get any more useful thoughts, but since no one is looking up, he flies a path over as many of them as he can, seeing if any minds let him through, sparing thirty seconds to poke at surface thoughts if they do. It might give him an idea of who they expect their enemies to be, at least.

They figure this was probably the rebels, not one of the other churches, which aren't usually this direct. They are planning retaliation but they want to make sure the infiltrator is caught first.

death-the-only-reward

He flies away, silently, over the city and dropping back to the ground near the administrative building thirty seconds before he runs out of spell. He takes another ten minutes to sit nearby and complete his notes before asking the guard at the door if it's a good time to see Onaku and speak to her about some things he's learned.

She's available after about half an hour more.

death-the-only-reward

He'll wait. He takes a walk around the city in the meantime, noting what people are doing, smiling at people who look up at him and returning greetings.

A lot of people are hanging around the druid and his little garden; some are boarding up buildings and barricading streets; some are going about approximately-ordinary lives, selling ale or clothes or herbal remedies.

death-the-only-reward