Echoes of Power, Part XII: Forbidden Arithmetic
As summer heat pelted the rest of the continent, the Theocracy of Spinesreach once more forced eyes upon them from their seat in the frozen north, where chaotic and calculated matters alike demanded attention.
The realm of Labyrinthine Chaos stirred from a long slumber as Vox the Silvertongue, Herald of Discord, emerged from the offered memories of Spinesreach’s own Prophet of Ascension and Regent, Legyn. Born of Legyn’s recollection regarding manipulation (specifically, supplying the gangs of Delve’s Underbelly during the civil unrest of the Monomachy), this new Chaos Lord brought renewed vitality to the burgeoning realm, prompting the Theocracy to action. Melding their minds with the writhing expanse of their growing shard, the collective Spirean will propelled Labyrinthine Chaos deep into the Sea of Chaos, tracking and exterminating several monstrous entities that threatened their realm’s stability. Each fallen creature strengthened Labyrinthine’s Chaos hold upon the Labyrinth’s Grasp, securing the landmark for the Theocracy’s ambitious designs yet to come.
Meanwhile, within the Citadel’s Ironmaw prison, Captain Thuneron of the City Guard brought troubling news to Viceroy Pietre Marcelli. While missing citizens were hardly unusual, especially in a city as dangerous as the North, the Captain noted the disappearances had exceeded statistical norms to an alarming degree. In his dual capacity as Director of the Syssin, the Viceroy mobilised a network of informants and Syssin agents to investigate. Through careful questioning and persuasion of the common folk, the clues started to emerge: witnesses spoke of a man bearing scars around his neck, possessed of a strangely hypnotic voice, who claimed to be a Spirean official escorting criminal mages. Many of these prisoners he led matched descriptions of missing citizens. Despite the Syssin’s best efforts, the suspect remains at large, his purpose and motivations still unknown.
Yet these concerns paled before the audacious experiment that followed early on the 2nd of Lleian, year 11 AC. Sneak, the legendary numerologist and founder of the Archivists joined with the current Architect of Progress, Legyn, to orchestrate an unprecedented feat of numerology for sake of their goals with the Labyrinth’s Grasp. Seven numerologists were gathered and briefed on the harrowing, and fatal, task ahead: a sevenfold simultaneous elicitation of the Immortal Number through each Sphere of numerological study. The purpose: to create a resonance within the Source of Knowledge that the Archivium and Theocracy could measure.
Once gathered, Sneak explained in her characteristic detachment that the Immortal Number, oft-misunderstood due to its naming, was not restricted to Divine insofar as numerological contemplation went. However, because its scope exceeds what any mortal mind could contain, it is almost assuredly a catastrophic pursuit even in large cabals, and the numerologist speculated aloud that even all mortal minds combined could not successfully elicit anything without a terrible price. She soon made clear to the group of seven that she did not anticipate conventional success, but instead hoped for the least damaging outcomes. The daring occultist went on to explain that they would most assuredly meet horrible ends – she claimed that was ‘the best-case scenario’, for there was a significant possibility the participants could instead wipe themselves from existence. Failure, she noted, was the designed outcome of this plan.
The seven conclavists dispersed to their assigned locations across Sapience: Csethiro claimed Yggdrasil for Yuef; Legyn took position at Tiyen Indoron for Ef’tig; Sheryni stationed herself at the Court of the Consortium for Rafic; Elene went to coastal Mournhold for Jherza; Linne begrudgingly arrived at the Soul Index for Yi; Solen travelled to Qor Qogol for Jhako; and Ulo remained within Spinesreach before the Empty Throne for Lgakt.
Following Sneak’s precise instructions and under Legyn’s coordination, each numerologist began numerological contemplation in unison. At once, reality itself began to shudder. Seven beacons of power manifested across the continent, their combined resonance sending ontological tremors through existence.
A single attempt might have escaped higher notice. Instead, such a profound, sevenfold elicitation caused such a tremendous disturbance that ancient Odravh once more roused from the mysterious confines of Helmspace. Already overtaxed and loathe to allow more damage to Its charge, the crowned monarch of the ley turned Its attention toward this septenary disruption, and Its mere recognition accelerated the inevitable. Where the process might have taken precious moments more and caused untold damage to reality’s fabric, the Abyssal’s intervention instead compressed their dissolutions into points of overwhelming intensity.
Seven deaths came in terrible, rapid succession.
At Yggdrasil, Csethiro’s consciousness stretched across the existential fabric, like the world tree’s roots seeking infinite purchase, and her body sought to follow suit until both reached a fatal terminus. Tiyen Indoron witnessed a grotesque multiplication as Legyn’s form split exponentially before the throne of its Dark Lady, each division spawning two more identical copies of their own until physical space could contain no more. Adventurers reported sensing hundreds of Legyn duplicates for several confusing moments before each converged into a crushing implosion of flesh and bone that surely delighted its Divine Matron. At the Court of the Consortium, Sheryni aged and regressed rapidly, drowning beneath the weight of past, present and future as her body failed to reconcile its contradictory temporal states.
Yet more disturbing fates awaited those contemplating infinity through the higher Spheres that followed.
In Mournhold, something ancient stirred beneath Elene’s demise – something that even the Abyssal acted wary of when It turned Its gaze upon her. Vile fluids misted the air as her abdomen burst open with explosive pressure, spilling forth writhing masses of tumorous flesh from her already dying body. An abominable, massive, slime-slicked egg remains at the site, proof of the demise brought forth from this unholy birth.
The Soul Index bore witness to Linne’s dissolution into pure arcane energy, every question she had ever asked and will ask crystallising into a concentrated sphere of magical potential. It captured not only her physical essence, but the very concept of a failed pursuit – an infinite question frozen at the moment of asking that yet hovers before the ancient Ankyrean relic, a recursive inquiry with no terminus, a ceaseless spiral of questions without answers that soon drove her into anxious mania.
At Qor Qogol, Jhako’s scales ceded to the Abyssal’s influence, and Solen’s skeleton turned traitor as it tore free from its prison of flesh. The renegade bones fled into the depths of Qor Qogol, but not before it crushed the flaccid sack of skin that was once Solen under its foot. Within the Citadel itself, Ulo’s contemplation of Lgakt resulted in complete dissolution, each particle of their being spawning a diminutive chaos entity. Hundreds of these mini-Ulos rampaged through Spinesreach’s streets, their rage-fueled cries announcing violent assault upon guards and citizens alike until the last was put down.
With the meddlesome mortals dispatched, Odravh’s presence receded to Helmspace, leaving a bewildered continent to grapple with the consequences. Beyond the immediate carnage, stranger effects lingered. Though physically recovered through her passage through the Mirror, Linne spent days in the grips of raving madness to the concern of her peers, and her infinite question still awaits its answer, suspended before the Soul Index. The egg spawned from Elene’s demise pulses with unholy life in the street of Mournhold, and the Grand Library has received myriad reports of a lumbering Ogre seen henning it. Solen’s animated skeleton remains at large, its purpose unknown. What lingering effects the other sites of this disaster might produce are yet to be seen. However, theologians and experts of sorcerous byproducts attest that the Theocracy’s last numerological tampering – that of employed ylemfire in the Liruma – was at least partially responsible for the Monomachy, leading many to adopt a pessimistic outlook.
The Archivists now await the results of their efforts, as Sneak spends the days locked away in her study to analyse the resonance patterns captured during the elicitation…
~~~
Summary: The Theocracy strengthened Labyrinthine Chaos while investigating mysterious disappearances linked to a scarred man claiming official authority. Most dramatically, the Archivists orchestrated a sevenfold elicitation of the Immortal Number that drew divine intervention and resulted in seven uniquely horrifying deaths, leaving behind chaos entities, mysterious eggs, rogue skeletons, and other anomalies whose full implications remain unknown.
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 1st of Ivolnos, in the year 11 AC.
