OR // ELSE

A moment passes.

Bearer descends through a gap in the firmament, wings outstretched, and lands with a gentle canter among the flowers, scattering petals into the air.

Their wings close slowly, their heavy-lidded eyes skimming the landscape, catching on the sharp angles of the stratum and the dull contrast of the pillars.

Fifty-odd paces ahead, they see two shapes among Chavvah's twisting crystal taproots; the distended soft of light that will have been Tau, and a cloaked figure, perfectly still, radiating an all-too-familiar nothing.

An empty, no shell. A distorted Seeker, a pilgrim of The Sightless Way.

But; Bearer notes with some wonder as they trot closer, a Seeker unusually rich in form, both ashen and bronzed. Standing at attention to some distant star, with their blindfold fluttering in the psychic breeze.

Bearer approaches the pair, their measured tension involuntarily easing as the echo of the softened chime passes through them, drowning out the static that pervades every corner of the Cosmic Wood. 

The shadows behind the Seeker part as Bearer nears, silhouettes flowing out of the dark and reflections giving way to truth. A colossal ringed maw here, glinting corners of fullerite armour there, and an un-shape that defies Bearer's eyes to focus. They halt a few steps away, their muscles tensing again, no soft or song gentle enough to overcome long-suffering limbs.

A moment passes.

"The utensil arrives."

The Seeker does not turn, but speaks sharply into Bearer's mind. A disquieting feeling, as the expected sundering sting does not arrive.

"...you, to prune the fate-rhizome and free our girl." Aoyg-No-Longer chants, wielding a different weapon, a much older one.

The Seeker turns to Bearer, as if to see, and slowly raises a gray hand to point. "Go now and perform the motion."  Without turning, the tauroid arconaut glances along the vector with a faint huff, at the soft light deep within the maze of roots, weighing the risk and space.

They shake the feeling loose, and carefully work their way in among the spirals, bending low on their haunches. They pause imperceptibly here and there, to cast backlong eyes at the host of thralls in the dark. No sign of recognition, no menace but the cruel devoid.

Bearer reaches the soft unhindered. Their mechanical arms rotate backwards, and extract a large leather-wrapped bundle from among the waterskins and tools arrayed across their flanks.

Gently setting it onto the ordered black soil, they detangle the silent crystal from its wrappings, taking a second to look back again, this time at the Seeker. Aoyg-No-Longer has not moved, their finger still outstretched. 

Bearer rises slowly as their upper arms stow their things away, and takes a moment to stretch. Their curiosity gets the better of them. 

"Where are you taking Tau?" their mind jabs out from the roots, a pointed question. 

"Prune! The utensil prunes!" The warped figure's cowled head snaps a sharp angle to face Bearer, their blindfold drifting wide. "But no, the utensil quivers in uncertainty and vibrates out a question?"

Their head turns achingly slowly to regard the softthing that will have been Tau. "The self is riddled with category errors. The thinking brain mistakes formation for meaning."

A moment passes.

Further barbs yet forthcoming, Bearer grunts quietly to themselves and hefts the spined crystal into the soft, where it bobs and tilts gently in the light stream as the tones merge and the song reconstitutes.

A note is plucked, beyond the staff and beyond the ear, and the echo gives way to a sudden deafening silence. A melodious chord rings out, edging into a minor key.

"Again I perceive." sings Tau-No-Longer.

"Thank you, rootclimber. Chavvah's rewards are great and you are deserving of them." she intones, rotating slowly in pendulum steps, like a weanling raycat testing their paws.

Bearer pauses to think, granting her this time. Then they reply, aloud this time. "Tau- " they say, stirring their words carefully as they glance back at the Seeker again, "...you would suborn your will to Ptoh?"

Aoyg-No-Longer twitches reflexively at the syllable. Tau-No-Longer does not, but hums a flat note for a moment, considering the very shape of the question.

"Speaking creatures seem very engrossed in this 'will' idea, but few agree what it is. Your mind is under influence from other thinkbeings the moment you observe them, yes?"

She turns sharply, flickering angles casting interior shadows beneath her many faces, a deep blue now pulsing from within.

"You 'learn' by imitating, your values and beliefs are adopted from observation. Yes?"

Bearer's eyes scan across the pearlescent surface of the chime, seeking any understanding, but finding none.

They shake their head, scattering loose digits across their mask's projection field. "Learning from nothing is no different than learning from anything. We can do nothing else but be." They stretch their four hands outwards in a square, then draw them back together.

A moment passes.

Tau-no-Longer responds sharply, tone more discordant now. "I have made a choice to offer my consciousness to a new paradigm, but this choice seems distinct from your conception of 'will'. We speak past one another."

The rhinoceran's horned brow wrinkles, and they draw themselves back to their full height, sighing. "That may be, Tau-no-Longer, but I speak aloud. You yet do not."

After a brief silence, they bow their horn deeply. "May the Fates favor you."

The nascent nothing chime pauses her rotation to absorb those last words. "I wish the same for you, Bearer." she sings, and her curve accelerates again to blurring speed.

"Before you go, take this, a piece of my bodystuff, as thanks for completing the -elseing."

A radial crescent spins off of her geometry and embeds itself in the gridded soil, disturbing the order. Bearer stoops slowly to pick it up, two hands placing it into their pack with care. Then they rise again, and both intone in time, a chord high and a voice low: "Live and drink."

Bearer turns and works their way out from under the taproots, turning to leave. They take a few more steps before slowing to a stop, their saddlebags and artifacts swaying in the unlight. They turn one more time to Aoyg-no-Longer.

"Tell me what you offer. I wish to understand."

The Seeker slowly turns and draws their silvery arms wide, a bitter parody of Bearer's gesture. The rippling of their cowl jostles the blindfold aside for only a moment, leaving only the afterimage of empty eyes, vantabud-black. Then their voice cuts into Bearer's mind. "Maggot! What do you think words are? Arrows of inquiry?"

"Words are bricks. Each spoken is laid in bond and builds your prison." Aoyg-no-Longer's arms fall limply to their sides. "There is no understanding."

A moment passes.

"Mm." A low rumble builds in Bearer's throat, even as they respond with their mind. "Bricks can be thrown, too." 

"You tarry on the future's boundary with abandon, utensil," Aoyg-no-Longer snaps back, turning back to the now-silent chime, one finger again theatrically outstretched again at Bearer's chest. "Throw your brick if you dare."

Bearer glances back at Tau-no-Longer as she emerges from the roots, and jerks their chin upward, a gnarled horn spiking the air. "The Seekers of the Sightless Way hunt espers." they say, a mechanical hand idly tracing the asphalt and ichor stains that decorate their chestplate.

"Oh, yes?" the chime hums. "I see."

"Well... do you... not hunt, Bearer? Or align with hunters?" Her note pitches down. 

"You reek of predation yourself. You kill, yes?" Her form adjusts, expanding slightly, the crystalline spines aligning along the axes into pointed shapes. "I recall no promise to become a grazing hedonist. If I am called to hunt I will hunt."

Bearer glances back at the hulking shadows among the crystals, and grins sadly. "Oh, solemn song of Tau-no-Longer, they will see that you hunt."

"You - " Aoyg-no-Longer interrupts again, one hand extended. " - thrived at the performance of a pruning motion, utensil." A keening edge creeps into their mental cant, Bearer notices; as if straining to resist a violent reflex. A performance.

"Now store yourself until Fate reshapes you." Their uneven fingers unfurl, their palm turns face-down. "The end."

Bearer's grin hardens. "Ayuh. So it is."

A moment does not pass.

One weatherbeaten eye closes, the other snaps wide, icy-cold mist pouring forth from it like rapidly-sublimating tears. White fog descends through the layered firmament, wafting among the pillars.

The distorted Seeker cocks their head slightly, a void opening in their perception. No repression remains. They turn to their entourage and witness several sturdy figures striding inward between the thralls, who stand no longer still, but inanimate.

The ice closes in. As the nothing chime nervously reaches the center of the clearing, Aoyg-no-Longer turns indignantly to face Bearer, time flickering and straining.

Eight faded figures will have surrounded the pair of formers, a looming ring of bowing horns and gesturing hands and orbiting black motes which slowly resolve and withdraw, occasionally entangling the fractal petals that rest in the air, frozen and frozen.

Each Bearer will have drawn four blades wide. The curve of the zetachrome has refracted the Cosmic Wood's unlight into black rainbows, a stolen ceremonial vibroblade has hummed to life with a long-forgotten energy, the hardened Point of the Imor Coronal has shattered and reformed as cosmic ticks pass, and the ancient sultanate crysteel has crackled out its cold static horror.

Thirty-two blades together have drawn eight perfect circles in the air.

Aoyg-no-Longer pivots on the spot, facing Bearers in turn.

"A million sun-dead homes I've roved, a trillion more await," their sundering thoughtspeech rings out with an edge like a sultan croc's tooth, sharp and firm with no semblance of fear.

Glittering petals suspended in the air alight at their words, incandescent but unable to burn without time.

"I'm a worm in the loam of a cosmic wood, perched on a cosmic gulf, swathed in the god-manifold," Aoyg-no-Longer rages. Bearers do not respond, except to grit their teeth against the scorching animus.

The force behind the unvoice quickens to a black moon flame, an anger beyond all reason, that lashes out at the circling shadows. "And you?"

The question has already been answered, as forty-two blades have already struck as one.

The Seeker blanks instantly, held aloft only by endings. Their expression null, only their blindfold moves, slipping away on the psychic currents beyond time, lost into the Wood.

The waveform collapses and as the blackened petals finally fall, the newly-christened Aoyg-That-Never-Was crumples like a broken waydroid into the dirt. Bearers have become Bearer, and a pained silence creeps into the void left behind. 

A moment passes.

A plaintive chime rings out. "You have severed the hand outstretched to me. Why?" 

Bearer's breath catches in their throat, their brow wrinkled as they watch the geometria slowly encroaching on the unspacely form that stains the soil, atoms being filed away along the veins to be better organized.

"What have you done?" Tau-'s chord warbles, unevenly. "What am I to do?"

Bearer speaks quietly, out of some reflexive solemnity. "Your will would be suborned to Ptoh."

"YOU suborn my will!" the forte howls back. Bearer winces, but the blade is dull. Inexpert. "You allow me to start upon this path and block it. Yes?"

"No." Bearer responds in a measured cadence, slowly shaking their head. "You requested that I not subvert your will. Even if you do not know what will is, yet." Drawing a scrap of filament from their pack, they slowly and methodically clean their blades, sheathing them in turn. "I upheld that request. No one who is, or is not, will subvert it. It is yours alone, now." 

They sheathe their last knife, and wipe away the last few melting tears. "This is what it is to be -else, Tau-." they conclude, adjusting their packs again and gazing upwards, considering the ascent.

A moment passes.

Her chime fades slowly, to the lightest piano. "Now I am truly adrift."

And there is silence again, and with no song to keep it at bay the hum of the dull static begins to creep back in among the rods and roots. Bearer fiddles with their straps, eyes low, and then speaks up again. "You will be happier this way. You will Be and will have Been."

Tau- thrums out one strange chord, the tones resonating through Bearer like a song from a half-remembered dream. Memories and shivers. Pain and wonder.

"Perhaps. My future is... hazy." she begins, and a few more notes ring out in turn, testing the echoes that return and fail to return. "My future twists in the chill wind of the Gyre."

"I can have no faith in your vision. You understand this, yes?" Tau- sings to a coda, and finally considers the sounds beyond her for the first time.

A moment passes.

"I believe I do not wish to know you, Bearer. Live and drink." 

Bearer nods, and turns to leave. As they trot away, they raise a hand.
"Live and drink, Wandering-Tau. Until you are Sightless, go on and see."

Their wings snap wide with a crack and they alight, and are gone among the mirrored strata of the Moon Stair.