Ever Brighter
Rihaku
The Internet
Ever Brighter
"Grand Duchess." The former Republic officer bowed deeply, his compatriots falling swiftly to a knee. Admiral Justait Everkorn had been eight hundred years of age and ravaged by terminal nano-temporal infection even before Dien Bravo had enslaved and assimilated him; that he stood before Letrizia today was a testament to the Princess-Regent's ingenuity, and their overlord's sheer might.
The Grand Duchess smiled. That, at least, the former Republic dog understood implicitly. The populace of her rival polity had transformed from irredeemably corrupt to irredeemably cloying; nowhere within Hunger's dominion was support stronger or more steadfast than the resurrected sycophants she'd once sought entirely to destroy.
All things could change, mused Letrizia - the course of the stars, the fabric of time and space, the laws of metaphysics, her own essential nature - but the worthlessness of the Republic never would. Former Imperial territories were, relatively speaking, properly rambunctious and ungrateful to the ruler that had saved them from annihilation: just as her father had taught her they'd be.
Hunger's echo at her side shifted slightly, blinking once as it turned to regard the far wall. The wraith-clone was one of millions, its power so minuscule as to be humanly imperceptible against the supernova blaze of its progenitor; yet still this insignificant and non-sentient particle of their overlord's will held power enough to extinguish Armaments at a stroke; to engage with the force of entire universes compressed and emerge wholly unabated.
There was a time when such absolute power would have bothered her. As Aeira had once put it: all agency, all purpose, all will within the inescapable and infinitely-vast reach of Lord Hunger existed only at his sufferance, save for the actions of his Curses and perhaps those of the Princess-Regent.
Aobaru liked to think he had carved out some measure of independence; but if Hunger ever truly disapproved of anything that went on in the Voyaging Realm, the Cursebearer had already made manifestly clear that even his presumptive heir apparent could do little to oppose him.
Once such thoughts would have driven her towards a place somewhat akin to despair, but no longer. That part of her had been excised. It no longer existed.
Idly Letrizia shook her head. No, it was better to say it had been transformed, and of her own volition, so that she could become a person who could not only accept Hunger's reign, but thrive within it. With the power he had granted them - casual efflux of his passage, the barest shadow of his own might - it was trivial to reshape one's own mind, unbound by Curses as Letrizia was. Gisena had regarded herself as essentially perfect, only scaling up her 'effectiveness' in every parameter: and perhaps she was, in her self-appointed role as Hunger's - counterpart. But Letrizia had no such overriding purpose.
The Republic had been dissolved. Human Sphere geo-spatial politics were essentially irrelevant. Her relatives and subjects were all avenged or resurrected, their influence and prosperity nigh-incomparable even within the utopian abundance of Hunger's reign. She partook in rule because it'd seemed, at the time, like the thing to do... and because, with her new faculties of cogitation and manifestation, it was no more than a trivial distraction from her greater interests anyway. The science of Rank had exploded in leaps and bounds with the all-defining lodestone of Lord Hunger to serve as example, and Princess Allria had done Letrizia the somewhat condescending favor of neglecting to advance the field with her own inconceivably superior abilities.
A month ago Letrizia would have been piqued, but she now was so transcendently beyond humanity that such an emotion lacked all discernible context. Perhaps even Lord Hunger retained more of his essential nature than she had, despite being shackled by fundamentally inhuman curses.
They had all taken their own chosen paths to ascension, some more solitary than others. In that regard hers was the most unnatural mentality to emerge from the locus, but Letrizia in no way regarded herself as lesser, or weaker, for it. Regardless of emotion she could now always take the action her mind knew was correct, and no amount of negativity could weigh down or blot out the nigh-unspeakable joy infused into the perennial quanta of her existence. Nor did such radiant happiness undermine or compromise her decision-making faculties whatsoever. Unbound by space or time to the degree that it did not interfere with Hunger's own meta-perceptions, Letrizia surfed the Astral currents on vessels of thought and grace.
There were worse things to have become, she knew.
As a child, she had brought bread to a devouring monster, that she might wield it as an implement for the preservation of her House. She had forged herself into a weapon for nation and peoples, in lieu of her father that could do so no longer. She had understood that the thread of her own mortality was to burn brightly and briefly, and resolved to achieve all that she could within that vanishing window. If the battlefield did not claim her, Verschlengorge's very nature would. Many soldiers died younger still.
Yet in in the moment of her extremity, a second devouring monster had arrived. An impossible glorious monster that would gift her the adulthood she never thought she'd have, and set her against enemies she could never even have imagined.
Those monsters defined the epochs of Letrizia's life. And, with each emergence they offered an identical challenge: the cessation of her most urgent problems, if she could remake herself to survive. There was no doubt hers was a blessed life, for how many were offered even one such opportunity, let alone two so perfectly matched?
But with the natural course of her life having already been so truncated, it ought hardly be any surprise that she would end up the most unnatural of their litter. She understood why the radical extent of her transformation somewhat displeased the others, with Hunger himself feeling something akin to the guilt of responsibility, but such sentiments were simply misguided.
"Stop trembling," she told the Republic assemblage. "It was an errant thought, not anything you did."
It amused her that in this world where no one had to fear death or torture, the mere prospect of social disapproval still evoked such desperation in these men. Augmented or not they were Republic scum in the end. All she'd done was shake her head!
"Not only that," Hunger's echo rumbled beside her. "They thought you'd detected the assassination attempt."
"Oh?" she raised an interested eyebrow. That she'd failed to ascertain any such threat was nearly unprecedented in recent months, and possibly entertaining.
"A prank disguised as one, yes." He continued, nodding at the wall. "Set up by their kids. It would have been quite dramatic."
"And you just had to quell it," she pouted. "That's no fun. Why can't you stop being so overprotective? You're not my real overlord anyway!"
He shrugged. "I did as I desired. Just as you have been."
Letrizia's eyes widened. "Touche. I didn't know you guys had that much personality in you."
The echo glanced irritably at her. "You'd prefer it this way, and we aim to please. Or displease, in this eventuality."
"Hmph," Letrizia tossed her hair. "It worked well enough, so I guess you're forgiven. Not that you care, but I do take some pride in stopping these things myself!"
"Our most effusive apologies, Grand Duchess!" The officer bowed deeply, falling to his knees. "A youthful indiscretion, buoyed by the generous surfeit of bodily security that our most gracious sovereign has provided, led to this unconscionable-"
Bored now.
Letrizia departed this bodily shell, leaving a phantasm of spun aether to inhabit that flesh. To sophonts of the officer's level, the difference was indistinguishable. Diplomacy was only a temporary diversion from her studies, meaningless as it ultimately was. Even if she fucked up - a possibility that her desire for excellence would not permit - they could hardly rebel against King Hunger. It was quite literally more futile than fighting the tide, much like her current attempt to achieve transfinite Rank...
At least Verschlengorge could do something to that enemy. Maybe she would spend some time on the Infinite Soup Husk instead.
"Hey."
Aobaru was as old-fashioned as always, standing with his prime - and only - body in the entrance of her atelier. Letrizia leapt slightly through time such that she had always been present to greet him.
She had never been one to go crazy for boys, especially fellow redheads, but the lord of Vigorflame was objectively the most charming and capable peer companion she was ever likely to get. And that was an impressive feat given the dizzying array of fellow Augmented that had sprung up in the realm following Hunger's accession, many of them greedily incorporating as many systems of physical and magical interface as sanity - and the law - would allow. That Aobaru had limited himself to a single incarnation in exchange for vastly greater concentration of power was almost... cute. Especially as it made actually ruling the Voyaging Realm so impractical, he was forced to rely on subordinates for help!
"Hey, you." A wraith-projection of her true self ghosted forward to bump shoulders with him. "Here for a round of Syndics, or just to admire my resplendent self?"
"I might be up for another round," he said cheerfully, "if you weren't such a sore loser."
"That's part of my charm," Letrizia huffed. "Like, do you even watch anime?"
In truth, Aobaru had prevailed seven rounds out of ten in their long (long, long...) history of such contests. The no-holds-barred game of absolute civilizational domination was played with volunteer populaces, resembling nothing so much as total unrestricted warfare among parties of mutually unknown ability, values and number. Many participants incarnated themselves into fully-biological mortal manifolds, temporarily surrendering the majority of their memories to play with greater immersion. Sometimes Letrizia wondered if their own existence was but another layer in some similar game, infinitely iterated... when one had no fears of significance, what was more thrilling than the prospect of real stakes?
The underlying aegis of Hunger's Law ensured that nothing truly horrible could come about to the sprits of his subjects - this was but the furthermost exploitation of that feature. Official policy had not deigned to sanction or encourage the immensely popular pastime, save to note ominously that Princess-Regent Gisena had already 'solved' it.
"So," Letrizia continued, "How goes the Voyaging Realm these days? It's been a few picoseconds since I last checked."
"Sorry to bore you so much," Aobaru deadpanned. "That's what, centuries in your subjective experience? Sounds incredibly unappetizing. I'll stick with impossibly fast reflexes, thanks."
"Millennia now," she corrected, incarnating as a version of herself whose pale blue locks fell to butt-level. Aobaru raised an eyebrow, and she scoffed. "I'd have thought you of all people would see the benefits of dilated time, given how fast your experimental kingdoms are now running!"
"I can't see anything," Aobaru smiled wryly. "I'm as blind and dumb as any member of humanity 1.0. Power without wisdom, like a child with a flamethrower."
"More like an atom bomb," she replied pertly. "But at least you yourself earned some noticeable fraction of that power. Who among us can say the same? That's why, despite all your issues, you might be the most suited among us to hold actual responsibility, Shogun of the Voyaging Realm!"
"Liar." His expression was flat. "The most suited would obviously be Miss Gisena Allria."
"She doesn't count, she's a Remittance."
Aobaru chuckled. "Talk about politically incorrect..."
"I am neither political, nor ever incorrect," Letrizia asserted happily. "You'd understand if you ever pushed your mind just a little bit further."
"The Shogun went down that path, once," Aobaru confided. "We decided to try something new. Hunger has done fine while mostly retaining his essential humanity."
"Something new, huh..." Letrizia looked outward at an angle Aobaru couldn't perceive; out, and further out to some unthinkable shore, some faraway audience impossible to germinate within the curve of their present lives. "You know, Aobaru, for once you might be right. Let's try something new! After all..."
She waved brightly, once, and words in bright lettering appeared behind her: the dread phrasing that had concluded so many works of twenty-first-century Terran narrative -
"Our adventure's only beginning!"
---
"It isn't," said the Maiden, and the world became daylight.
"Grand Duchess." The former Republic officer bowed deeply, his compatriots falling swiftly to a knee. Admiral Justait Everkorn had been eight hundred years of age and ravaged by terminal nano-temporal infection even before Dien Bravo had enslaved and assimilated him; that he stood before Letrizia today was a testament to the Princess-Regent's ingenuity, and their overlord's sheer might.
The Grand Duchess smiled. That, at least, the former Republic dog understood implicitly. The populace of her rival polity had transformed from irredeemably corrupt to irredeemably cloying; nowhere within Hunger's dominion was support stronger or more steadfast than the resurrected sycophants she'd once sought entirely to destroy.
All things could change, mused Letrizia - the course of the stars, the fabric of time and space, the laws of metaphysics, her own essential nature - but the worthlessness of the Republic never would. Former Imperial territories were, relatively speaking, properly rambunctious and ungrateful to the ruler that had saved them from annihilation: just as her father had taught her they'd be.
Hunger's echo at her side shifted slightly, blinking once as it turned to regard the far wall. The wraith-clone was one of millions, its power so minuscule as to be humanly imperceptible against the supernova blaze of its progenitor; yet still this insignificant and non-sentient particle of their overlord's will held power enough to extinguish Armaments at a stroke; to engage with the force of entire universes compressed and emerge wholly unabated.
There was a time when such absolute power would have bothered her. As Aeira had once put it: all agency, all purpose, all will within the inescapable and infinitely-vast reach of Lord Hunger existed only at his sufferance, save for the actions of his Curses and perhaps those of the Princess-Regent.
Aobaru liked to think he had carved out some measure of independence; but if Hunger ever truly disapproved of anything that went on in the Voyaging Realm, the Cursebearer had already made manifestly clear that even his presumptive heir apparent could do little to oppose him.
Once such thoughts would have driven her towards a place somewhat akin to despair, but no longer. That part of her had been excised. It no longer existed.
Idly Letrizia shook her head. No, it was better to say it had been transformed, and of her own volition, so that she could become a person who could not only accept Hunger's reign, but thrive within it. With the power he had granted them - casual efflux of his passage, the barest shadow of his own might - it was trivial to reshape one's own mind, unbound by Curses as Letrizia was. Gisena had regarded herself as essentially perfect, only scaling up her 'effectiveness' in every parameter: and perhaps she was, in her self-appointed role as Hunger's - counterpart. But Letrizia had no such overriding purpose.
The Republic had been dissolved. Human Sphere geo-spatial politics were essentially irrelevant. Her relatives and subjects were all avenged or resurrected, their influence and prosperity nigh-incomparable even within the utopian abundance of Hunger's reign. She partook in rule because it'd seemed, at the time, like the thing to do... and because, with her new faculties of cogitation and manifestation, it was no more than a trivial distraction from her greater interests anyway. The science of Rank had exploded in leaps and bounds with the all-defining lodestone of Lord Hunger to serve as example, and Princess Allria had done Letrizia the somewhat condescending favor of neglecting to advance the field with her own inconceivably superior abilities.
A month ago Letrizia would have been piqued, but she now was so transcendently beyond humanity that such an emotion lacked all discernible context. Perhaps even Lord Hunger retained more of his essential nature than she had, despite being shackled by fundamentally inhuman curses.
They had all taken their own chosen paths to ascension, some more solitary than others. In that regard hers was the most unnatural mentality to emerge from the locus, but Letrizia in no way regarded herself as lesser, or weaker, for it. Regardless of emotion she could now always take the action her mind knew was correct, and no amount of negativity could weigh down or blot out the nigh-unspeakable joy infused into the perennial quanta of her existence. Nor did such radiant happiness undermine or compromise her decision-making faculties whatsoever. Unbound by space or time to the degree that it did not interfere with Hunger's own meta-perceptions, Letrizia surfed the Astral currents on vessels of thought and grace.
There were worse things to have become, she knew.
As a child, she had brought bread to a devouring monster, that she might wield it as an implement for the preservation of her House. She had forged herself into a weapon for nation and peoples, in lieu of her father that could do so no longer. She had understood that the thread of her own mortality was to burn brightly and briefly, and resolved to achieve all that she could within that vanishing window. If the battlefield did not claim her, Verschlengorge's very nature would. Many soldiers died younger still.
Yet in in the moment of her extremity, a second devouring monster had arrived. An impossible glorious monster that would gift her the adulthood she never thought she'd have, and set her against enemies she could never even have imagined.
Those monsters defined the epochs of Letrizia's life. And, with each emergence they offered an identical challenge: the cessation of her most urgent problems, if she could remake herself to survive. There was no doubt hers was a blessed life, for how many were offered even one such opportunity, let alone two so perfectly matched?
But with the natural course of her life having already been so truncated, it ought hardly be any surprise that she would end up the most unnatural of their litter. She understood why the radical extent of her transformation somewhat displeased the others, with Hunger himself feeling something akin to the guilt of responsibility, but such sentiments were simply misguided.
"Stop trembling," she told the Republic assemblage. "It was an errant thought, not anything you did."
It amused her that in this world where no one had to fear death or torture, the mere prospect of social disapproval still evoked such desperation in these men. Augmented or not they were Republic scum in the end. All she'd done was shake her head!
"Not only that," Hunger's echo rumbled beside her. "They thought you'd detected the assassination attempt."
"Oh?" she raised an interested eyebrow. That she'd failed to ascertain any such threat was nearly unprecedented in recent months, and possibly entertaining.
"A prank disguised as one, yes." He continued, nodding at the wall. "Set up by their kids. It would have been quite dramatic."
"And you just had to quell it," she pouted. "That's no fun. Why can't you stop being so overprotective? You're not my real overlord anyway!"
He shrugged. "I did as I desired. Just as you have been."
Letrizia's eyes widened. "Touche. I didn't know you guys had that much personality in you."
The echo glanced irritably at her. "You'd prefer it this way, and we aim to please. Or displease, in this eventuality."
"Hmph," Letrizia tossed her hair. "It worked well enough, so I guess you're forgiven. Not that you care, but I do take some pride in stopping these things myself!"
"Our most effusive apologies, Grand Duchess!" The officer bowed deeply, falling to his knees. "A youthful indiscretion, buoyed by the generous surfeit of bodily security that our most gracious sovereign has provided, led to this unconscionable-"
Bored now.
Letrizia departed this bodily shell, leaving a phantasm of spun aether to inhabit that flesh. To sophonts of the officer's level, the difference was indistinguishable. Diplomacy was only a temporary diversion from her studies, meaningless as it ultimately was. Even if she fucked up - a possibility that her desire for excellence would not permit - they could hardly rebel against King Hunger. It was quite literally more futile than fighting the tide, much like her current attempt to achieve transfinite Rank...
At least Verschlengorge could do something to that enemy. Maybe she would spend some time on the Infinite Soup Husk instead.
"Hey."
Aobaru was as old-fashioned as always, standing with his prime - and only - body in the entrance of her atelier. Letrizia leapt slightly through time such that she had always been present to greet him.
She had never been one to go crazy for boys, especially fellow redheads, but the lord of Vigorflame was objectively the most charming and capable peer companion she was ever likely to get. And that was an impressive feat given the dizzying array of fellow Augmented that had sprung up in the realm following Hunger's accession, many of them greedily incorporating as many systems of physical and magical interface as sanity - and the law - would allow. That Aobaru had limited himself to a single incarnation in exchange for vastly greater concentration of power was almost... cute. Especially as it made actually ruling the Voyaging Realm so impractical, he was forced to rely on subordinates for help!
"Hey, you." A wraith-projection of her true self ghosted forward to bump shoulders with him. "Here for a round of Syndics, or just to admire my resplendent self?"
"I might be up for another round," he said cheerfully, "if you weren't such a sore loser."
"That's part of my charm," Letrizia huffed. "Like, do you even watch anime?"
In truth, Aobaru had prevailed seven rounds out of ten in their long (long, long...) history of such contests. The no-holds-barred game of absolute civilizational domination was played with volunteer populaces, resembling nothing so much as total unrestricted warfare among parties of mutually unknown ability, values and number. Many participants incarnated themselves into fully-biological mortal manifolds, temporarily surrendering the majority of their memories to play with greater immersion. Sometimes Letrizia wondered if their own existence was but another layer in some similar game, infinitely iterated... when one had no fears of significance, what was more thrilling than the prospect of real stakes?
The underlying aegis of Hunger's Law ensured that nothing truly horrible could come about to the sprits of his subjects - this was but the furthermost exploitation of that feature. Official policy had not deigned to sanction or encourage the immensely popular pastime, save to note ominously that Princess-Regent Gisena had already 'solved' it.
"So," Letrizia continued, "How goes the Voyaging Realm these days? It's been a few picoseconds since I last checked."
"Sorry to bore you so much," Aobaru deadpanned. "That's what, centuries in your subjective experience? Sounds incredibly unappetizing. I'll stick with impossibly fast reflexes, thanks."
"Millennia now," she corrected, incarnating as a version of herself whose pale blue locks fell to butt-level. Aobaru raised an eyebrow, and she scoffed. "I'd have thought you of all people would see the benefits of dilated time, given how fast your experimental kingdoms are now running!"
"I can't see anything," Aobaru smiled wryly. "I'm as blind and dumb as any member of humanity 1.0. Power without wisdom, like a child with a flamethrower."
"More like an atom bomb," she replied pertly. "But at least you yourself earned some noticeable fraction of that power. Who among us can say the same? That's why, despite all your issues, you might be the most suited among us to hold actual responsibility, Shogun of the Voyaging Realm!"
"Liar." His expression was flat. "The most suited would obviously be Miss Gisena Allria."
"She doesn't count, she's a Remittance."
Aobaru chuckled. "Talk about politically incorrect..."
"I am neither political, nor ever incorrect," Letrizia asserted happily. "You'd understand if you ever pushed your mind just a little bit further."
"The Shogun went down that path, once," Aobaru confided. "We decided to try something new. Hunger has done fine while mostly retaining his essential humanity."
"Something new, huh..." Letrizia looked outward at an angle Aobaru couldn't perceive; out, and further out to some unthinkable shore, some faraway audience impossible to germinate within the curve of their present lives. "You know, Aobaru, for once you might be right. Let's try something new! After all..."
She waved brightly, once, and words in bright lettering appeared behind her: the dread phrasing that had concluded so many works of twenty-first-century Terran narrative -
"Our adventure's only beginning!"
---
"It isn't," said the Maiden, and the world became daylight.