Death, Devotion, Dissonance

The opening sentence of the vision pulled Endra's attention.

"Then there really is nothing to be done?" the Father of Beasts spoke.

"Unfortunately, the knowledge of the future is not something that can help against the Princess of Denial," the Daughter of Time smiled. "At this point, I can only see more details on how we'll end up dead by her hands."

'The Princess of Denial?' Endra's ears perked up. 'That golem I fought mentioned the name during that test, didn't I? He even said that one of the rats knew about the Princess of Denial, but no one else could remember her…'

"It's vexing, to think our Hexmagi Alliance would become dust without even a fight," the Father grimaced.

"A bullshit 'Gift' that Hex possesses…" the Sinmother spat out.

"She is no mere Hex now," the Keeper of Secrets spoke out. "She is a proper deity now. There were many arguments about this wasn't there? 'At what point does a Hex or a Magi become god?'. Well, with what she's doing to the souls and bodies of everyone, I'm deigning to call her our goddess now."

"If only our goddess could be more merciful towards us…"

"We are powerless to question the will of our goddess," the Keeper chuckled. "At this point, I only hope we'll be transformed into a more affable race. I wouldn't want to become part of her little legion of antpeople, no thanks."

"What monstrosities has she created of us now?" the Sinmother scowled.

"As far as I could tell, her latest endeavors were: ant-people, spider-people, bird-people, metal-people, and semiliquid-people."

"Semiliquid?" one of the Twelve asked.

"Yeah, their flesh can change shapes. Shapeshifters basically."

"Metal?" another asked.

"Living metals," the Keeper spoke nonchalantly. "They tend to take on a humanoid shape, though."

Endra felt like he'd learned of something blasphemous.

'So the Twelve Races were created by this Princess of Denial? Doesn't that make her the Empress? Who else is so omnipotent to do something like that?'

"I don't want to become something like that…"

"Likewise," the Keeper sighed. "But we do have hope. She's now working on a different race. A very special one at that. The Hivemind, she calls them."

The others leaned in to listen.

"She's trying to create a race of people that are bound somehow. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but they'd look mostly the same as humans, but their minds would be connected. They'd think the same things and know the same things, basically."

Just as the Keeper spoke this, the Sin-mother slammed on the desk. "That's it!"

The hopeful tone in her voice pulled everyone's attention, Endra included.

"Tell me more about the experiments she's doing!" she urged.

"For the time being," the Keeper started. "She's trying soul magic mostly. Before, she was trying to create an organ that acts as the bond between the Hivemind's… minds, but that plan mostly turned to Soul magic in the end. Knowledge and memories are so deeply ingrained into one's soul after all.

"But's she's facing some problems, since the souls of people are so vastly different so it's hard to mesh them together. She's also thinking hard on keeping the final product sane. After all, such a large amount of souls definitely has a hefty amount of information on them. I even saw her try to create a giant brain that's capable of thinking at such levels and also acting as a center for all the different bodies.

"Though, the brain was too hard to keep alive, so she scrapped the idea. So, as I've mentioned before, she's searching for methods that use soul magic."

Endra wondered how the Keeper was so up to date on what the Princess of Denial was doing, but he guessed that the old man had his methods. Since it was rumored that he only cast Absolutes, perhaps he had a spell that could spy on someone else regardless of them being a god or not.

But aside from that, he was very interested in the conversation.

The Hivemind was a rather mysterious race of people. In the few decades they were alive, they were said to have pushed magic to its limits, and in the end, were the cause of summoning the Twelve Calamities.

Hearing about their true nature, Endra could see how it was plausible. It was basically a hyper-evolutionary race, where every member worked for the same goal. They were practically a super-computer on steroids.

But from the conversation, Endra could tell that there was something more to that story.

"In that case…" the Sin-mother hummed. "Perhaps we have a chance at a next life."

The rest were silent, waiting for her to explain.

"Since she's struggling to find compatible souls, we'll just have to provide that for her. Sief, how dense is your soul?" she asked the large Albino.

"It's equal to about 7 thousand ordinary souls."

"Exactly. And among us, yours would be considered rather modest. It definitely pales compared to mine, which is equal to 90 thousand. Add that between us all, and the amount would be nothing to scoff at…"

Endra frowned hearing such foreign concepts. One person's soul equaling thousands?

'Is it something exclusive to the time before the Empire? … Now that I think about it, these people all seem familiar with this thing called soul magic, but I've never heard a whiff of it during Evin's studies…'

"Say, what if we whittled down our souls to its basest form and simply let the Princess collect them? Surely, she wouldn't be able to resist such a perfect gift? After all, it's the perfect solution to her Hivemind problem. Thousands of identical souls, all strong enough to take on a bit of manhandling."

"Are you crazy?" one of the Twelve asked. "You know how fucked up the process of whittling down our soul would be? That's no different than dying in the most agonizing way possible!"

"Of course I know," the Sin-mother spat out. "Who do you think you're talking to? … But for us to survive, this is the only method I can think of."

"Ori, can you see whether something like that will be possible?" someone asked the Daughter of Time.

"I can't say. As you know, souls like ours breaking down is basically death, so anything beyond that… I'm unable to see. But if we have no better options, I'll be happy to go along with Lauwich's plan."

A brief debate occurred regarding the feasibility of the plan, but the Sin-mother could not give a concrete answer. They even talked about whether the Princess would even use their souls for her Hivemind experiment. But all those talks, they were pointless. It was a blind leap of faith.

Their deaths were certain, but it was just a choice between a peaceful death and a very painful death with a slim chance to revive someday in the future.

In the end, everyone agreed to the plan.

The vision ended abruptly.

*****