Chapter 34: Metacognition

Subject: Inis - [Requesting Reanalysis] Location: Redtinge Overgrowth

It is slow, noted Shade.

This was the first comment in some time since the dissection started. It was precise work, so the silence was appreciated. Inis’s parasite seemed to understand that.

“Is that a complaint? How typical of a creature born from Blight material. What intelligence you have rings hollow.”

At this point, Inis was just making a rather childish jab at Shade, the unwelcome guest in her body. She didn’t want to think about it too much. Fortunately, right now she couldn’t afford to waste the mental effort.

If she had, she might have discovered just how much fear was being channelled into anger.

Shade’s inaudible whisper originated somewhere in the hidden recesses of her consciousness. Its presence had faded even more while the scientist concentrated on her work.

Inis’s natural sight was coming back, but that was unexpectedly unwelcome. Sure, it was useful for some things, but it was hard to see in this jungle. Even with the fog thinning in the immediate area, very little light reached her all the way down here.

And the pain… It was almost too much to bear. Though it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. Inis had no recovery shards and Shade didn’t seem to be able to teach her how to do much more than leech fuel for her body’s natural recovery from the environment.

But natural recovery took a long time, even for a seeker who’d just eaten blightseeds. These had come from a pack of Chorth blightbeasts who’d miscalculated how vulnerable she was while concentrating.

Feeling more like her old self, Inis kept vigilant watch of her surroundings through virasense. She thought about passing off the duty to Shade, but just considering it made her want to scream at herself.

Nothing has changed. I have only one person, one entity, to rely on. Me.

Subject: Inis - [Requesting Reanalysis] Location: Redtinge Overgrowth

Inis breathed a hearty sigh. Hard work was finally bearing fruit. She’d identified two important organs.

One elongated section of pumps and connected tubing was responsible for generating the fog and spewing it out of the porous body. The sheer number of these creatures hidden throughout the jungle must be staggering.

Or, perhaps there were more creatures just like it. Larger ones, capable of much more. Botan were capable of blending in with the flora and fungi afterall.

The other organ was a dense orb. Once unraveled, it demonstrated a peculiar resonance with smaller anatomical structures distributed across the beast’s ravaged body. Many were crushed in the fighting, but some lent insight into how the master organ created virasense interference.

Inis still barely understood this much, and she made many assumptions. When she jabbed at the strange camouflage organ with a stick, Shade also witnessed the blightbeast’s innards react.

Our knowledge would have been gone, Shade remarked.

“Yes. If you had your way, we wouldn’t learn these things. Now, because I suspect it was you who insisted on bringing me here in my post-ARC fugue, I don’t have my headset. I will need to commit this all to memory until I can write it down.”

What is our headset’s function? Shade asked.

“It records my voice, so I can listen to it later,” Inis replied accidentally smearing fluid from blightbeast entrails on her forehead when she involuntarily rubbed it out of frustration.

Shade still didn’t understand. It was silent in Inis’s mind, drowning in new concepts. It had only just realized that ARC referred to the recent injection. The tragedy of Shade’s birth.

“I can record my voice. I can listen to that record. I cannot perfectly recall the important things that happen. When you see life in more complicated terms, there is more to remember. Understand? Stupid blightspawn”

Blightspawn? Shade wondered.

Inis was reaching the limits of her patience. But what could she do besides entertain this thing and vent her emotional turbulence as anger?

Neither of us deserve this, she decided.

“Something created from Blight, I guess,” she tried to explain.

We watched… What you did… We like this thing, Shade struggled to articulate.

“You like what thing? The brutality of dissection?”

No, the more complicated thing, Shade replied. Knowing more.

Inis couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was this creature truly expressing an unexpected appreciation for learning?

There was a disturbing flutter in Inis’s chest. She felt good learning that this parasite appreciated what she showed it. While she hadn’t shared her values seeking validation, she found it calmed her thoughts. It met an emotional need.

“That’s it. I’ve gone mad,” Inis chuckled in a trembling voice.

Was Shade influencing her emotions? No. Logically, this was easily a byproduct of her interest in science and life in long-term isolation. Inis’s hobbies were really getting the best of her now.

We witnessed memories of something else. In different situations, the meaning changes. If what you call “gone mad” is a bad thing, it… We are finding it difficult to understand how to communicate it… Shade struggled.

Shade was trying to tell Inis what her mentor told her. Sanity is subjective. It is problematic to define, and Inis shouldn’t waste effort.

Inis wasn’t going to tell it that it had helped. She still didn’t like Shade.

We don’t think we were made like them. Shade brooded, after a lengthy silence.

After Inis asked it to repeat itself, she finally understood. She was curious, but was this a tactic to garner sympathy?

She asked Shade why it didn’t think it was like a blightbeast.

We didn’t know why we came here. Answers, we thought. A gift of value… We waited, and probed, but nothing felt right. Nothing felt like us.

Inis couldn’t make sense of Shade’s thoughts, but not because they were entwined with her own.

Silently, Inis finished the brutalized specimen off with a well-placed Viradart. She stooped down to pick up the blightseed it left behind and fell deeper into thought. Shade went on.

We feel connected to the things here, but we are not of them. Not of you and not of them.

The gorey scene spread across the jungle floor vanished with only a trace that conflict had occurred. Blood and viscera left Inis’s skin, but she remained unclean.

Once again, she pondered why blightseeds were all that was left behind. There must be a reason, when everything else vanished. Seekers ate them, but nothing to date had produced a result like Shade, right?

Inis couldn’t be sure. She didn’t have the knowledge of every Blightbane Guild in every city across the known world. Though, it was her first objective to gather what she could as she travelled around Shroud.

If there were others afflicted with a parasitic entity like Shade, there would be talk of it. Seekers would be wary of consuming blightseeds.

Too many variables were well out of reach. Shade reacted to this thought. It was relevant.

We don’t know what we are, but we like this thing you have taught us. We see you like it too. How many are there out there in the places you’ve been? Shade asked.

“How many what? Things to learn? There is more to know than can ever be encountered. The question is vague.”

You want us gone, but you also want to learn us. Reveal things about this, Shade communicated a contradiction.

And so Inis spent time going back and forth with the not-quite-a-voice in her head and came to better terms with their shared situation.

By the end of their mediation session, she learned they had more in common than she first believed. She wanted this thing gone, but she also wanted to know what it was. Shade wanted to know why it existed too.

A tenuous harmony.

Subject: Inis - [Requesting Reanalysis] Location: Redtinge Overgrowth

Inis was journeying to the center of the jungle again to reach the Redtinge Pillar, the magitech elevator that would take her to safety.

Shade was busy processing their last exchange and let her be. It was appreciated.

Blightbeasts stalked the undergrowth, prowling just beyond the radius where she would actually do something about them. They learned the precise distance to keep through trial-and-dismemberment.

Even though Inis learned some things about how to sap vira and sol from her environment, she couldn’t replenish everything. Vira took many forms, and her body used many of them to sustain vital functions that needed proper sleep and nutrition.

What if I were to eat a blightbeast? she wondered. Not kill it, but just take a bite? If I finished it off, any nutritional gain would vanish.

At some point in seeker history, one must have attempted that. Probably a deranged person, but could she really judge at this point?

Even as newly-returned vision blurred, Inis decided not to nibble on a blightbeast. Not even when the thought made her stomach growl.

“No, not even the tiniest little nibble,” she relented.

The starving scientist was somewhat lost, but she’d come so far already. Her Deprive spell wore off entirely, and even the cloudy wisps of fog offended the eyes. It seemed the brain didn’t take too kindly to having its senses crudely blocked and restored.

Burns covering her weary body were somewhat healed. Thanks to the recovery boost provided by blightseeds, Inis’s excuciating pain receded to a dull ache in mere hours. Or, maybe half a day had passed? Who knew.

I need a timepiece to tell time. It’s back at camp, with all my pulse-forsaken food!

Something else Inis didn’t know was that someone was watching her. It was someone who’d been following her progress for many months.

Subject: Metis Location: ???

The subject was a hair’s breadth from death, over and over for days. Just how unlucky was she?

Metis gave a light chuckle at the thought of luck. Most of the misfortune this human had suffered was just the result of the actions she made responding to prior misfortune, as well as that which was a byproduct of her quest.

How will this affect Inis’s quest? How will this change her motivations?

Metis was curious about her own motives, too. Before arriving at this point in the surveillance, Metis wouldn’t think about these things at all. She did her job, she didn’t have to care about the people she watched.

In truth, the observer had forgotten what it was like to be interested in something so minor.

Was Inis to blame for this change in perspective? Among many on Metis’s watchlist, there was one other “problem subject” that evoked these feelings.

“But Inis is more like me, I think. When she isn’t trying to take on more than she can handle. Unlike the other one, she knows her limits. Also unlike the other one… Inis is disciplined. That’s why it is so frustrating to watch this happen to her.”

Metis wondered if she was being too hard on the other target on her list.

“I just don’t know anymore. I was asked to do this job because I am competent, right? Then… Why does watching this weak human suffer and fail make me feel like I’m not all that different?”

Her whispers fell on deaf ears, while numerous magitech surveillance tools, directed at many targets, continued to supply Metis’s isolated refuge with data on those targets.

Yet, her ridiculous notion warranted further analysis. Metis added another target to her watchlist. Herself.