[ it is difficult to say where kiraman's eyes are, but it's possible they are still glued to viktor's face as they let him go through his five stages of grief with his mpreg egg. his mpregg. ]
I never wanted to be a savior. [ so, mood. ] You said you started the commune for people who came to you for healing. Is that how Jayce found you?
His expression crumples - confusion, mostly, but under it, Viktor himself, and hurt, sadness, frustration.]
Yes. I asked him, through the body of a council member he once knew, to come see me, to see what I had accomplished. He said Hextech... was a curse. He was different... He had touched the arcane, and it had changed him. [The echo returns to his voice.] Then he came. We brought him to me.
[It wavers back out.]
But when I opened my eyes, the look in his eyes... He had no other goal except to end me. I could see it.
So you used someone else to show off your new abilities, to someone who didn't understand, someone who was going to... judge, perhaps. But was it Jayce the arcane changed? Or was it you?
[ and all your creepy little hivemind echos. ]
... I wanted to make a god. Something like it, anyway. A just god, one to combat against someone who created something that would destroy millions of lives. In his prime, he was considered a genius. Me? Well, couldn't have been that smart if I solved something he spent his whole life failing to reach. He had to be stopped. Didn't matter everything he created, everything he'd done with his life. He was corrupted. And maybe... when someone's that warped, the only way to save it is from themselves.
[ it's clear that they only apply this kind of mercy killing to viktor, but the principle is the same. if something grows too out of hand, you may have to kill the thing to fix it. ]
And from there you can rebuild it. Rewire how it thinks, take it out of its framework and adjust the program so that the processes it runs become a new product. [ that is more said as an aside because the analogy got away from them a bit. ]
I thought Jayce would understand. [His voice doesn't rise, but the echo is back, fighting for the usual monotonous neutrality over the rankle of his usual sound.] We were both changed.
[He just doesn't know what divine inspiration Jayce saw. What was it?]
You're saying I should have been killed.
[He's looking at Kiraman now, the blue embedded in his eyes chilly. No. He can't accept that. He was nearly perfect? The epitome of the highest form of advancement. The peak of evolution.] We had the power to bestow upon everyone a salvation in a coalescent paradise, free of the humanity which destroys them again and again. [And free of everything else, including resistance.]
That is the glorious evolution.
[They're right. Sometimes, your compassion becomes twisted too far.]
[ hm. dislike. this is a lot of dislike, but kiraman holds their ground and appears entirely unruffled by this. ]
No. That is deconstruction. [ they point this out first, choosing to work their way backwards in the conversation. ] I never said you should have been killed, but if that was your takeaway... why did that resonate? It was just an assessment of character.
[ because it's the same point. because it's exactly the same thing, it's someone pushed by their ideas too far that they went to absolutely insane lengths to accomplish them until someone was willing to challenge and kill them. ]
Without you, who needed a partnership to begin with. You, who asked for the partnership because you knew you couldn't do it alone. [ a reminder. ]
The way your dream manifested might've become his nightmare. You and the arcane. You're almost one in the same now. [ and if the arcane is uncontrolled and not contained, wouldn't the thing that would unravel be viktor himself? ]
[He shakes his head, not in disagreement, but confusion.]
He made me what I am. Then he decided to regret it? [Just an educated guessing. A musing.] He would rather I be dead than be what he created? The arcane is wonderful. What reason could it be a nightmare to him?
[Sorry your Frankenstein's monster has become sentient, Jayce!!]
I wanted us to continue our dream together as partners. Why wouldn't he want that?
[Someone else has abandoned him!! Of course! He is just some nobody from the Undercity after all.]
[ this is a vaguely uncomfortable conversation for them for a few reasons, but they're ignoring that. ]
Some people think they have everything under control. That they know exactly what they're doing, or they're so driven by their goal that the results of how it gets there don't matter. Even to the point of destroying the creation.
[ yeah, weird how that happens. ]
You manipulated someone else to reach out to him in a show of power he's never seen. [ though, more curiously: ] Did you get to talk to him before he killed you?
It wasn't manipulation. [He wants to clarify that first even though it is a form of manipulation.] Salo was a part of our collective. He spoke to my mind first to tell me he had crossed paths with Jayce; I spoke to Jayce through him with his consent. I don't invade their lives or thoughts unprompted.
[...]
He killed Salo after our conversation.
[Which was rude, but he can understand this might have been scary for Jayce to witness. He can concede that, he guesses. Not sure WHY but okay.]
No. When I opened my eyes, he was powering his hammer. The last I saw of anything was him standing at the entrance with a strange expression.
[ they tip their head in acknowledgement. alright. not manipulation. they can accept that. ]
... reactionary. [ they are not thinking much of jayce in this moment. they are not sure how to think about viktor either though. this is a very interesting set of circumstances for them. ] You think he wasn't in control of himself either then?
[ wait. ]
A hammer. Like... [ mimics swinging down a giant hammer. ]
[Hmmm... He considers this, but what makes him side-eye what's said is "either," only because he believes he is perfectly in control of himself.
What Hexcore influence?]
Yes. [Hammer time.] It's a hammer he built based on our Hextech even though we said we would never use Hextech to build weapons.
It likely utilizes a hex crystal, so it can be charged to disperse a beam of energy.
[Above the mpregg, he pulls aside some of the blue blankie covering his chest where the mottled, healed crater has turned into an ugly scar. He truly got blasted. Heavier sections of golden metal begin here and disappear down out of sight.]
I was born with a stunted leg. I had to wear a brace on it, and later, I had spinal surgery to implant screws for the chest brace I needed. It fused with my flesh during the transmutation. The arcane does this to others when I heal them - if they have a physical malformation.
[He shakes his head.]
I had seen it one other time. I didn't ask any questions. [A pause.] ...
[He glances over his shoulder briefly before looking back.]
[ they shake their head. they can discuss what a video game is later.
instead, they are listening to viktor explain his tragic backstory. he cannot see what their expression looks like, but it seems as if that's giving them pause to think this over. ]
Even in evolution there's no escaping genetics. [ this is mumbled a little, because even if viktor was healed, those pieces of him remained for life. ]
So he went and made this weapon without you despite doing everything else together. And despite agreeing not to use your technology for weapons. And then blasted you. [ never mind they are a jayce-anti as well suddenly. they do not think viktor is correct! but both of these things can be true. ] Did you think you would end up here when you did die?
they will continue to pry pieces of this story out of viktor's brain, actually, or so help them. ]
My... partner and I were on two sides, too, for a while. Not that I knew that for a long time, but when I came back again I learned they were pretty against the things I'd done. But... they came around later.
[ that aside. the unfortunate part is that kiraman is a curious mind themselves, and they've wondered about this. ]
We were once always on the same page. Inseparable. I do wonder... what changed his mind.
[The horrors that awaited.
His hand lifts and extends, and there isn't any hesitation in him when he settles his fingers on what would amount to Kiraman's forehead, almost as if he has done this many, many times. The fingertips are cool, like coins; they begin to shine with an iridescent glow.
A wide chasm opens within Kiraman, a gaping maw both satiated and hungry all at once. The motion feels like infiltrating chaos, a burrowing spiral, yet the essence of it has more order to it than expected. Their spirit as a whole is flung out away from their form and dropped instead in an endless, wide, limitless void filled with shining stars and nebulae. With no comparison, who knows if they are standing, or sitting, or falling, or walking; there is no up, or down. The only sound is the rhythmic, single-toned hum of energy - the arcane; a vibration felt again the eardrums and mind more than heard. Some sort of primordial energy which instills neither fear nor comfort, but a pinpoint of respite.
And there's Viktor, too, with them. He looks different, though a lot like Kiraman except for his face unconcealed within the confines of the glow of his body. Must be floating, at least by the way Viktor hovers. Here, he must be Viktor as he was before the Hexcore's influence: an expression of amusement pours into his face. Humor, excitement. Teasing.]
You'd be surprised what makes a person change. [ but it's usually discovering the truth. it then depends on if they think their truth is the only truth.
but they don't seem concerned about what viktor is doing. in fact, they watch closely and let it happen, and as it opens within them they seem to realize with startling clarity that this feels a bit familiar. there's surprise there when they feel themselves being bodied around (unused to not having control, really) and they stay still for a moment as if to fully absorb the sound and the chasm and the void.
and it's... that energy. it's that relief, that vague semblance of inner peace, maybe, that catches their attention as they tilt their head back to look across the void.]
Whoa.
[this is what they say first as a first instinct, because familiar or not, this is still new. and overwhelming, in a way. but when viktor hovers in front of them then, they study him carefully. this is the interior viktor, the one wrapped in the malfunctioning sentient magic, an actual separation from the amalgamation someone else created. it does not escape them in the slightest that viktor seems far more lucid here. ]
So what you meant to say was the arcane is limitless. To be shaped by whoever's hands touch it. Raw energy that hasn't been put into a circuit yet. [ this is how they're choosing to understand it. ]
[His smile is humble, but genuine - and actually there for once. His eyes don't have the shards of cold ice to them; instead, they are warm and golden. He twists around to look out over the bottomless and topless horizon for a moment.]
Yes, [he agrees finally.] I suppose that is why they say many wars were fought over it. [He gestures at the expanse.] This is the collective. At least, it would be if there were others connected to us. Each of them would be a thread-song somewhere out here. Thinking, talking, wanting.
[ very, very interesting. they are starting to see what happened here. and they're trying to float, too? let them up. ]
Quiet doesn't seem so bad. [ but then again, they could use it, sometimes. ] You sure everyone in the collective would be wanting, thinking, and talking the same way? How do you know they won't conflict?
[The questions make him laugh quietly for some reason.]
No one wants, thinks, or talks the same. Everyone in the collective was their own person. I could hear their minds, their desires. They did not conflict because everyone was at peace as a single coexistence.
I... have misunderstood the arcane. [ they sound a little amused and a little embarrassed. they still think they're right that what happened to viktor and merging with the arcane was Bad, but. they can understand the appeal. of what the arcane was meant to do. ]
It's more like the cloud. But can the collective grow? If they can think and want, can they grow and change?
That's alright. [He seems amused himself.] It's a manifested hub of the connection the arcane can allow. A place where everyone is linked to each other and me. I am also still learning more about it.
[He shakes his head gently.]
I don't know. The commune was young. I never had the chance to find out. But I was brought someone whose mutation locked away who they were, and I was using the connection to search their mind for what was missing.
[ a pause to that. this, too, sounds familiar. there are a lot of similarities here that they are discovering in an offshoot way and they're not sure how to feel about that. it's not bad, necessarily, but it makes them think. ]
Like a train station. Everyone coming from different directions but they're all gathered to go to the same destination. [ sure, fine. ] Do mutations like that happen a lot? When you search a mind, is it like this?
[ hm. should they be concerned about viktor searching their mind actually. that's a new thought. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I never wanted to be a savior. [ so, mood. ] You said you started the commune for people who came to you for healing. Is that how Jayce found you?
[ "why exactly did jayce kill you." ]
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His expression crumples - confusion, mostly, but under it, Viktor himself, and hurt, sadness, frustration.]
Yes. I asked him, through the body of a council member he once knew, to come see me, to see what I had accomplished. He said Hextech... was a curse. He was different... He had touched the arcane, and it had changed him. [The echo returns to his voice.] Then he came. We brought him to me.
[It wavers back out.]
But when I opened my eyes, the look in his eyes... He had no other goal except to end me. I could see it.
no subject
[ and all your creepy little hivemind echos. ]
... I wanted to make a god. Something like it, anyway. A just god, one to combat against someone who created something that would destroy millions of lives. In his prime, he was considered a genius. Me? Well, couldn't have been that smart if I solved something he spent his whole life failing to reach. He had to be stopped. Didn't matter everything he created, everything he'd done with his life. He was corrupted. And maybe... when someone's that warped, the only way to save it is from themselves.
[ it's clear that they only apply this kind of mercy killing to viktor, but the principle is the same. if something grows too out of hand, you may have to kill the thing to fix it. ]
And from there you can rebuild it. Rewire how it thinks, take it out of its framework and adjust the program so that the processes it runs become a new product. [ that is more said as an aside because the analogy got away from them a bit. ]
no subject
[He just doesn't know what divine inspiration Jayce saw. What was it?]
You're saying I should have been killed.
[He's looking at Kiraman now, the blue embedded in his eyes chilly. No. He can't accept that. He was nearly perfect? The epitome of the highest form of advancement. The peak of evolution.] We had the power to bestow upon everyone a salvation in a coalescent paradise, free of the humanity which destroys them again and again. [And free of everything else, including resistance.]
That is the glorious evolution.
[They're right. Sometimes, your compassion becomes twisted too far.]
no subject
No. That is deconstruction. [ they point this out first, choosing to work their way backwards in the conversation. ] I never said you should have been killed, but if that was your takeaway... why did that resonate? It was just an assessment of character.
[ because it's the same point. because it's exactly the same thing, it's someone pushed by their ideas too far that they went to absolutely insane lengths to accomplish them until someone was willing to challenge and kill them. ]
How did Jayce change?
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Was his discontent for me... greater than our dream together?
[He was the hub, the circuit in which the malformed arcane flowed through into the rest, and Jayce had destroyed him without even hesitating.]
I don't know. He did not look like himself. I could feel the arcane within him, the same humming song. But he had abandoned our dream.
no subject
The way your dream manifested might've become his nightmare. You and the arcane. You're almost one in the same now. [ and if the arcane is uncontrolled and not contained, wouldn't the thing that would unravel be viktor himself? ]
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He made me what I am. Then he decided to regret it? [Just an educated guessing. A musing.] He would rather I be dead than be what he created? The arcane is wonderful. What reason could it be a nightmare to him?
[Sorry your Frankenstein's monster has become sentient, Jayce!!]
I wanted us to continue our dream together as partners. Why wouldn't he want that?
[Someone else has abandoned him!! Of course! He is just some nobody from the Undercity after all.]
I would show him how amazing it could be.
no subject
Some people think they have everything under control. That they know exactly what they're doing, or they're so driven by their goal that the results of how it gets there don't matter. Even to the point of destroying the creation.
[ yeah, weird how that happens. ]
You manipulated someone else to reach out to him in a show of power he's never seen. [ though, more curiously: ] Did you get to talk to him before he killed you?
no subject
[...]
He killed Salo after our conversation.
[Which was rude, but he can understand this might have been scary for Jayce to witness. He can concede that, he guesses. Not sure WHY but okay.]
No. When I opened my eyes, he was powering his hammer. The last I saw of anything was him standing at the entrance with a strange expression.
no subject
... reactionary. [ they are not thinking much of jayce in this moment. they are not sure how to think about viktor either though. this is a very interesting set of circumstances for them. ] You think he wasn't in control of himself either then?
[ wait. ]
A hammer. Like... [ mimics swinging down a giant hammer. ]
no subject
What Hexcore influence?]
Yes. [Hammer time.] It's a hammer he built based on our Hextech even though we said we would never use Hextech to build weapons.
It likely utilizes a hex crystal, so it can be charged to disperse a beam of energy.
[Above the mpregg, he pulls aside some of the blue blankie covering his chest where the mottled, healed crater has turned into an ugly scar. He truly got blasted. Heavier sections of golden metal begin here and disappear down out of sight.]
no subject
Pretty sure I played a video game like that once. [ but they do lean forward to peer at this scar. ouchie. ]
Metal from the fusion, too? [ cyborg... ? ] Did you know he made the hammer before he used it on you?
no subject
Video game...?
[He's ""old,"" don't be saying that.]
I was born with a stunted leg. I had to wear a brace on it, and later, I had spinal surgery to implant screws for the chest brace I needed. It fused with my flesh during the transmutation. The arcane does this to others when I heal them - if they have a physical malformation.
[He shakes his head.]
I had seen it one other time. I didn't ask any questions. [A pause.] ...
[He glances over his shoulder briefly before looking back.]
I didn't think to at the time.
no subject
instead, they are listening to viktor explain his tragic backstory. he cannot see what their expression looks like, but it seems as if that's giving them pause to think this over. ]
Even in evolution there's no escaping genetics. [ this is mumbled a little, because even if viktor was healed, those pieces of him remained for life. ]
So he went and made this weapon without you despite doing everything else together. And despite agreeing not to use your technology for weapons. And then blasted you. [ never mind they are a jayce-anti as well suddenly. they do not think viktor is correct! but both of these things can be true. ] Did you think you would end up here when you did die?
[ heaven, they mean. ]
no subject
The way Kiraman is missing pieces of this long story. Not their fault. Just the jumble of conversation.]
Jayce became a councilor at another's behest. He became entangled in their ways, pulled between our work and their requests, his duty.
[An explanation for the weaponry.]
No. I assumed I would be pulled into nothing, or perhaps, repurposed within the arcane. [Peering at Kiraman.] Would you like to see it? The arcane.
no subject
they will continue to pry pieces of this story out of viktor's brain, actually, or so help them. ]
My... partner and I were on two sides, too, for a while. Not that I knew that for a long time, but when I came back again I learned they were pretty against the things I'd done. But... they came around later.
[ that aside. the unfortunate part is that kiraman is a curious mind themselves, and they've wondered about this. ]
... show me.
no subject
We were once always on the same page. Inseparable. I do wonder... what changed his mind.
[The horrors that awaited.
His hand lifts and extends, and there isn't any hesitation in him when he settles his fingers on what would amount to Kiraman's forehead, almost as if he has done this many, many times. The fingertips are cool, like coins; they begin to shine with an iridescent glow.
A wide chasm opens within Kiraman, a gaping maw both satiated and hungry all at once. The motion feels like infiltrating chaos, a burrowing spiral, yet the essence of it has more order to it than expected. Their spirit as a whole is flung out away from their form and dropped instead in an endless, wide, limitless void filled with shining stars and nebulae. With no comparison, who knows if they are standing, or sitting, or falling, or walking; there is no up, or down. The only sound is the rhythmic, single-toned hum of energy - the arcane; a vibration felt again the eardrums and mind more than heard. Some sort of primordial energy which instills neither fear nor comfort, but a pinpoint of respite.
And there's Viktor, too, with them. He looks different, though a lot like Kiraman except for his face unconcealed within the confines of the glow of his body. Must be floating, at least by the way Viktor hovers. Here, he must be Viktor as he was before the Hexcore's influence: an expression of amusement pours into his face. Humor, excitement. Teasing.]
What do you think?
no subject
but they don't seem concerned about what viktor is doing. in fact, they watch closely and let it happen, and as it opens within them they seem to realize with startling clarity that this feels a bit familiar. there's surprise there when they feel themselves being bodied around (unused to not having control, really) and they stay still for a moment as if to fully absorb the sound and the chasm and the void.
and it's... that energy. it's that relief, that vague semblance of inner peace, maybe, that catches their attention as they tilt their head back to look across the void.]
Whoa.
[this is what they say first as a first instinct, because familiar or not, this is still new. and overwhelming, in a way. but when viktor hovers in front of them then, they study him carefully. this is the interior viktor, the one wrapped in the malfunctioning sentient magic, an actual separation from the amalgamation someone else created. it does not escape them in the slightest that viktor seems far more lucid here. ]
So what you meant to say was the arcane is limitless. To be shaped by whoever's hands touch it. Raw energy that hasn't been put into a circuit yet. [ this is how they're choosing to understand it. ]
no subject
Yes, [he agrees finally.] I suppose that is why they say many wars were fought over it. [He gestures at the expanse.] This is the collective. At least, it would be if there were others connected to us. Each of them would be a thread-song somewhere out here. Thinking, talking, wanting.
It's quiet now.
no subject
Quiet doesn't seem so bad. [ but then again, they could use it, sometimes. ] You sure everyone in the collective would be wanting, thinking, and talking the same way? How do you know they won't conflict?
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No one wants, thinks, or talks the same. Everyone in the collective was their own person. I could hear their minds, their desires. They did not conflict because everyone was at peace as a single coexistence.
The ruination came from outside the collective.
no subject
It's more like the cloud. But can the collective grow? If they can think and want, can they grow and change?
no subject
[He shakes his head gently.]
I don't know. The commune was young. I never had the chance to find out. But I was brought someone whose mutation locked away who they were, and I was using the connection to search their mind for what was missing.
no subject
Like a train station. Everyone coming from different directions but they're all gathered to go to the same destination. [ sure, fine. ] Do mutations like that happen a lot? When you search a mind, is it like this?
[ hm. should they be concerned about viktor searching their mind actually. that's a new thought. ]
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