Chapter 38 To Sing a Song of Swans or a Final Requiem

“What is the answer a person gives when both their body and life have come to naught? What is the Truth they speak?

Do they shout in defiance?

Do they resign to peace?

Or do they try to bargain with Death itself?

That is a Defining Moment, what a person does when faced with both Deaths.”

The bell rang, and Aiden bid his farewells to the other students, though it was not the school gates that he walked towards, but towards the fields, where a garage lay.

“There are three main types of instantaneous power-ups that anyone can use,” Trist had told him. “All of them require a significant cost to occur.”

“The first and simplest, telling your opponent what your ability is. This only works in a setting where you are opposed to an enemy and requires your opponents’ understanding of what it is. The cost here incurred is your opponents’ understanding of your ability, in return, you get a temporary Hume boost that lasts until the battle is ‘finished’. This can only work once per person, but you can extend the Hume boost by telling your enemy what you plan to do as well. That joke of a villain monologuing his master plan falls under this category.”

“The next two are more complex, they are respectively called a Swan Song and Requiem. They both cost your life to use, but in different ways.

A Swan Song costs your future, all your potential, all that you could possibly achieve, in return, it temporarily ages you up, changing you to a form where you have mastered your power, where you stand at the apex of your potential.

And the second, the opposite of Swan Songs… A Requiem costs your past, it consumes every act you have ever done, removing your very existence and impact on the world and converting it to pure Hume. People who choose this gain more Hume the longer they’ve been alive and the greater their impact on the world, but these acts are erased in order for them gain more Hume.”

“Both have their pros and cons, and affect people differently, I for example would have an extremely weak Swan Song because I’m already close to, or at my peak potential, whereas my Requiem would yield significant Hume because of how long I’ve been alive and active. Both would probably kill me though.”

“But very rarely, someone returns from a Requiem, they say they’ve experienced a Defining Moment, though they are often vague on what it means. From what I’ve observed, it allows them to keep all the Hume they’ve gained through a Requiem, without annihilating their existence.”

Aiden stepped past the threshold entering the garage, seeing Isaac sitting inside his dirty office, a TV playing some kind of soap drama.

His perspective was different now, where before he saw Isaac as a normal person, he could sense the abnormal feeling he gave off, similar to that Judy girl after she revealed her first ability.

Aiden could sense the abnormal level of Pure Hume in his body.

“Savants are people who have mastered Meta Techniques to the point where they can nullify abilities, not weaken, but completely and utterly nullify. The cost of this is that their own ability is affected, often weakened or destroyed completely. They often feel abnormally normal to our Hume senses, more so the more experienced you are in sensing Hume.”

“What are you here for?” Isaac began, turning to him.

Before he froze, staring at Aiden with a strange intensity.

“I had it,” Aiden told him, “I’ve had a Defining Moment.”

“You fucking idiot.”

Blunt, rude, but that didn’t bother Aiden as he asked.

“What is

(-)

As Aiden stumbled, a hand steadied him, helping him stand up as the disorientation faded.

“You can’t finish that sentence,” Isaac said, pausing the TV, “and neither can I. You’re just getting knocked in the head for no reason.”

“What did I experience?” Aiden gasped, “I saw

(-)

Blood, dripping down his nose and onto the floor.

Isaac scoffed and brought a tissue to his face, moving Aiden’s hand to hold it there as it soaked up blood.

“There are things that should never be said,” Isaac told him. “Things you are better off not knowing or telling.”

“I am here for answers,” Aiden hissed.

Isaac sighed, “Sit down, and I’ll tell you of

(-)

“Fucking damn it,” the gadgeteer growled as he stumbled away from Aiden and fell on the wall for support.

“I will tell him of gods,” he grimaced. “Not a specific one, but of the idols we call deities and how they come about.”

And he plopped himself into a chair, gesturing at Aiden to follow suit.

“What do you know of the Gamer’s Labyrinth?”

Aiden sat down in front of the older man, “That thing? I know the Gamer’s corpse is at the heart of it, I know Daedalus built it, and I know of the effect it has on the people inside.”

Everyone inside the Labyrinth could level.

Level in same way the Gamer could, access Status Screens and Skills in the same way the Gamer once did, over time becoming progressively more powerful.

“But its effect is only limited to inside the Labyrinth,” Aiden continued, drawing on Bu’s memories. “Any ‘Player’ who leaves the Labyrinth loses almost all of their gains from levelling inside.”

“But for every twenty levels they’ve levelled, they get one ‘real’ level that they keep outside,” Isaac finished.

Aiden nodded. “A level sixty inside the Labyrinth, who is a level three outside, is the equivalent of a weak Metahuman, slightly stronger than a normal human but most importantly, immune to Bleed like we are.”

Aiden Bu had thought of dragging his sister Jaiden into that Labyrinth and power levelling her, but the numerous difficulties, such as there being a max limit of people who can be inside the Labyrinth, meaning someone had to leave before another could enter, the already massive queue to get inside, the dangers of travelling such a distance to Gorea, and the fact he had to power level her to sixty, left it ultimately a possible, but extremely unviable option. Even more so than miracle potions, which he could just order from here. It would cost an extreme amount of money, but it was more possible than fighting through a crowd of people all seeking the same power.

“A weak metahuman might not seem like much,” Isaac continued, “but the ability to mass produce them is. Why do you think the Muriganas’ tried to conquer that place? An ability like that is massively useful.”

“To my understanding, the Gamer’s original ability was not that,” Aiden said.

Isaac nodded, “The current one is a blend of Imbuement and Reinforcement Extended techniques, remaining after death after being laid on top of the creation of Daedalus, but tell me, why do you think the Gamer got that powerful?”

Not waiting for an answer, Isaac continued, “It is actually pretty simple. What is a game system but a framework with a shit ton of rules and conditions?”

Aiden froze, eyes narrowing, he was leading him onto something.

“The system the Gamer had was based on MMO types, they realised that after the Labyrinth was established, so every level or skill or class was innately ‘balanced’ under the assumption the user would be engaging in both PvE and PvP type stuff. His power would actively ‘Patched’ by itself, weakening certain overpowered aspects but strengthening underperforming ones, those things made it innately conditional, but that wasn’t the main reason why he got that strong, only that his final strength got multiplied.”

“Strip away all the fluff and in the end the Gamer’s power was simply growth through death. You realise that he just suddenly appeared one day don’t you?”

Aiden blinked, indeed, the Gamer was relatively unknown until he began streaming, and by then he was already immensely powerful. Someone of that power didn’t just appear.

“We figured it out after his death,” Isaac told him, “Precogs, they found out that he had been entering Gates and invading the worlds on the other side of them.”

“Four,” he said, “Four entire worlds, three of them completely silent, not a single speck of life remaining.”

“But-” Aiden began, ‘for a Gate to open, there must be life on the other side,’ and he stopped, when he registered, the word ‘remaining.’

Isaac nodded, “Three entire worlds, genocided of all life, one of them was a civilisation almost on par with ours.”

Aiden throat felt dry, raspy, as he asked, “The fourth?”

“A stabilised Gate that left no Bleed. In it, an entire world bred to fight,” he said. “Every caste of society trained to be warriors, from factory men, farmers, merchants. Nobility was determined by fighting strength-”

“-so they could fight him off?” Aiden interrupted.

“-so they could be reaped,” Isaac corrected. “A civilisation conquered and farmed. They trained so that were worth more XP to the Gamer’s ability. He had made himself their deity and they saw death to him as their afterlife.”

The fingers of Aiden’s remaining hand curled in, digging into his flesh, drawing blood as they did so.

“There is great weight to death,” Isaac continued. “In dealing, experiencing or partaking. It is one of the few constants of the Multiverse. And we lead back to Requiems and Defining Moments.”

“I’ve searched for a long time, but I can only find records of Requiems and Defining Moments up to three hundred years prior,” he glanced briefly to the sky, towards the broken moon, “despite the fact Swan Songs and Hand Reveals go far before that, even millenia prior, during the age of the Apocalypse, were records of Swan Songs and Hand Reveals, but not Requiems.”

“What does that mean?” Aiden asked. “Did Requiems simply not exist?”

“I don’t believe so,” Isaac told him. “Instead, I believe they were completely self containing.”

“Unlike a Swan Song, a Requiem consumes the past, stuff that is already existing, rather than the possibility of existence. I believe until recently, they consumed everything, including the final act a person dealt with a Requiem.”

Aiden’s eyes shown with understanding.

Ranpo had not disappeared from existence when he had, the crow had simply forgotten him.

Same with the blade he kept hidden under his cast. His Umbrella appeared and warped the ground, but that damage did not disappear even when he was.

Even when the footprints were washed away by the sea, Ranpo and the Umbrella remained.

“I see you understand,” Isaac nodded, “we who have experienced Requiems know not everything is taken, but Swan Songs, the opposite of Requiems, do.”

“It is impossible to return from a Swan Song,” Isaac said. “Your future is completely gone, all that is left are your past actions and the present, all before the future which you begin to burn. So why is it that a Requiem does not also consume your final actions, or other marks of your existence, when a Swan Song consumes you in entirety?”

And Aiden’s eyes went wide.

“Because those Requiems were left… Incomplete,” he realised, before tensing for a censure that did not come.

“You’re safe,” Isaac assured him, “you didn’t try to mention

(-)

Aiden rose to catch Isaac as he flinched, almost falling from his seat. “Gah! That never gets easier.”

Helping the older man settle back into his chair, Aiden asked, “But why? Why can’t we talk freely?”

“I suppose it is another condition,” Isaac mused. “Do you know how many idiots seek Defining Moments despite the fact it would probably kill them? If they knew a Requiem could be cheated, and most importantly how, more would be trying to cheat it.”

“Scarcity is a Condition,” Aiden muttered, “that’s probably also why the Labyrinth has a ‘server limit’. In lowering the number of people it affects, it strengthens the effect it has on those that already are.”

“Now you’re catching on,” Isaac said, grabbing a napkin to wipe some blood that was leaking from his nose. “That was why I was so… vague with my description. I probably could get around the censor, but in doing so, on the off-chance you actually need a cheat out of it, I might invalidate you as a candidate for

(-)

“Fuck!” Isaac yelled as he grabbed his head, Aiden rushing out of his seat once again to steady the man. “Is that really necessary!” he ranted, “Both of us already know!”

No one answered him, despite that, Isaac did feel better after swearing at a non-specific entity that was not identifiable from his speech, but whom Aiden knew exactly who he was referring to.

He was swearing next to a ‘child’ by the way, which only made Aiden lose that tiny bit of ingrained respect towards seniors which he had for the man.

“But then what-” Aiden paused himself, before correcting his speech, “We know the how, but what is the why?”

Why was there an entity handing out Defining Moments? Why was there an entity that allowed people to cheat Requiems?

Why did the Incomplete God exist?

Isaac shrugged. “I dunno.”

“You don’t know?” Aiden asked, disappointment in his voice.

“I have theories, but to answer why a specific thing is, I cannot.”

“What are your theories then?”

Isaac thought for a moment, likely prewording the ideas in his head, so as to avoid directly mentioning the entity.

“Sister Savage, the Priest of the Church, do you know of her? Or of the Church in general?”

“I know they are part of the Mediterra Theocracy,” Aiden answered, “the ones keeping the southside of the Hell Gate completely bottled up.”

Isaac nodded, “Far before the magic of Living Concepts started appearing, a group of powerful metahumans tried something drastic.

They tried to become Gods, and they succeeded.”

“See,” he continued to explain, “abilities really get fucky when you start getting a shit ton of conditions and rules associated to them. Making them more solid to reality. Sure there is strength in having a freer ability, flexibility beats raw power in most situations, but the ideal a single person can have in a world like this, is to cheat your ability into having a ton of conditions and rules, whilst being flexible.”

“Getting the best of both worlds,” Aiden agreed.

“But that is the ideal of a single person,” Isaac stressed. “What happens if a group of powerful metahumans, decided to each turn their ability into a single metaphorical cog? To altogether create a great clockwork machine that feeds on every other cog in the system? To build their abilities to utterly compliment and cover each other.”

Aiden’s mind went to Wren.

Her ability completely invalidated half the costs of his. Where he needed material to create his creatures, she could provide them easily for a single piece of paper, where he needed to feed his creatures if they remained, she could write a few words and create food from paper. Vegan food, but even then it was already extremely cost effective.

But he shouldn’t exploit a minor, even if his current body was the same age as her.

And that was when neither of their abilities were ‘built’ for each other, still existing as seperate, if synergistic units.

What would happen if two metahumans had put conditions on their abilities so that they would only work off each other?

What if that number was upped to three? Four? Five?

If just Wren and Aiden could achieve this level of power, what would happen if you dragged that to its logical extreme?

“That is the Church,” Isaac said, recognising the mounting realisation in Aiden’s eyes. “Dozens of ability users who’ve each sacrificed their ‘self’ in order to become a collective deity.”

“They would have both power and flexibility,” Aiden murmured. “But if a single one dies-”

“That God doesn’t exactly exist as a single unit,” Isaac replied. “To kill it, you need to kill every single one of its followers.”

He shook his head, “But just as I said, the Church’s God is not a single thing or entity. It is present in everyone who follows its doctrines and believes faithfully in it. It is alive so long as its teachings are taught and followed.”

“That’s what the Church does,” Aiden realised, “what Sister Savage and other Priests do, they are borrowing an ability collective, and using that, and the rituals-”

“Are just conditions they need to fulfil to use those abilities,” Isaac finished. “Faith and belief is the condition to use, the rituals they do is a cost, that way even non-metahumans can be of the Church, because the Hume cost is paid for in their blood rituals. It is a complete equivalent exchange.”

Aiden looked back at Bu’s memories, to the fields of crucified corpses, “But why blood? Why human sacrifice? Surely there are easier things to pay?”

Isaac snorted, “You know difficulty just makes the cost even better? But the real answer is that those metahumans used a previously existing Cult’s teaching as a framework. There’s solidity in using things with history behind them, and death we’ve established has massive weight, so they used the teachings of a cannibalistic blood cult that was around the time of the Apocalypse.”

“What was that blood cult called?”

“The Kristonity,” Isaac answered, “not much is known about them, since it lands squarely in the fog of ages, but it was already global before the Apocalypse happened.”

“Wait a moment…” Aiden murmured, “The Kristonity?”

‘Did he mean Christianity?’

“Yeah?” Isaac said.

“That can’t be right,” he murmured.

Isaac shrugged, talking as if reading directly from a book, “The Kristonity was a known blood cult, every seventh day they gathered in processions to listen to the chant of elders as they ate ‘bread’ and ‘wine’, which most modern day historians agree were euphamisms for flesh and blood. They also seemed to worship the crucifixion and torture of people, along with ritually drowning their children, that’s about all that was known about them. Honestly it’s a miracle so much of the Cult was remembered till the modern day. The Church uses an expanded version of their lore, but it is mostly historically inaccurate, due to needing to fill out the extreme holes we have on the Kristonity.”

“Yeah,” Aiden nodded noncommittally. “Blood Cult…”

He shook his head, “How does this lead back to your theory?”

“Oh yeah,” Isaac shook his head to wake himself, “you know abilities sometimes don’t disappear when their users die? You should right, you’ve been here almost a week.”

“I do.”

“When abilities are involved, nothing is lost without benefit,” Isaac said. “You tell your opponent what your ability or plan is, you get a Hume power up. You set a condition that you can’t use an ability for half the day, you power it up for the other half. You get the idea.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“So what happens when a Requiem fully consumes its user?” Isaac asked. “In the past, before… what is now… What happens in that final moment when a Requiem completely destroys the last dregs of existence there is in a person?”

“It should be creating more Hume,” Isaac pointed out, “but the problem is, the user is dead, gone in a way that is complete and irrecoverable, so where does that Hume go?”

“People would notice if reality suddenly became thicker at a spot, but there are no records of such anomalies, which means that Hume is being taken.”

“And abilities don’t die,” Aiden whispered.

An Incomplete black marble statue, that looked like it was still in the process of slowly being carved out.

That was the essence of Isaac’s theory, that the Incomplete God was the dregs of every metahuman that had ever died to a Requiem, congealed into a single form-

“Until the dead abilities gained intelligence.”

Like the Church’s created God, it was a collective, a collective that continued to act long after the death of its many originators.

Will was left behind in dead abilities, that was why the Gamer’s corpse still maintained the Labyrinth, that was why Josh needed to fulfil the conditions to inherit Tuba Knight rather than just saying it was his one day.

Power could be inherited, there were numerous conditions to be fulfilled, but amongst all those dead abilities, there was a single common factor regarding their original users.

They all died to a Requiem.

“Is

(-)

Aiden coughed into his hand, leaving some flecks of blood in his palm. “Benevolent,” he gasped, throat impossibly dry as he wiped away the blood with a tissue.

Isaac shrugged, “Who knows, dead abilities are known to mimic intelligence, but those with ‘will’ are often just stiff machines who only act in a certain way and never deviate.”

The Incomplete God only appeared during a Requiem, or a person’s ‘Second Death’.

The God somehow allowed Requiems to actually have effect, halting it somewhere, instead of completely consuming the user’s existence.

The user of the Requiem needed to pass some kind of judgement, then they got a Defining Moment.

Those who’ve had a Defining Moment had their speech restricted so that they would not teach others of the entity.

Instead of giving powerups willy nilly, it was an ability, an ability that followed rules and conditions like his did, just on a completely different scale, one that was global and affected every single metahuman who risked a Requiem.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Isaac murmured. “If… things are as I theorise. It would certainly not be the first ‘God’ we’ve had, like most abilities that reach that scale and endurance, the level where they become a worldly law, as certain as our breath and the blue sky, is one that is locked away behind the union of dozens of abilities, creating a singularity that is also restricted in its actions, but made the more powerful for it.”

“The Gamer might’ve reached that level,” Isaac pondered, “if he had more time to level, but he died before then, so he is stuck to only affecting the Labyrinth.”

“But Requiem’s are just one half aren’t they?” Aiden asked, remembering what Trist had said only a few hours earlier. “Swan Songs, does that have such a god?”

Isaac shrugged, “If there is, I have never heard of it.”

“But-”

“There are no records of a person returning from a Swan Song,” Isaac elaborated, “whether that information is being actively suppressed like with our speech, I do not know, but with Requiems, there is knowledge of Defining Moments, it is known that people have returned from it.”

“There is none of that for a Swan Song God,” he finished.

Aiden nodded, “I suppose. Thank you for your insights.”

Isaac scoffed, “It’s theoretically what I’m getting paid here for now.”

He chuckled out of politeness, before the laughter slowly died as Aiden saw Isaac was completely serious.

“One last thing I want to request of you,” Aiden said.

Isaac raised a palm. “Before that. Tell me something, how were you erased?” he asked, “What did the world you enter look like? What was it?”

When Aiden answered, his voice was strange, not speaking with his usual, soft-spoken and nigh emotionless tone, but instead, something almost wistful, nostalgic.

“I was at a shore, a shore I remembered in a past life, with beautiful stars and shining waters filled with Colorful creatures, where the footprints we walked were washed away by the sea.”

Isaac closed his eyes, breathing deeply, “For me, it was the workshops of my family. Manufactorems filled with all our achievements, one that was slowly taken away by rust of time.”

“Isaac? The gadgeteer?”

She nodded, “Yeah, he’s the new Meta Techniques instructor. He’s a Savant himself, which is why his ability is particularly piss poor, but his trained skill and knowledge is where his strength is at.”

“Why does he keep trying to be a gadgeteer then?” Aiden asked, remembering the rant the man had let out on more than one occasion near him.

“Thinker powers tend to make people a bit kooky in the head,” she said, “so expect a bit of weirdness from him.”

Aiden nodded, once again remembering how the man randomly broke into rants.

“It might even be a long term condition,” she theorised, “a vow type, one that needs him to continue to try to pursue gadgeteering wholeheartedly, even though he knows it’s a complete dead end for him.”

“Remember that place,” Isaac murmured, “imagine it strongly enough, and you can return to it.”

“Why?”

“Clarity,” he answered with a strange reverence. “It is not often a person can take a peek at the insides of their own ability. To some, it is the same as looking at your soul and mind, it is valuable.”

“Any advice less esoteric?”

“Anything less would be too specific,” Isaac told him. “Abilities are unique to you, what you gain from such a place is also unique to you. Any advice I give you would be too flavoured by my own worldview and resolve, along with my family’s. It won’t work for you.”

Aiden shrugged, “I see.”

“What was the other thing that you wanted to ask of me?”

“Trist said you can cancel out abilities.”

“Takes a goddamn lot outta me though,” Isaac murmured.

“Can I ask you to try that on me?”