(I) Liberation

-Aviary272 (I)

Liberation

"A traitor?" the Culturist said, sounding doubtful. "Are you sure? If there was a traitor, I believe I would have sensed them."

"Well, I suspect your senses are not nearly as sharp as mine when it comes to Psychomancy," Hymn shot back. He strode past all the Pathbearers within the slipgate's chamber and scried them using his divining eye. "I'm beyond certain that there is a rat among us. Mainly because I had to trace a telepathic chain connecting one of my assassins to someone here. Just before I snuffed the light out of their eyes.”

The first person Hymn scanned was Merrielmel. The Enchanter shivered beneath the gaze of the Legendary Seeker and tried to defend himself. "H-headmaster, you know me! I don't..." His stammers degenerated into inelegant blubbering as his attempt to argue on his own behalf collapsed.

Hymn simply scoffed and looked away. "I know it's not you, Merrielmel. Your mind's too brittle. The eldritch would never be able to use someone such as you as a conduit. You’d break the moment you caught a glimpse of the nightmares lurking beyond the reach of Integration. Besides, if you were compromised, I suspect that the Gate at the center of my Academy would have been attuned to the Outside already, and I would be dealing with a flood of Fingerlings rather than an unstable dimensional pathway."

Hymn turned on Rusty thereafter. The dimensional blade was embedded in the ground just before the massive obelisk.

"Not you either," Hymn said. "You're a little bit too stable. Your mind's not human enough, not malleable enough. And besides, you belong to that one. And she would never let some ridiculous horror wear you or her like a flesh sleeve to do their bidding. She is a bit too attached to her fleshy husk for that.”

Hymn rolled his eyes as Jessica stomped forward, coming to stand between him and her blade. "Not all of us can be creepy bastards like you, Hymn," Jessica retorted. “You keep your eyes off Rusty.”

“Hm. Worried what I might see?” Hymn asked with a smirk.

“Worried where Rusty might end up,” Jessica replied, not hiding her murderous intent.

There was less than a meter between them. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered even if there were a hundred kilometers between them. Jessica was faster than lightning and could cleave a gap through a city. Hymn, meanwhile, held himself like the type to trip over his carpet. Physically, there was something that just screamed .

But there was something more than that. Beyond the body, there was no,

He wasn’t scared of Jessica Hawgrave. He didn’t even care about her. And that made Shiv wonder why.

Hymn just snorted. “Ah. Threats. The Inquisition’s hound learns the Inquisition’s ways. But some of us seek to slip the chains others put around us." Hymn smiled at the Giantsbane. Jessica's glare showed how little she appreciated his humor. “Swing that sword. Annoy Veronica Chandler. Do it.”

Jessica scowled but held herself in check. “She’s not the reason why your head is still connected to your neck.”

“No, but she is how I can annoy you most easily. Anyhow, it's not you, it's not you, it's not you, it's not you." He began swiping his hand at the orcs, at Gone, at Five, at Candles, and then at the Culturist. "It's not the Necromancer Jotun you have hiding in your cape," he said to Shiv. "Nor is it the Necrotech Nightstalker that that orc over there has hiding inside his cannon. Also, really? A rat in a cannon?”

"That's where you put him?” Shiv said, looking Mortar up and down. He'd partly rebuilt his robotic components at some point, likely using the scrap metal found in the coliseum, judging from his rusted appearance. "You stuck him in your cannon? I was wondering where he went after Monster Mystery Meat. “

“What? He lost that fight. I get the right to fire him into my enemies. That's our arrangement." Mortar sounded protective of his favored enemy—and his decision about where to keep him.

"And he agreed to it?" Adam asked, doubt clear in his voice.

"Yeah," the bot-clad orc replied with a shrug. "It's not like we haven't done it before, right?"

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“I’ll get you next time, you oversized gray sack of shit.” With that, a squeak sounded from the inside of the cannon on Mortar’s back, and a small glowing head peeked out. Two eye sockets with dim embers of corrosive mana burning within glared back at Shiv. “Oh. You. You deal with the fairy bastards and the kitchen? Anyone else still alive?” The Necrotech froze as he realized how many people were looking at him. “You know what, we can talk later. Privately. I’m going back inside my blast-hole.”

"Yeah, go back inside," Mortar said. “And don’t talk. You are ammunition right now. And ammunition you remain until I fire at you at something worth bombing with Necromancy."

“Bite my bony ass, orc.” Bowden let out an annoyed chirp and dropped back down the tube without further protest.

Finally, Hymn came to a stop before Solzimort. The Hydra's twelve heads reared up and coiled in from all sides, the massive amounts of jewelry bedecking him clanging together loudly. Solzimort’s heads circled around the Headmaster and smiled at him, each one showing rows of teeth, but their eyes were genuine and innocent, like a child trapped in a many-headed monster's body. "Is something wrong?" Solzimort asked. "Are we trying to find bad guys?"

The Headmaster's eyes flickered. His Divination dimmed a wall. Flakes of translucence bled out from his right iris. Suddenly, a blooming tide of Psychomancy swallowed Solzimort, trapping him within a membrane of mental magic.

And then, a second later, the bubble popped without any warning whatsoever as the spell concluded. Hymn smacked his lips.

"Right now, I think we're just looking for one individual. And I can't exactly call them a bad guy. Perhaps more like a hidden split personality." Hymn smirked as he looked the Hydra up and down. "You're not even aware of yourself, are you?"

Solzimort’s heads slithered back. A shared look of confusion crept over each one of the Hydra's faces. "Huh?”

"Must admit, you almost got yourself past me too. It's quite a trick, burying your true consciousness so deeply. Though you are in a unique position to pull such a trick." The Headmaster turned and regaled the rest of the chamber with his findings. "Behold! A rat! A rat that has hidden his mind from even himself."

As he gestured to Solzimort, Shiv was filled with unease. The Hydra always seemed to have a few missing pieces, and the Deathless could never come up with a logical explanation as to how such a creature could have reached Legendary Tier. But still, with the growing hint of fear creeping into the Hydra’s body language—how each of his twelve heads was shrinking in closer to his lizard body and how he whimpered like a scared puppy—Shiv struggled against his instincts to intervene.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

"Is this about switching those things around?" Solzimort said, sounding like a guilty child unable to keep a shameful secret anymore. "We're sorry. We put the things back earlier. We're really, really sorry. We won't do it again."

Hymn was just about to deliver his findings, but then he paused and turned to stare at Solzimort with an open jaw. "Oh, right, of course, that was you too," Hymn said. "No, no, that's a separate matter. Also annoying, but less annoying than this. Also less impressive." The Headmaster cleared his throat. "Again, behold the culprit! Except the culprit is also the victim. Of himself and likely the Ascendancy beyond.”

Silence. Staring. Everyone looked at the Headmaster, waiting for him to elaborate further.

Hymn rolled his eyes. "Okay, due to a Hydra's unique physiology and the System's delightful whims, its heads don't all awaken at the same time. One achieves self-awareness and heightened intelligence before all the others. When it does, it has a period in which it develops its own personality. Now, in most cases, the other heads adopt the prime head's personality, for they share a central brain system: their biomatter is connected. However, if the first head decides to sever that biomatter at a certain point, but still keeps its head alive through manual means or Biomancy, then there is a chance. No, more than a chance: there is a functional way to preserve its original personality while ensuring that the other heads grow into something different. A deliberate deviation of egos, if you will."

"We don't get it," Solzimort said, sounding as simple as could be.

Shiv didn’t much get it either.

"Of course you don't, my sweet, stupid, practically lobotomized creature. In fact, the fact that you don't is a deliberate act of engineering rather than a natural outcome. You aren't stupid—or rather, your original mind wasn't stupid. The rest of you was made stupid to hide him. Your current lacking intellect and general adorableness are parts of a skill, a Social Skill meant to engender protective feelings inside another person, feelings that make them regard you as something of an infant or helpless creature they must fawn over, that they must spare of any consequence."

As if to give evidence to the Headmaster's words, all of Solzimort's eyes grew wider and larger, its features grew softer, its scales seemed the texture of butter, supple and vulnerable. Every single head was laid down on the ground, looking up like a punished dog.

"But why, you may ask. What's the purpose of this? Why split one's consciousness? Why do this to yourself? Probably because he didn't do it to himself. You found Solzimort within the Rubik's Well, correct?"

Shiv nodded. “Cripple told us he was there as a sort of trophy or piece of an art collection for Longinus.”

The Headmaster regarded the Hydra again. "That may be partly correct, but I suspect that this, too, is one of Maiden's projects. Not to create a split-minded creature—but likely to serve as a proper Avatar for our dear broken Enoch."

Shiv scowled, but then he thought about it.

Adam and Shiv looked at each other in shared understanding, while the Culturist chuckled. "Well, I must say that I didn't detect anything of a hidden mind within the hydra. You impress me, Hymn."

"You were overly fixated, as usual, and failed to notice the lesser dangers in your periphery." Hymn yawned. "Regardless, if I am to piece all this together, I suspect that Maiden or another member of our dear Ascendancy captured a particularly high-level Hydra that somehow hadn't awakened yet, and then they placed it within the Rubix Well before it could fully awaken and manipulated it to develop down a specific track. From there, they probably had it face off against specific prisoners, further culturing and sculpting its growth trajectory. Why two minds? Likely for Enoch. But also, if it doesn't work, if it can't serve as Enoch's Avatar, then they can still have it become a sort of hidden agent."

"Right, that all tracks, but how is Solzimort speaking to the Stranger?” Shiv asked. “Does he have Seeker abilities too? I don't see any Psychomancy around him."

"That's because his Psychomancy is compact and materializes on trigger, a bit like your Chronomancy. It doesn't fully trigger unless he's in the right state, and probably phased out of reality somewhat." Hymn paused and turned to face the Hydra. "Actually, let's speed this along."

Before anyone could protest, Hymn unleashed a Psychomantic spell. The shape of a sundered cross flickered over Solzimort's heads, and it slammed down, crashing into the Hydra's being. A detonation of translucence washed through the room, and Shiv felt his Magical Resistance grind against an impossible pressure. His Shapeless Tides bent and wailed against the Headmaster's might, and Shiv realized that the Culturist may not have been exaggerating: Hades Hymn might be the single most dangerous person among them.

Shiv said to himself.

"What are you doing?" Solzimort asked, observing the translucent mana coating his body. "Why are we getting so sleepy?" The Hydra's many mouths practically unhinged in a collective yawn.

"Don't worry, just trying to say hi to your subconsciousness," Hymn answered.

"Oh, okay. Well, when you meet whoever this subconsciousness is, tell him we said hi."

"I will be sure to do just that, sweet Hydra."