B02-014 - Watch It Die
The ship rumbles to a new heading, Katerinya liking finding some new course in her visions whilst Celestine starts to awaken, a warrior's early rise. " Liliiiiith." She moans out, forcing the other woman awake near instantly, " I loooove youuuu~." Celestine plays with the other woman as she fully awakens.
"I love you too," Lilith responded happily. "God. God I love you too." Leaning into the Saint's grip, a buzzing joy of a good nap, and fun touches intermingling. "Okay." She says after a dozen minutes, "I need to feed everyone." The morning was special to Lilith, the preparation of food at the start of the day gave her a ritual, a norm that set the tone positively, while making her feel assured that everyone was accounted for and fed. She quickly popped out of bed to get dressed more for Reina's sake than anything, and moved to the kitchen to pull out T-Bone steaks, eggs, proofed dough for english muffins and two different cast iron's skillets.
To the side, a hot kettle boiled to a pre-set temperature, which she used to make pour-over coffee for Katerinya, then taking out a second glass filling it with ice and coffee from a refrigerator, and then creams and sugar making it overpoweringly sweet. Then re-setting the kettle to make sure both options were available for Reina, choosing to pull a horrendously dangerous stim drink that seemed to only consist of sugar, caffeine, and low grade amphetamines.
Lilith called to Reina over the Swarm link, while shouting " Breakfast is Ready. " Letting the noise bounce and spread throughout the ship, somehow knowing she'd been heard. Reina showing up first, then Celestine, and finally with a sneer Katerinya.
"I didn't know what you drink, so I have both hot and iced coffee, energy drinks, and then uh liquor." Lilith said with a smile, "I think, Rum and Vodka mostly."
"Oh, cool." She says, grabbing the vodka, dumping two shots into her coffee and starting to sip at it. "We used to drink these in the morning at home. Youth Guard privileges." Reina explains, taking another gulp. Celestine has a tiny, barely noticeable limp to her as she finds a seat and starts to eat.
Katerinya is scowling this morning, staring at both Lilith and Celestine.
"We were quiet this time!" Lilith said to Katerinya almost pleading, "We barely made a sound! "
"Sure, and you lit the WARP UP." Katerinya shouts, obviously not having slept last night. "I close my eyes and all I can hear is 'Quiet' and 'please', gah!"
A small giggle escapes Lilith as she speaks. "That is so much better than normal." Lilith says, pointing a fork at her. "Besides you've had a year to get a further room, at some point it's a decision you're making to listen in."
"Just you wait." Katerinya growls, stealing a muffin, and then another, her favourite part of breakfast. "I'll get even."
Lilith nods happily, "Once it's a little less freaky for me to get sliced open, for everyone, I think you'll be surprised . I've made some adjustments! The Drukhari can manipulate themselves a half second back in time. So can I now." Then very very quietly as she sipped her glass, she said mentally, And the gene seed of two Astartes lines.
Katerinya coughs, staring forwards, thoughts of choking the life out of Lilith raring in her mind, her latest obsession of violence as it turns out.
I know you like choking because it's so much more intimate , Lilith teases not making eye contact, You can't help but stare into my eyes the entire time.
I'm going to snap you. Katerinya promises, not denying anything.
The new game is silent now. Lilith agrees as she eats, Very simple, you get the kill if you can get it silently, and without leaving me out like a lump on the floor. I know Stealth isn't your strong suit, so I'll try and give you a gimme a few times.
I have better ideas. Katerinya growls in reality whilst the glare continues.
That just causes Lilith to giggle, snorting into her food again as she watches the woman stare daggers and pace angrily. "Reina, I've got stuff planned but is there anything specific that interests you?"
Reina's plate is clean, cleared in minutes with military efficiency, "Oh, yeah, no." She said, a speech style that sends Lilith back to Tarsonis for a moment.
"In order to weave essence, we need stuff to weave. That's you're main interest right?" Lilith reaffirms quickly to make sure she's on the right track.
"Yeah?" Reina said a little confused at the question.
"So messing with Essence means making a lot of horrific abominations to learn how to make cool things. For me, it's mostly been slapping genes together and then feeling it out. I noticed patterns though, so I'll be teaching those to you. The simplest thing I can think of is a Zergling, so simple you can fit two to an egg. We're going to try and make a slight change to the carapace colour. I'll show you where, and let you mess around and hatch some to see how your changes affect things." Lilith nods very sure of herself for once, "You'll need a sequencer blade though, which means you'll need at some point be willing to let your Essence be change. That happens while you're um… Outside your corporeal form, which is the most painless, or we could try it live but… That hurts even for me."
"At the end we're going to do a far less horrifying and controlled moment of me passing away, and then you can see how an infested is formed as they're reborn." Lilith finishes finally. "Any questions? That sound good?"
"Huh." Reina tilts her head, considering everything just said to her with the mind of a Tech Priest in training, "So, bullet points, minor changes to a genome, attempt self modification, kill slash see you kill yourself to observe revivification?" One by one, she breaks down the action plan.
"Step two is most likely going to be I poke you and you realise it's a bad option." Lilith says firmly, "Live sequencing hurts, I won't be letting you do it on yourself because I don't want you attaching your lungs to your eyeballs or something and then drown on your own tears."
"Arch Magos Cawl had us learn and attach cybernetics while conscious, is it similar?" The student wonders, looking curious.
"I… Don't know, we don't get cybernetics our flesh rejects it immediately and vehemently." Lilith says thinking, "When Varynna joined she spat out an entire like… System, she was a few bits of meat that quickly rebuilt."
Katerinya grumbles, "It hurts, more than most things." Though how she knows is beyond anyone here, no visible cyberware on her.
"Alright, fuck it," Lilith says standing up, "Can I see your hand? I'm going to just quickly poke at you. I don't really know what your pain tolerance is." Reaching out for Reina's hand.
The young woman offers the left, the one that was flesh even days ago, watching the sequencing blade get nearer.
Lilith takes a very normal typical first cut, normally a slight nick to reveal a thread to tug. The blade nicking the arm, but hitting something else beneath it. She looks to Reima for a reaction.
Her face curls, a mild discomfort evident, not quite the normal freeze. "It's exactly like cybernetics." Reina grumbles at the feeling.
"Oh good, so you're familiar." Lilith quickly uses the blade to reattach the points and removes it. "Yeah, so adding a blade would take about an hour I think? Once I see how you do with the really small stuff. I'm a little reticent to just hand you knife and say 'go wild.'"
"It took me a couple hours to attach the hand." Reina admits, looking a small bit ashamed, "I kept falling unconscious when the nerves were connecting. So we should try–"
"Well great news!" Lilith says smiling, "You don't faint anymore from pain! Only thing that can keep you down is lack of biomass! Also you'll be sitting in a pool that helps, mostly to retain biomass that'll help keep you alive." Then she stops, annoyed with herself, "I'll stop cutting you off."
"I'm used to it from Arch Magos Cawl. He says what he wants to say when he wants to." She shrugs,not particularly bothered.
That makes Lilith wince a little, "I'm teaching one person, so your input is kind of important to the whole thing. Let's go! Also, shopping after a bit to make your bedroom less… Empty. Unless you want to go alone, I can probably just let you go with an honour guard of Zerg I think." Looking to Katerinya and Celeste for advice, "I could do that right?"
"I can just…go to the next planet's markets, don't worry." Reina smiles, something bashful to it, "I am nineteen, I can be alone."
"I can't normally, " Lilith says thinking, "I have a bad habit of making friends." The last part is said disdainfully, with a bitter cut to it. Oh god, now I'm saying weird shit in odd tones. She thinks to herself, This is your fault Katerinya, you made me old.
Katerinya ignores the mental barb while Reina giggles and Celestine chuckles. "My dear Lilith, that's not a bad habit, it's just a side effect of your heart." Reaching over to touch Lilith, still dreamily looking at her whenever she can, as if entranced by the woman all over again.
"Tell that to the multitudes of problems it causes." She says quietly, but leaning into the touch all the same. "Alright, I'd like for you to take a pack of Zerglings to practice like, telling them to do shit but I also am down to just let you roam or whatever. We'll start with contacting each other through the Swarm I think."
Then she sighs, "When I used to do this, every thought I had was on full blast at a million miles a minute. I decided to just snip that part for myself and any future infested, now only the most intense is transmitted. We need at least a semi-balance of privacy you uh, just focus on someone in the swarm, pretty much only me or the Hatchery, or the distant system of ours." She takes a deep breath, "Try focusing on me really hard until you feel a… Pressure, and then think something, then stop focusing on me until you feel that pressure release."
Reina looks at her confused, but stares at Lilith seeming to be deep in consternation, less than a second later her thoughts flow into Lilith's mind with a slight push.
How do I make my skin change colour/Lilith smells nice/My hair is itchy/I can feel my hand/
"Alright, stop focusing on me now, and your thoughts will stop getting sent!" Lilith says cheerfully back. "We can't read each others minds without consent, again something I just… Didn't want to deal with if I ever got bigger."
She can read my thoughts?/ Which thoughts / My hair is still itchy and / Reina is looking panicked at Lilith and now seems to be trying to stop but sure how.
"Uh… Just… find something else to focus on Reina." Lilith says concerned, before quickly getting up and grabbing an ice cube. She sighs as she ignores a panicked barrage of thoughts and hands Reina two ice cubes. "Hold this." The thoughts stopped almost instantly. "Just a weird sensation can do it."
"Uh… What did you hear." Reina asked with a deep blush on her face.
Lilith shook her head, "Pretty much every thought I didn't actively ignore once I realised what was happening. Don't worry about it, seriously. I do not care I've done far worse on purpose. Just relax." Though that last one was to herself as she took a deep breath. "So yeah, you ever need help just focus on me and I'll come help. There's a maximum range, but you'd have to be out of the range of every Overlord and Brood Mother and Queen we have, which I think is Terra, and then a line towards another System just a short jump away." She adds, before taking a deep breath.
"Before I get distracted again." Reina's eyes lock to the floor, "We should start, like, doing something engaging."
"Right, cool to the hatchery," Lilith says "Might as well get used to sprinting around ships." She adds as she bolts a short kick off the side of a bulkhead sending her rocketing down the hall.
Reina stares at the move, before jogging after Lilith, shouting "Why can't we install trams? Like in the Iron Revenant?" Catching up to the woman minutes later, feet squelching on creep in the cavernous cargo bay as she almost loses her footing if not for the living carpets' own grip. Her eyes go wide as she looks at the massive hatchery, the size of a small house pulsing with heat and spawning larvae.
"Because this is Katerinya's ship, and she barely allows me to sleep here." Lilith jokes with a laugh, "More importantly, we can move far faster than a Tram, and far quieter. Every muscle is wired up to endorphins so even a little exercise will send you bouncing off the walls soon enough." Lilith says, then she points at the larvae, "Ok watch that."
Reina turned watching the larvae engross itself in creep, then over the body a small boil forms into a pimple, into an egg, finally a few minutes later the egg bursts open with two dog sized creatures. About a metre tall, with sickle like limbs and sharp incisors and wings like a dragonfly attached to each side of them. .
"They won't bite anyone on this ship, go ahead and pet one if you want." Lilith says happily, "These ones aren't for sequencing, we're just going to keep them around."
"Huh." Reina reaches out, hand touching the harsh scales of the Zergling, scratching at it, making the things give predatory purrs at her. "They're really violent about enjoying this." She comments, "Really violent." At one pushing against the other to get both hands to itself.
"Absolutely," Lilith says, watching with a grin, "They're bioweapons. The Zergling hatches in a few minutes, the hatchery makes larvae in a few minutes, and the drones make hatcheries in a few minutes. From a single Hatchery, I think you can create two like… Every handful of minutes, getting a few dozen in an hour. With Zerg the quantities aren't super important outside of infrastructure, you just grow a billion in a week and send them off."
"This is the core, then." Reina nods, "The heart of everything is this hatchery. Do you just think at it?" She turns to Lilith, asking for instruction.
"Yeah pretty much! I was going to do sequencing, but I just realised we need to see the change you made." Lilith says with a deep breath. "Ok, weird thing about hive minds, you've got access to millions of years of memories. Including mine if you really felt like it. If you go digging try to use discretion with what you talk to me about, a lot of it's pretty traumatic." Lilith said quickly. "It's all thought, you just focus on what you want, or what you think you want, and the rest of us unconsciously guide you to it."
Reina nods, and Lilith sighs as she immediately delves into thoughts of Terrans and Infested lives, just letting it happen because ultimately, there can't be any secrets. "When you're ready, focus on the hatchery, and then just kind of tell it in your head to make a zergling. Or just say it." Lilith says quickly, "It's a lot more natural to focus on things you're talking too."
The young woman stares at the hatchery, verbalising her thoughts, "Make zergling." It sounds silly, almost like a programmed command, but the hatchery shifts and pulses, transmitting the order to a larva and watching them grow in seconds, another duo of the basest form of zerg coming out. Embryonic fluid dripping off them as they snap at the air, growling.
Lilith tapped her leg and smiled as all four came running to her bumping into each other for pets. "They're favourite colour is yellow." She says with a smile from a very distant memory. "Alright, let's get to sequencing. I made two pools inside."
"Uh. Ma'am?" Reina said, as Lilith walked into the Hatchery, the door opening for her unclenching itself, "I can't?"
Lilith hit her head with her palm, "Right sorry," before she sliced off her arm at the fore-arm, sending small spurts of blood across the floor, before reaching inside and grabbing the blade out of the tendrils that interlocked to create the limb. She offered it to Reina with a smile turning around.
Reina looked uneasy and winced as she took the sticky blade from her. Her stomach doing a flip as the gore smelled pleasant, almost edible. The blade seemed to be a cross between a scalpel, a seam ripper, and a crochet hook. Lilith showed her very quickly how to tie and manipulate the knots and weaves of Essence, using Cawl's notes to better understand both their learning showing how certain blocks were used in many places, and how they can all be used in combinatorial patterns.
To Lilith, Reina seemed a natural, or at least had enough genetic knowledge to quickly swap out strands and move knots quickly. She lacked focus, or at least discipline however. She took orders well enough, but her mind seemed to wander and touch things that should be left well enough alone. Lilith found herself quickly stopping the hatchery from creating random Zerg bioforms as the woman day dreamed, or finding her thoughts sometimes intermittently shared with her. It was distracting.
The Adept finally says after hours of learning at the foot of the more experienced Sequencer, "Who taught…you?" Another curious question, one of many as she looks at Lilith, "Arch Magos Cawl couldn't remember who taught him, is why I ask."
"I was taught by the Ur-Sequencer of my original swarm, A giant ten metre worm called Abathur. He's… An acquired taste." Lilith admits with a heavy sigh, "He only taught me because I was an experiment he was heavily invested in, then I grew to know and like him, which increased the investment. Mostly, he snapped at me to help him with things, and occasionally muttered angrily to undo a dangerous mistake. Very kind with upgrades though, making almost any dumb idea an immediate addition to test." She touched her chin thinking, "I wonder if it was just an easy way for him to show affection."
"Sounds like the Arch Magos when he's in a bad mood." Reina smiles fondly, "He's still affable…just…angrily so, its very funny when its the other students on the receiving end." A giggle passes out of her at the memory.
Thinking on how Abathur treated most people, especially his experiments, Lilith sighed, "Think Cawl but opposite in personality. Still wildly dangerous and foolhardy with experimentation, but very unemotional to the point where he can seem very cruel. For example, he doesn't believe in using anaesthetic, even for things being sequenced past the point of life." At the look on Reina's face Lilith quickly added, "If it messes with the experiment, then their death was in vain. The suffering is in part out of respect."
"Oh, that makes…sense I suppose." Reina isn't horrified, just discomforted, "Arch Magos Cawl once said something similar, that everything must be given up for knowledge and achievement, but only if necessary." She recalls the story further, "It's how he explained his body, and why he recommended we only follow if we have the grit to do it. It was necessary, and so he gave it up."
"You're going to be the first, and possibly only Genetor to ever learn our knowledge, but with some of your questions, I'm a bit worried I didn't really get across how much you're giving up." Then looking over her shoulder carefully, "If you don't un-knot that, the Zergling will be soft shelled. I don't know if that's intentional, you're too far down on the sequence."
"Damnit." Reina hisses, moving back up, trying to figure out how to do this by rote. "I suppose that's true, Arch Magos Cawl is not a Genetor, he is a Dominus." Her voice isn't exactly focused, looking across the sequenced strand up and down to try and figure out the whole.
"Interesting," Lilith said nodding, "I assumed Arch Magos was the top title, like Emperor or Captain." Then looking at her staring at her work, "You're doing everything mostly correct. It's great for your first time!" Then following it with, "You might find it easier if you create—" She very quicky pulls a strand from her own finger, "If I just make a little hitch here," She shows a somewhat complicated knot, "I can better keep my place, instead of having to rely solely on my abilities to recognize. It also can't be re-woven when it's crossed like this."
"So you can make temporary pauses, I was having trouble with the morphic-Uhm, everchanging-structure." Reina follows the example near-perfectly, however they train them in the Mechanicum seems effective, "And he is on the ruling council of Mars, though rarely attends. His title means he is above a Magos, but below the Fabricator-General, Dominus means his speciality lies in making machines, bodies and discoveries relating to warfare." She explains, working on the strand all throughout, "Very technically, he is the highest ranking war-leader in the Cult, though he does not see the point in using the authority, as he has often ranted."
"Pulling rank just pisses people off unless they already respect you. If they do respect you, you don't need to pull rank." She comments absentmindedly, thinking about Varynna, the Primarch, and some of the other imperials she's met.
"Well that's exactly the issue, no one seems to respect him, it's confusing." Reina starts frowning, "Without him, Lord Guilliman would never have awoken, he invented the artifice of his armour, that which allowed his body to overcome the cut from his siblings warp-tainted blade, he re-invented the Astartes to make them stronger, faster, more enduring, he reinvented so much, and yet…he can't attend a Symposium without being threatened with death." It's a confusion at the double standard that comes off her, not understanding how doctrine and reality can be so different.
"I'm not going to tell you what to think, but I'll ask some questions." Lilith said very carefully, "If Guilliman and Cawl are allies, and as we know Guilliman is the son of the emperor giving Cawl a lot of freedom, how does that effect, do you think, the normal way things operate in the Mechanicum before they both returned?"
"Well that's just it, Lord Guilliman doesn't like him either." Reina admits, "I, uhm, spliced into the ship's internal pict and audio records when I was bored."
"That's rad." Lilith says at the word splice, making a mental connection with the word hack, "True, but he respects him. Threatening someone with death is a lack of respect. Saying 'these ideas gross me out,' or 'you're ideas aggravate me,' are signs of dislike. It's ok to feel discomfort at someone's opinion, and then tell them so. It may provide insight to both of you. Respect is a currency that spends far further than thrones do."
Reina nods, "Guilliman never…threatened him with it, but sometimes the Arch Magos would suggest certain projects that could use resources, like-" She stops, thinking, then realizing it doesn't matter anymore, continues, "When he took the geneseed of traitor Astartes, and began…making his own Astartes chapters, Guilliman was enraged. Arch Magos Cawl had to warn him of whose ship he was on else I believe it would have come to blow."
"Exactly, that reminder both of the danger, but also that Cawl was in his home. If the two came to blows it would have been destructive for everyone involved including the imperium. Reminding Guilliman of honour was going to do far more than trying to reason with something he found detestable." She suggested nodding, "That much respect, that strong of a relationship can be a defining point in the galaxy. Does Cawl like how most of the Mechanicum is run do you suppose?"
"He liked Arch Magos Kotov when they spoke, but rarely anyone else." Reina considers, "But Arch Magos Kotov also said," The Adept smiles at the memory, "And I quote, 'I am an Arch Magos, I do what I want.' to Arch Magos Cawl figuring out if he cared about the law."
"What did he say?" Lilith prodded, trying to get her to an idea without forcing Liliths own opinions, finding it very difficuilt though somehow manageable.
"Oh, Arch Magos Cawl? He proceeded to show him his experiments in illegal warp technology." Reina says exuberantly, "I've never seen them, but they apparently made Arch Magos Kotov pale and horrified for weeks after."
"Kotov was the one screaming that Cawl was a Siliconum right? And labeled a loon?" Both trying to remember what she heard the o ther day, and trying to lay down groundwork for something.
"Arch Magos Kotov? No, he shortly after embarked on Crusade to the Halo Stars to search for something called 'The Breath of the Gods'." The Adept shakes her head, "Aboard the Speranza, the ship which the main gun of the Iron Revenant is based off, a miraculous vessel, it predates the Imperium!" She seems very excited about that, "It's the largest vessel the Mechanicum has, more a flying planetoid than a ship!"
"Is Kotov still on crusade?" Lilith looked over her shoulder and the sequencing, and was somewhat shocked that she was basically almost finished. Just needing to undo the hitch and re-weave the essence.
"Well, Arch Magos Cawl thinks him dead, but he's very dour about other people's chances when in danger." Reina undoes the hitch, letting the Zergling fully emerge, "I think he'll be fine, Arch Magos Kotov was very impressive when I saw him, smarter than Arch Magos Cawl in a lot of ways, especially when they spoke of truly exotic things." Her eyes widen, "You were speaking about time and space manipulation earlier, Arch Magos Kotov is one of the only people in the Imperium that still makes Stasis fields and the most ancient forms of space warp technology, maybe you should seek him out?"
"Almost definitely, I think if only to show him a thirty-eight millenia old oddity," Lilith said with a small smile, inspecting the Zergling that burst out of the viscera. Examining them down to the genetic level for defects. "You did great! This is perfect, I don't have any real notes to give on i—" Then one of them seemed to split a little as it moved, she looked closer, "Oh, don't worry too much about it, but a minor problem, you might have nicked something when you undid a few knots. This pair will most likely die from dehydration in an hour or two, but the essence you created should be fine for the next ones."
Reina frowns, "Omnissiah damn it." Is mumbled under her breath as she stares at the thing, finding its flaws, the flaws she made.
"It's really fine, perfection comes with practice. We improve to create perfection, and inherently will always create imperfect things until that goal is achieved." Lilith quietly nods looking at the creature. "Do you want to leave the room? Or will you be fine with me putting it down now? It's existence for the next hour is going to be pretty bad."
"Hmm? It's just a test." Reina shakes her head, "I'll observe its breakdown so I know what it looks like." And the training of the Mechanicum shows its head again as she has no real connection to the creature before her.
There's a moment as Lilith considers it, swiping through Zerg memories to see if this was something they already had, but improperly sequencing and then letting things run around was rarely something needed as the result was already known. Then she wondered if Reina would learn from it or even could. She looks at the two of them the Zergling and Reina, "I think for the test then, you should be aware of the sensory effects, if you're feeling up to it. I'll act as an inbetween, and let you feel what the Zergling does as it deteriorates."
"Perfect." Reina sits down, waiting for the creature to start dying, "This is already new data! I've never experienced this first hand."
There's a moment where Lilith tries to search her mind for something that would say this is a bad idea. Vast stores Abathur had provided her when she split, and nothing on this new drive to teach, even less on Terran psychology. "If at any point, it's too much just say so. I do not know your limits." Lilith affirms, grabbing onto the Zerglings mind, and then pushing the thoughts and sensations forward.
Reina felt her whole body tense with the need to tear something apart, her teeth itching in her mouth as the sensation to chew, bite, and kill suffused her. An unending joy at the thought of death, at the very idea of killing, while an underlying sensation of togetherness as low level orders tell the Zerg how to manoeuvre around objects in the room, no higher idea than meamble and wait to kill. Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin were flooding the Zerglings system in a constant stream while pain was non-existent. Over the next fifteen minutes she felt small things shut down, first muscles getting slow and weak, not painful necessarily but a small sense of being unwell seeking out creep that didn't heal her. A need to consume and heal that didn't come.
"You good?" Lilith asked quickly, as the feelings intensified.
Reina blinks once, then again, then once more. "That seems to be an uncomfortable existence. But I wasn't born into it." A scientific appraisal rather than anything more personal as she looks at the Zergling moving slower, "It feels nothing but an enjoyment and goal to serve, it's… odd."
"Yes, exactly. I'll continue then." Lilith kept pushing as systems started to shut down from dehydration. And it's need to eat and absorb creep intensified, continuing to feel an odd uncomfort at a biological order that was impossible to follow. Not able to heal, slowly not able to move, parts of itself dragging it into the creep as it tries to eat it directly to no avail. Systems shut down, starting with hormone regulation as a sense of incoming death overtakes it. Causing it to want to fight harder, more aggressive, try and get more kills to serve in its last gasp efforts that discomfort at trying to make the impossible real and then a black darkness. The off switch being pressed, as it struggled senses no longer able to function, and a complete entrapment in it's skin until that too ceases.
Then as she watched them both fall Lilith asked, "Any final observations?"
"They are more like servitors than living creatures, but instead of bound by programming and neural shunts, they are bound by instinct and chemical." Reina describes, "Both kinder and less kind, its interesting."
That brings a quick sigh of relief to Lilith, "Cool! I was worried letting you experience something's death might have ill effects, but it seemed to work out. We as infested get huge bursts of adrenaline and endorphins that make the experience far more pleasant, a way to offset trauma." She nods smiling, "A more intense reward comes from killing, and just succeeding at a task in general. It's a motivator to chase an ideal. A goal, and in addition an attempt at offsetting some mistakes made in previous designs that weren't able to properly experience anything but rage and hate. The Ur-Sequencer learned the necessity of Terrans to be somewhat comfortable and happy. It was a bit later than he should have, but he got there."
Rather than speaking, Reina takes notes, writing them on a dataslate that is well used judging by the marks on sides and screen that seems recently replaced.
"So do you want to watch me respawn or experience it?" Lilith says once noticing that she's done, "Or do you still want to wait." After a few minutes, "What happened to your dataslate by the way."
"Oh, nothing it's just a passed down thing, the student before me had it, and the student before then. It has six thousand years of Arch Magos Cawl's student notes on it." Reina is tapping away at it, "And sre, can it not be a bolt pistol?" She looks back up to Lilith, "I'm not afraid of dying, but I don't…like bolts."
"That's totally fine," Another deep breath as she smile, most of her worries now gone, "Alright, you watch then you go. You got nervous yesterday so a reminder that we don't respawn…" She touches her eyes, "Treat it like a medical experiment, autopsying a corpse." That felt right to say.
She quickly took out a sequencer blade and moved it to the underside of her throat. Nothing happened, Lilith looked at her hand confused the blade appearing when pointed away from her head, but very quickly descending the minute she intended to end herself. "Oh! Right! Sorry, fuck right. We disable the Thanatotic drive." She groaned trying to think.
"I could do it?" Reina offers, shrugging. "I've killed someone before."
"Oh, cool! Yeah, don't use the sequencer blade though, it won't kill me and I'll be rather upset, just hurts a lot unless you make very decisive cuts. Kills on the genetic level." Very quickly reaching for the sequencer blade before thinking, "Oh actually you keep that one, you'll need more and I don't want to keep cutting off my arm." A different steel appears in her hand, and she hands that to the infested apprentice. "Hit the brain, if you don't damage enough to kill, I'll just regenerate so go at it until I slump."
"Your brain is pretty normal, so if I go here." She quickly walks around Lilith, trying to place her theoretical and practical understanding of brains with this live subject, "And point it here," The blade rests against the soft portions of the skull, angled slightly upwards and gripped with both hands, "I should be able to just go through the brainstem? I should build something to make this easier."
"Are you aware you can slice through bone like it's made of wet tissue paper? This is part of why we're sprinting place to place. There's not easier. Just a quick lazy swing will do it, might be harder with me but shouldn't be unless you're not very confident. As in chicken out at the last moment." Lilith says with a smile, hoping to seem less harsh. "Just arm up, arm down, literally anywhere north of the eyes."
"That feels a little too crude, this is more…scientific I guess." Reina admits, tensing before pushing up and killing Lilith's body in a sharp, barely tenth of a second of pain. The body falls slump in front of her, and she observes a slight flash for a nanosecond as almost instantly Lilith begins to re-grow in the egg. Her jaw tensing as she watches through semi translucent fluid, when after only a few minutes, the egg burst open, revealing Lilith curled on the floor waking up and standing.
"There you go!" Lilith said as she dumped her body into the Evolution pool after returning all of its possessions back to herself.
"It's like a…transmission of your body and mind just as you die." She mumbles, still holding the sequencing blade, "Almost like…a cogitator program being moved. Right?" Reina looks up, seeking affirmation, or rejection of her theory.
"One sec," Lilith says as she quickly flips through the swarm's new memories of the mechanicum, "Yes. The essence keeps a continuous state of consciousness then re-implants into a new body. You're not really in your meat suit, you're just piloting it."
"I was just about to ask that." Reina smiles, "Continuity of consciousness was a worry, we have things like this in the Mechanicus, but it's always…worrying if it's really you?" She admits with a slight frown, "Or just a very excellent copy."
"You can't copy essence after a certain amount of complexity if you try to make a new Lilith it'll just sit there until my essence moves to it. I can transfer, I can't copy. We can't make entirely new things, it's always a base of something we picked up then heavily modified." Then as Lilith spoke she realized, "Oh shit, we're exactly like the Mechanicum I think. The Zergling essence for example is just a set of low level processes that are piloted by one of us or a Queen or an Overlord, there's no person there or thing it's a set of commands and sensors to dictate too."
"Parallel evolution? Makes sense, it's an efficient system, it'll be replicated." Reina nods, "It's like how many species in the galaxy are straight backed bipeds with two manipulator limbs and a growth that houses eyes, ears, other senses and a brain." She explains, "It's just a good way to do things."
"Yep, or like how many things on a long enough timespan becomes a crab." Lilith is even more pleased that this was going this well. Though harder things would be in store especially when it came to synthesising improvements from mixing and matching. "Alright! You can either add a sequencer or go on your shopping trip or uh… Whatever you want really! I spent most of my free time…" A small wave of memories of Lilith's time in the swarm, both harmful and joyful came that made her groan. "Being a nuisance, you can probably figure out something better. Next planet with life we'll go hunting essence from new bioforms."
"I love you too," Lilith responded happily. "God. God I love you too." Leaning into the Saint's grip, a buzzing joy of a good nap, and fun touches intermingling. "Okay." She says after a dozen minutes, "I need to feed everyone." The morning was special to Lilith, the preparation of food at the start of the day gave her a ritual, a norm that set the tone positively, while making her feel assured that everyone was accounted for and fed. She quickly popped out of bed to get dressed more for Reina's sake than anything, and moved to the kitchen to pull out T-Bone steaks, eggs, proofed dough for english muffins and two different cast iron's skillets.
To the side, a hot kettle boiled to a pre-set temperature, which she used to make pour-over coffee for Katerinya, then taking out a second glass filling it with ice and coffee from a refrigerator, and then creams and sugar making it overpoweringly sweet. Then re-setting the kettle to make sure both options were available for Reina, choosing to pull a horrendously dangerous stim drink that seemed to only consist of sugar, caffeine, and low grade amphetamines.
Lilith called to Reina over the Swarm link, while shouting " Breakfast is Ready. " Letting the noise bounce and spread throughout the ship, somehow knowing she'd been heard. Reina showing up first, then Celestine, and finally with a sneer Katerinya.
"I didn't know what you drink, so I have both hot and iced coffee, energy drinks, and then uh liquor." Lilith said with a smile, "I think, Rum and Vodka mostly."
"Oh, cool." She says, grabbing the vodka, dumping two shots into her coffee and starting to sip at it. "We used to drink these in the morning at home. Youth Guard privileges." Reina explains, taking another gulp. Celestine has a tiny, barely noticeable limp to her as she finds a seat and starts to eat.
Katerinya is scowling this morning, staring at both Lilith and Celestine.
"We were quiet this time!" Lilith said to Katerinya almost pleading, "We barely made a sound! "
"Sure, and you lit the WARP UP." Katerinya shouts, obviously not having slept last night. "I close my eyes and all I can hear is 'Quiet' and 'please', gah!"
A small giggle escapes Lilith as she speaks. "That is so much better than normal." Lilith says, pointing a fork at her. "Besides you've had a year to get a further room, at some point it's a decision you're making to listen in."
"Just you wait." Katerinya growls, stealing a muffin, and then another, her favourite part of breakfast. "I'll get even."
Lilith nods happily, "Once it's a little less freaky for me to get sliced open, for everyone, I think you'll be surprised . I've made some adjustments! The Drukhari can manipulate themselves a half second back in time. So can I now." Then very very quietly as she sipped her glass, she said mentally, And the gene seed of two Astartes lines.
Katerinya coughs, staring forwards, thoughts of choking the life out of Lilith raring in her mind, her latest obsession of violence as it turns out.
I know you like choking because it's so much more intimate , Lilith teases not making eye contact, You can't help but stare into my eyes the entire time.
I'm going to snap you. Katerinya promises, not denying anything.
The new game is silent now. Lilith agrees as she eats, Very simple, you get the kill if you can get it silently, and without leaving me out like a lump on the floor. I know Stealth isn't your strong suit, so I'll try and give you a gimme a few times.
I have better ideas. Katerinya growls in reality whilst the glare continues.
That just causes Lilith to giggle, snorting into her food again as she watches the woman stare daggers and pace angrily. "Reina, I've got stuff planned but is there anything specific that interests you?"
Reina's plate is clean, cleared in minutes with military efficiency, "Oh, yeah, no." She said, a speech style that sends Lilith back to Tarsonis for a moment.
"In order to weave essence, we need stuff to weave. That's you're main interest right?" Lilith reaffirms quickly to make sure she's on the right track.
"Yeah?" Reina said a little confused at the question.
"So messing with Essence means making a lot of horrific abominations to learn how to make cool things. For me, it's mostly been slapping genes together and then feeling it out. I noticed patterns though, so I'll be teaching those to you. The simplest thing I can think of is a Zergling, so simple you can fit two to an egg. We're going to try and make a slight change to the carapace colour. I'll show you where, and let you mess around and hatch some to see how your changes affect things." Lilith nods very sure of herself for once, "You'll need a sequencer blade though, which means you'll need at some point be willing to let your Essence be change. That happens while you're um… Outside your corporeal form, which is the most painless, or we could try it live but… That hurts even for me."
"At the end we're going to do a far less horrifying and controlled moment of me passing away, and then you can see how an infested is formed as they're reborn." Lilith finishes finally. "Any questions? That sound good?"
"Huh." Reina tilts her head, considering everything just said to her with the mind of a Tech Priest in training, "So, bullet points, minor changes to a genome, attempt self modification, kill slash see you kill yourself to observe revivification?" One by one, she breaks down the action plan.
"Step two is most likely going to be I poke you and you realise it's a bad option." Lilith says firmly, "Live sequencing hurts, I won't be letting you do it on yourself because I don't want you attaching your lungs to your eyeballs or something and then drown on your own tears."
"Arch Magos Cawl had us learn and attach cybernetics while conscious, is it similar?" The student wonders, looking curious.
"I… Don't know, we don't get cybernetics our flesh rejects it immediately and vehemently." Lilith says thinking, "When Varynna joined she spat out an entire like… System, she was a few bits of meat that quickly rebuilt."
Katerinya grumbles, "It hurts, more than most things." Though how she knows is beyond anyone here, no visible cyberware on her.
"Alright, fuck it," Lilith says standing up, "Can I see your hand? I'm going to just quickly poke at you. I don't really know what your pain tolerance is." Reaching out for Reina's hand.
The young woman offers the left, the one that was flesh even days ago, watching the sequencing blade get nearer.
Lilith takes a very normal typical first cut, normally a slight nick to reveal a thread to tug. The blade nicking the arm, but hitting something else beneath it. She looks to Reima for a reaction.
Her face curls, a mild discomfort evident, not quite the normal freeze. "It's exactly like cybernetics." Reina grumbles at the feeling.
"Oh good, so you're familiar." Lilith quickly uses the blade to reattach the points and removes it. "Yeah, so adding a blade would take about an hour I think? Once I see how you do with the really small stuff. I'm a little reticent to just hand you knife and say 'go wild.'"
"It took me a couple hours to attach the hand." Reina admits, looking a small bit ashamed, "I kept falling unconscious when the nerves were connecting. So we should try–"
"Well great news!" Lilith says smiling, "You don't faint anymore from pain! Only thing that can keep you down is lack of biomass! Also you'll be sitting in a pool that helps, mostly to retain biomass that'll help keep you alive." Then she stops, annoyed with herself, "I'll stop cutting you off."
"I'm used to it from Arch Magos Cawl. He says what he wants to say when he wants to." She shrugs,not particularly bothered.
That makes Lilith wince a little, "I'm teaching one person, so your input is kind of important to the whole thing. Let's go! Also, shopping after a bit to make your bedroom less… Empty. Unless you want to go alone, I can probably just let you go with an honour guard of Zerg I think." Looking to Katerinya and Celeste for advice, "I could do that right?"
"I can just…go to the next planet's markets, don't worry." Reina smiles, something bashful to it, "I am nineteen, I can be alone."
"I can't normally, " Lilith says thinking, "I have a bad habit of making friends." The last part is said disdainfully, with a bitter cut to it. Oh god, now I'm saying weird shit in odd tones. She thinks to herself, This is your fault Katerinya, you made me old.
Katerinya ignores the mental barb while Reina giggles and Celestine chuckles. "My dear Lilith, that's not a bad habit, it's just a side effect of your heart." Reaching over to touch Lilith, still dreamily looking at her whenever she can, as if entranced by the woman all over again.
"Tell that to the multitudes of problems it causes." She says quietly, but leaning into the touch all the same. "Alright, I'd like for you to take a pack of Zerglings to practice like, telling them to do shit but I also am down to just let you roam or whatever. We'll start with contacting each other through the Swarm I think."
Then she sighs, "When I used to do this, every thought I had was on full blast at a million miles a minute. I decided to just snip that part for myself and any future infested, now only the most intense is transmitted. We need at least a semi-balance of privacy you uh, just focus on someone in the swarm, pretty much only me or the Hatchery, or the distant system of ours." She takes a deep breath, "Try focusing on me really hard until you feel a… Pressure, and then think something, then stop focusing on me until you feel that pressure release."
Reina looks at her confused, but stares at Lilith seeming to be deep in consternation, less than a second later her thoughts flow into Lilith's mind with a slight push.
How do I make my skin change colour/Lilith smells nice/My hair is itchy/I can feel my hand/
"Alright, stop focusing on me now, and your thoughts will stop getting sent!" Lilith says cheerfully back. "We can't read each others minds without consent, again something I just… Didn't want to deal with if I ever got bigger."
She can read my thoughts?/ Which thoughts / My hair is still itchy and / Reina is looking panicked at Lilith and now seems to be trying to stop but sure how.
"Uh… Just… find something else to focus on Reina." Lilith says concerned, before quickly getting up and grabbing an ice cube. She sighs as she ignores a panicked barrage of thoughts and hands Reina two ice cubes. "Hold this." The thoughts stopped almost instantly. "Just a weird sensation can do it."
"Uh… What did you hear." Reina asked with a deep blush on her face.
Lilith shook her head, "Pretty much every thought I didn't actively ignore once I realised what was happening. Don't worry about it, seriously. I do not care I've done far worse on purpose. Just relax." Though that last one was to herself as she took a deep breath. "So yeah, you ever need help just focus on me and I'll come help. There's a maximum range, but you'd have to be out of the range of every Overlord and Brood Mother and Queen we have, which I think is Terra, and then a line towards another System just a short jump away." She adds, before taking a deep breath.
"Before I get distracted again." Reina's eyes lock to the floor, "We should start, like, doing something engaging."
"Right, cool to the hatchery," Lilith says "Might as well get used to sprinting around ships." She adds as she bolts a short kick off the side of a bulkhead sending her rocketing down the hall.
Reina stares at the move, before jogging after Lilith, shouting "Why can't we install trams? Like in the Iron Revenant?" Catching up to the woman minutes later, feet squelching on creep in the cavernous cargo bay as she almost loses her footing if not for the living carpets' own grip. Her eyes go wide as she looks at the massive hatchery, the size of a small house pulsing with heat and spawning larvae.
"Because this is Katerinya's ship, and she barely allows me to sleep here." Lilith jokes with a laugh, "More importantly, we can move far faster than a Tram, and far quieter. Every muscle is wired up to endorphins so even a little exercise will send you bouncing off the walls soon enough." Lilith says, then she points at the larvae, "Ok watch that."
Reina turned watching the larvae engross itself in creep, then over the body a small boil forms into a pimple, into an egg, finally a few minutes later the egg bursts open with two dog sized creatures. About a metre tall, with sickle like limbs and sharp incisors and wings like a dragonfly attached to each side of them. .
"They won't bite anyone on this ship, go ahead and pet one if you want." Lilith says happily, "These ones aren't for sequencing, we're just going to keep them around."
"Huh." Reina reaches out, hand touching the harsh scales of the Zergling, scratching at it, making the things give predatory purrs at her. "They're really violent about enjoying this." She comments, "Really violent." At one pushing against the other to get both hands to itself.
"Absolutely," Lilith says, watching with a grin, "They're bioweapons. The Zergling hatches in a few minutes, the hatchery makes larvae in a few minutes, and the drones make hatcheries in a few minutes. From a single Hatchery, I think you can create two like… Every handful of minutes, getting a few dozen in an hour. With Zerg the quantities aren't super important outside of infrastructure, you just grow a billion in a week and send them off."
"This is the core, then." Reina nods, "The heart of everything is this hatchery. Do you just think at it?" She turns to Lilith, asking for instruction.
"Yeah pretty much! I was going to do sequencing, but I just realised we need to see the change you made." Lilith says with a deep breath. "Ok, weird thing about hive minds, you've got access to millions of years of memories. Including mine if you really felt like it. If you go digging try to use discretion with what you talk to me about, a lot of it's pretty traumatic." Lilith said quickly. "It's all thought, you just focus on what you want, or what you think you want, and the rest of us unconsciously guide you to it."
Reina nods, and Lilith sighs as she immediately delves into thoughts of Terrans and Infested lives, just letting it happen because ultimately, there can't be any secrets. "When you're ready, focus on the hatchery, and then just kind of tell it in your head to make a zergling. Or just say it." Lilith says quickly, "It's a lot more natural to focus on things you're talking too."
The young woman stares at the hatchery, verbalising her thoughts, "Make zergling." It sounds silly, almost like a programmed command, but the hatchery shifts and pulses, transmitting the order to a larva and watching them grow in seconds, another duo of the basest form of zerg coming out. Embryonic fluid dripping off them as they snap at the air, growling.
Lilith tapped her leg and smiled as all four came running to her bumping into each other for pets. "They're favourite colour is yellow." She says with a smile from a very distant memory. "Alright, let's get to sequencing. I made two pools inside."
"Uh. Ma'am?" Reina said, as Lilith walked into the Hatchery, the door opening for her unclenching itself, "I can't?"
Lilith hit her head with her palm, "Right sorry," before she sliced off her arm at the fore-arm, sending small spurts of blood across the floor, before reaching inside and grabbing the blade out of the tendrils that interlocked to create the limb. She offered it to Reina with a smile turning around.
Reina looked uneasy and winced as she took the sticky blade from her. Her stomach doing a flip as the gore smelled pleasant, almost edible. The blade seemed to be a cross between a scalpel, a seam ripper, and a crochet hook. Lilith showed her very quickly how to tie and manipulate the knots and weaves of Essence, using Cawl's notes to better understand both their learning showing how certain blocks were used in many places, and how they can all be used in combinatorial patterns.
To Lilith, Reina seemed a natural, or at least had enough genetic knowledge to quickly swap out strands and move knots quickly. She lacked focus, or at least discipline however. She took orders well enough, but her mind seemed to wander and touch things that should be left well enough alone. Lilith found herself quickly stopping the hatchery from creating random Zerg bioforms as the woman day dreamed, or finding her thoughts sometimes intermittently shared with her. It was distracting.
The Adept finally says after hours of learning at the foot of the more experienced Sequencer, "Who taught…you?" Another curious question, one of many as she looks at Lilith, "Arch Magos Cawl couldn't remember who taught him, is why I ask."
"I was taught by the Ur-Sequencer of my original swarm, A giant ten metre worm called Abathur. He's… An acquired taste." Lilith admits with a heavy sigh, "He only taught me because I was an experiment he was heavily invested in, then I grew to know and like him, which increased the investment. Mostly, he snapped at me to help him with things, and occasionally muttered angrily to undo a dangerous mistake. Very kind with upgrades though, making almost any dumb idea an immediate addition to test." She touched her chin thinking, "I wonder if it was just an easy way for him to show affection."
"Sounds like the Arch Magos when he's in a bad mood." Reina smiles fondly, "He's still affable…just…angrily so, its very funny when its the other students on the receiving end." A giggle passes out of her at the memory.
Thinking on how Abathur treated most people, especially his experiments, Lilith sighed, "Think Cawl but opposite in personality. Still wildly dangerous and foolhardy with experimentation, but very unemotional to the point where he can seem very cruel. For example, he doesn't believe in using anaesthetic, even for things being sequenced past the point of life." At the look on Reina's face Lilith quickly added, "If it messes with the experiment, then their death was in vain. The suffering is in part out of respect."
"Oh, that makes…sense I suppose." Reina isn't horrified, just discomforted, "Arch Magos Cawl once said something similar, that everything must be given up for knowledge and achievement, but only if necessary." She recalls the story further, "It's how he explained his body, and why he recommended we only follow if we have the grit to do it. It was necessary, and so he gave it up."
"You're going to be the first, and possibly only Genetor to ever learn our knowledge, but with some of your questions, I'm a bit worried I didn't really get across how much you're giving up." Then looking over her shoulder carefully, "If you don't un-knot that, the Zergling will be soft shelled. I don't know if that's intentional, you're too far down on the sequence."
"Damnit." Reina hisses, moving back up, trying to figure out how to do this by rote. "I suppose that's true, Arch Magos Cawl is not a Genetor, he is a Dominus." Her voice isn't exactly focused, looking across the sequenced strand up and down to try and figure out the whole.
"Interesting," Lilith said nodding, "I assumed Arch Magos was the top title, like Emperor or Captain." Then looking at her staring at her work, "You're doing everything mostly correct. It's great for your first time!" Then following it with, "You might find it easier if you create—" She very quicky pulls a strand from her own finger, "If I just make a little hitch here," She shows a somewhat complicated knot, "I can better keep my place, instead of having to rely solely on my abilities to recognize. It also can't be re-woven when it's crossed like this."
"So you can make temporary pauses, I was having trouble with the morphic-Uhm, everchanging-structure." Reina follows the example near-perfectly, however they train them in the Mechanicum seems effective, "And he is on the ruling council of Mars, though rarely attends. His title means he is above a Magos, but below the Fabricator-General, Dominus means his speciality lies in making machines, bodies and discoveries relating to warfare." She explains, working on the strand all throughout, "Very technically, he is the highest ranking war-leader in the Cult, though he does not see the point in using the authority, as he has often ranted."
"Pulling rank just pisses people off unless they already respect you. If they do respect you, you don't need to pull rank." She comments absentmindedly, thinking about Varynna, the Primarch, and some of the other imperials she's met.
"Well that's exactly the issue, no one seems to respect him, it's confusing." Reina starts frowning, "Without him, Lord Guilliman would never have awoken, he invented the artifice of his armour, that which allowed his body to overcome the cut from his siblings warp-tainted blade, he re-invented the Astartes to make them stronger, faster, more enduring, he reinvented so much, and yet…he can't attend a Symposium without being threatened with death." It's a confusion at the double standard that comes off her, not understanding how doctrine and reality can be so different.
"I'm not going to tell you what to think, but I'll ask some questions." Lilith said very carefully, "If Guilliman and Cawl are allies, and as we know Guilliman is the son of the emperor giving Cawl a lot of freedom, how does that effect, do you think, the normal way things operate in the Mechanicum before they both returned?"
"Well that's just it, Lord Guilliman doesn't like him either." Reina admits, "I, uhm, spliced into the ship's internal pict and audio records when I was bored."
"That's rad." Lilith says at the word splice, making a mental connection with the word hack, "True, but he respects him. Threatening someone with death is a lack of respect. Saying 'these ideas gross me out,' or 'you're ideas aggravate me,' are signs of dislike. It's ok to feel discomfort at someone's opinion, and then tell them so. It may provide insight to both of you. Respect is a currency that spends far further than thrones do."
Reina nods, "Guilliman never…threatened him with it, but sometimes the Arch Magos would suggest certain projects that could use resources, like-" She stops, thinking, then realizing it doesn't matter anymore, continues, "When he took the geneseed of traitor Astartes, and began…making his own Astartes chapters, Guilliman was enraged. Arch Magos Cawl had to warn him of whose ship he was on else I believe it would have come to blow."
"Exactly, that reminder both of the danger, but also that Cawl was in his home. If the two came to blows it would have been destructive for everyone involved including the imperium. Reminding Guilliman of honour was going to do far more than trying to reason with something he found detestable." She suggested nodding, "That much respect, that strong of a relationship can be a defining point in the galaxy. Does Cawl like how most of the Mechanicum is run do you suppose?"
"He liked Arch Magos Kotov when they spoke, but rarely anyone else." Reina considers, "But Arch Magos Kotov also said," The Adept smiles at the memory, "And I quote, 'I am an Arch Magos, I do what I want.' to Arch Magos Cawl figuring out if he cared about the law."
"What did he say?" Lilith prodded, trying to get her to an idea without forcing Liliths own opinions, finding it very difficuilt though somehow manageable.
"Oh, Arch Magos Cawl? He proceeded to show him his experiments in illegal warp technology." Reina says exuberantly, "I've never seen them, but they apparently made Arch Magos Kotov pale and horrified for weeks after."
"Kotov was the one screaming that Cawl was a Siliconum right? And labeled a loon?" Both trying to remember what she heard the o ther day, and trying to lay down groundwork for something.
"Arch Magos Kotov? No, he shortly after embarked on Crusade to the Halo Stars to search for something called 'The Breath of the Gods'." The Adept shakes her head, "Aboard the Speranza, the ship which the main gun of the Iron Revenant is based off, a miraculous vessel, it predates the Imperium!" She seems very excited about that, "It's the largest vessel the Mechanicum has, more a flying planetoid than a ship!"
"Is Kotov still on crusade?" Lilith looked over her shoulder and the sequencing, and was somewhat shocked that she was basically almost finished. Just needing to undo the hitch and re-weave the essence.
"Well, Arch Magos Cawl thinks him dead, but he's very dour about other people's chances when in danger." Reina undoes the hitch, letting the Zergling fully emerge, "I think he'll be fine, Arch Magos Kotov was very impressive when I saw him, smarter than Arch Magos Cawl in a lot of ways, especially when they spoke of truly exotic things." Her eyes widen, "You were speaking about time and space manipulation earlier, Arch Magos Kotov is one of the only people in the Imperium that still makes Stasis fields and the most ancient forms of space warp technology, maybe you should seek him out?"
"Almost definitely, I think if only to show him a thirty-eight millenia old oddity," Lilith said with a small smile, inspecting the Zergling that burst out of the viscera. Examining them down to the genetic level for defects. "You did great! This is perfect, I don't have any real notes to give on i—" Then one of them seemed to split a little as it moved, she looked closer, "Oh, don't worry too much about it, but a minor problem, you might have nicked something when you undid a few knots. This pair will most likely die from dehydration in an hour or two, but the essence you created should be fine for the next ones."
Reina frowns, "Omnissiah damn it." Is mumbled under her breath as she stares at the thing, finding its flaws, the flaws she made.
"It's really fine, perfection comes with practice. We improve to create perfection, and inherently will always create imperfect things until that goal is achieved." Lilith quietly nods looking at the creature. "Do you want to leave the room? Or will you be fine with me putting it down now? It's existence for the next hour is going to be pretty bad."
"Hmm? It's just a test." Reina shakes her head, "I'll observe its breakdown so I know what it looks like." And the training of the Mechanicum shows its head again as she has no real connection to the creature before her.
There's a moment as Lilith considers it, swiping through Zerg memories to see if this was something they already had, but improperly sequencing and then letting things run around was rarely something needed as the result was already known. Then she wondered if Reina would learn from it or even could. She looks at the two of them the Zergling and Reina, "I think for the test then, you should be aware of the sensory effects, if you're feeling up to it. I'll act as an inbetween, and let you feel what the Zergling does as it deteriorates."
"Perfect." Reina sits down, waiting for the creature to start dying, "This is already new data! I've never experienced this first hand."
There's a moment where Lilith tries to search her mind for something that would say this is a bad idea. Vast stores Abathur had provided her when she split, and nothing on this new drive to teach, even less on Terran psychology. "If at any point, it's too much just say so. I do not know your limits." Lilith affirms, grabbing onto the Zerglings mind, and then pushing the thoughts and sensations forward.
Reina felt her whole body tense with the need to tear something apart, her teeth itching in her mouth as the sensation to chew, bite, and kill suffused her. An unending joy at the thought of death, at the very idea of killing, while an underlying sensation of togetherness as low level orders tell the Zerg how to manoeuvre around objects in the room, no higher idea than meamble and wait to kill. Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin were flooding the Zerglings system in a constant stream while pain was non-existent. Over the next fifteen minutes she felt small things shut down, first muscles getting slow and weak, not painful necessarily but a small sense of being unwell seeking out creep that didn't heal her. A need to consume and heal that didn't come.
"You good?" Lilith asked quickly, as the feelings intensified.
Reina blinks once, then again, then once more. "That seems to be an uncomfortable existence. But I wasn't born into it." A scientific appraisal rather than anything more personal as she looks at the Zergling moving slower, "It feels nothing but an enjoyment and goal to serve, it's… odd."
"Yes, exactly. I'll continue then." Lilith kept pushing as systems started to shut down from dehydration. And it's need to eat and absorb creep intensified, continuing to feel an odd uncomfort at a biological order that was impossible to follow. Not able to heal, slowly not able to move, parts of itself dragging it into the creep as it tries to eat it directly to no avail. Systems shut down, starting with hormone regulation as a sense of incoming death overtakes it. Causing it to want to fight harder, more aggressive, try and get more kills to serve in its last gasp efforts that discomfort at trying to make the impossible real and then a black darkness. The off switch being pressed, as it struggled senses no longer able to function, and a complete entrapment in it's skin until that too ceases.
Then as she watched them both fall Lilith asked, "Any final observations?"
"They are more like servitors than living creatures, but instead of bound by programming and neural shunts, they are bound by instinct and chemical." Reina describes, "Both kinder and less kind, its interesting."
That brings a quick sigh of relief to Lilith, "Cool! I was worried letting you experience something's death might have ill effects, but it seemed to work out. We as infested get huge bursts of adrenaline and endorphins that make the experience far more pleasant, a way to offset trauma." She nods smiling, "A more intense reward comes from killing, and just succeeding at a task in general. It's a motivator to chase an ideal. A goal, and in addition an attempt at offsetting some mistakes made in previous designs that weren't able to properly experience anything but rage and hate. The Ur-Sequencer learned the necessity of Terrans to be somewhat comfortable and happy. It was a bit later than he should have, but he got there."
Rather than speaking, Reina takes notes, writing them on a dataslate that is well used judging by the marks on sides and screen that seems recently replaced.
"So do you want to watch me respawn or experience it?" Lilith says once noticing that she's done, "Or do you still want to wait." After a few minutes, "What happened to your dataslate by the way."
"Oh, nothing it's just a passed down thing, the student before me had it, and the student before then. It has six thousand years of Arch Magos Cawl's student notes on it." Reina is tapping away at it, "And sre, can it not be a bolt pistol?" She looks back up to Lilith, "I'm not afraid of dying, but I don't…like bolts."
"That's totally fine," Another deep breath as she smile, most of her worries now gone, "Alright, you watch then you go. You got nervous yesterday so a reminder that we don't respawn…" She touches her eyes, "Treat it like a medical experiment, autopsying a corpse." That felt right to say.
She quickly took out a sequencer blade and moved it to the underside of her throat. Nothing happened, Lilith looked at her hand confused the blade appearing when pointed away from her head, but very quickly descending the minute she intended to end herself. "Oh! Right! Sorry, fuck right. We disable the Thanatotic drive." She groaned trying to think.
"I could do it?" Reina offers, shrugging. "I've killed someone before."
"Oh, cool! Yeah, don't use the sequencer blade though, it won't kill me and I'll be rather upset, just hurts a lot unless you make very decisive cuts. Kills on the genetic level." Very quickly reaching for the sequencer blade before thinking, "Oh actually you keep that one, you'll need more and I don't want to keep cutting off my arm." A different steel appears in her hand, and she hands that to the infested apprentice. "Hit the brain, if you don't damage enough to kill, I'll just regenerate so go at it until I slump."
"Your brain is pretty normal, so if I go here." She quickly walks around Lilith, trying to place her theoretical and practical understanding of brains with this live subject, "And point it here," The blade rests against the soft portions of the skull, angled slightly upwards and gripped with both hands, "I should be able to just go through the brainstem? I should build something to make this easier."
"Are you aware you can slice through bone like it's made of wet tissue paper? This is part of why we're sprinting place to place. There's not easier. Just a quick lazy swing will do it, might be harder with me but shouldn't be unless you're not very confident. As in chicken out at the last moment." Lilith says with a smile, hoping to seem less harsh. "Just arm up, arm down, literally anywhere north of the eyes."
"That feels a little too crude, this is more…scientific I guess." Reina admits, tensing before pushing up and killing Lilith's body in a sharp, barely tenth of a second of pain. The body falls slump in front of her, and she observes a slight flash for a nanosecond as almost instantly Lilith begins to re-grow in the egg. Her jaw tensing as she watches through semi translucent fluid, when after only a few minutes, the egg burst open, revealing Lilith curled on the floor waking up and standing.
"There you go!" Lilith said as she dumped her body into the Evolution pool after returning all of its possessions back to herself.
"It's like a…transmission of your body and mind just as you die." She mumbles, still holding the sequencing blade, "Almost like…a cogitator program being moved. Right?" Reina looks up, seeking affirmation, or rejection of her theory.
"One sec," Lilith says as she quickly flips through the swarm's new memories of the mechanicum, "Yes. The essence keeps a continuous state of consciousness then re-implants into a new body. You're not really in your meat suit, you're just piloting it."
"I was just about to ask that." Reina smiles, "Continuity of consciousness was a worry, we have things like this in the Mechanicus, but it's always…worrying if it's really you?" She admits with a slight frown, "Or just a very excellent copy."
"You can't copy essence after a certain amount of complexity if you try to make a new Lilith it'll just sit there until my essence moves to it. I can transfer, I can't copy. We can't make entirely new things, it's always a base of something we picked up then heavily modified." Then as Lilith spoke she realized, "Oh shit, we're exactly like the Mechanicum I think. The Zergling essence for example is just a set of low level processes that are piloted by one of us or a Queen or an Overlord, there's no person there or thing it's a set of commands and sensors to dictate too."
"Parallel evolution? Makes sense, it's an efficient system, it'll be replicated." Reina nods, "It's like how many species in the galaxy are straight backed bipeds with two manipulator limbs and a growth that houses eyes, ears, other senses and a brain." She explains, "It's just a good way to do things."
"Yep, or like how many things on a long enough timespan becomes a crab." Lilith is even more pleased that this was going this well. Though harder things would be in store especially when it came to synthesising improvements from mixing and matching. "Alright! You can either add a sequencer or go on your shopping trip or uh… Whatever you want really! I spent most of my free time…" A small wave of memories of Lilith's time in the swarm, both harmful and joyful came that made her groan. "Being a nuisance, you can probably figure out something better. Next planet with life we'll go hunting essence from new bioforms."
Last edited: