Remnants of the Earth
SPACE STATIONS => TRIM => Topic started by: GIR on August 03, 2019, 11:31:23 pm
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It was rare, some mind deep within her comparatively small sea, a lost and nearly forgotten fragment that was, at the time, the only one awake, that enough of the High Priestess's fragments were inactive for her to actually, properly sleep. Dreams were a rarity, and, when they did happen, were an amalgamation of tens of thousands of dreamers, those she'd taken into her being with their consent, who were as devoted to her master and savior as she was. Well, what was left, anyway. There were modern soldiers fighting hordes of beasts the like of which had died out thousands of years ago. There were fish in the sky being chased by birds in clouds of water and magma, while half-mechanical abominations clashed with the majestic dragons that had been their forebears. Ancient temples to long-forgotten gods and modern pillars wrought by greed and vanity shared sometimes-fields, sometimes forests, sometimes wastelands, sometimes all of the above as the air was filled with the scents of plants that were as much amalgamations as the woman whose body slept.
But, regardless of the dream, one place was always at the heart of the madness. Somewhere around 10,000 years, she, a foolish thief of 21, had gone to that place in search of yet another treasure. A bauble like the countless others she had hoped would fill the emptiness she felt. The old temple had been rumored to contain a weapon that could end the world. She knew of no fewer than three tribes that would hail the one who brought it to them as a hero, so she had sought it out. The search had been dangerous, strenuous, and had very nearly cost her her mind. In the end, there was no weapon, as such. The temple had not been a vault for some sacred treasure. Rather, it had been a cage for a beast the ancients (and, even at that time, they'd been ancients) had feared to the point of madness, but lacked the power to destroy. It... They... Had called itself "Red Tide" in the language it had learned when it devoured all but a piece of her. An image of the toxic algae that would accumulate in the waters near her home village had sprung to mind when it had...
She still had no words for how she communicated with Red Tide. She still wasn't suire she needed to. All she cared was that Red Tide had given her the thing she had sought in her treasures: Meaning. She'd never had friends. Her parents had groomed her brother to be the next Chieftain and had no grander plans for her than to be married off to some tribe or another they sought favor with. Her village saw her and her brother the same way one might see a ring or a skirt on a person: An accessory. A bauble. Something to highlight his greatness. But Red Tide saw her as something else. A companion. A confidante. Someone who *understood*. And it was the place she'd met it, joined it, become someone and not something, that sat at the center of her dreamscape, no matter how many minds added their dreams to the amalgamation.
It was this small fragment, the one awake and mulling over the oddity of the dream, that noticed that the High Priestess was not alone. One by one, the other fragments awoke until her mind rang with the cacophony of minds. Unlike the puppets both she and Red Tide were able to control, to attempt to read her mind even at a glance when she was awake was as trying to stare directly at the sun. To look more closely, then, was as to stare from a mere foot away, the desires, hungers, feelings, thoughts, emotions, ambitions, and more of the minds not being filtered through a single fragment's empty body, but, rather, being viewed at the source. "You have come with questions, I presume?", she asked when she noticed the other occupant was clearly a scientist. The High Priestess spoke not with the voice of a single woman, but with a collection of voices, the sum of all the minds she had devoured over the years in service to her master. "If you have brought me sustenance, I shall speak freely. If you have brought none, then you shall only have answers if you pay me in kind. A question for a question. An answer for an answer.". The humans who had captured her had, over the time she'd been here, worn down her patience and any good will she may have felt at some point. She was no longer free with her aid or a willing participant in their experiments.
Each act of defiance was a scouting mission, every detail of her interactions noted and compiled for when it was time to leave, should that time ever come.
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Setiae has been sitting there for a while, just watching, monitoring her mentally. The voices and thoughts ebbed and flowed. It was overwhelming, but endlessly fascinating. She made a gesture when the elf-looking woman spoke her terms. A door opened and someone stumbled in after being shoved. He was some criminal picked up out of a prison somewhere. Serial didn’t know from where or who he was, and she had no desire to.
“Subject 00102,” she said, “or do you prefer being called something else?” As she spoke, Setiae moved closer to the woman, a peace of equipment in hand. It was actually five small pieces, and the doctor stuck them to her head around the height of her temple, and evenly spaced apart. They would do a continual scan of the subjects brain threw-out the session. She would glean information about blood flow, hormone shifts, neurotransmitter activity, electrical activity, and anything else physically going on with the brain.
“How old are you?”
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"You are familiar with what I am.", the High Priestess noted, as she devoured the criminal's mind before he had a chance to notice her, "Though not entirely. I do eat, after all. However, this is sufficient for now.". Many of the fragments within her were angered at this statement. There were minds among her that felt that someone who had chosen to become part of her of their own free will should have been offered instead of a criminal who'd had no choice. They knew she became more useful to her master the more minds she took into her, and that, while passing minds to Red Tide, as she'd done with the criminal, was good, it would be better still to find more converts willing to serve it. Others felt that the scientist was acting in good faith, that she had done nothing to deserve to be treated as if she had been negligent. Still others were unwilling to accept that the offering had been anything other than another means of gathering information. Everything the criminal was, what he'd done, who he'd been, his past, his prison, was also debated at length as her minds argued over the quality of what had been offered, though the consensus was that it had been offered, and that cooperation, for now, was acceptable.
"I prefer what I am, High Priestess.", she answered. She permitted the adherence of the devices to her head, the consensus being that, while they were not desirable, neither were they harmful, "I discarded my given name in ancient times. In truth, I no longer recall it. ", she stated, "Subject 00102 is a designation your tribe has given me. It is as calling an apple a rose because one knows not to what one refers.", she continued. Anger was the predominant emotion at that statement, though there was also hatred, disgust, and, oddly enough, shame in a few of the minds.
In response to the question of age, "I do not recall precisely how old I am. Time loses significance when the tribe you grew up in is but an ancient memory, and this was true when Adela was the nation all associated with dragon riders. By my nearest estimate, at least ten thousand years has passed between my birth and now.". As the High Priestess spoke, the criminal was made to wait by the door, his eyes blank, like any other puppet. It had always been fascinating to her how puppets, her own of which she referred to as acolytes, never seemed to change once their minds were consumed. They never grew older, they never died of age or disease, but could be killed by the same weapons as they could before being consumed. She had asked, once, before she'd learned to know Red Tide as it knew her, if they were alive or dead. The response she had gotten was one that, even now, as she answered the scientist's questions, many of the minds mulled over. It had been confusing, the answer, and some weren't sure even Red Tide knew what happened to the puppets that made that so, though the fact that it had to do with the greater wyrm's wellbeing and power was abundantly clear. The puppets it had had before they'd met had all ceased functioning and rotted to uselessness when it had been trapped in the temple. After the Collapse, when the oceans became toxic and Red Tide's power had grown, they had become more durable, able to withstand, for a limited time, blows that would kill others of their kind. "I have my own questions. My cooperation, for now, does not depend on answers to them, but I will ask all the same. Your own name and age, if you please?".
The neurotransmitters in her brain responded primarily to the state of mind of her core personality, on the physical plane. The blood flow, hormone shifts, electrical activity, and all else would be heightened, as if she was under extreme stress, but otherwise within the parameters of a normal human. It was on the magical plane that most of the activity happened, though that activity could be picked up in the same way a normal human's thoughts would by a psychic.
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Setaie was a scientist, to gather and analyze data to turn it into knowledge that could be applied to technology or a problem to find a solution or a use, was basically the goal of her entire life. She watched in fascination, as the criminal’s mind was consumed- watched with her mind and her eyes. She knew the neural data would be limited but she could watch the recording in concert with the video recording of this session later - it might give her more. Somewhere nearby, out of the room, but close at hand, more powerful psychics than she were “listening in” on the goings on in her, it, their? mind(s).
Setiae nodded. She was somewhat familiar with what the High Priestess was. “Priestess usually refers to a religious figure - Do you consider yourself the head of a religion, High Priestess?” She was curious. “Do you have goals beyond just consuming minds?”
She watched, for a moment, as the hollowed our man stood by the door. He’d never be allowed to leave this place - same as subject 00102, but for now he was let to live. They had discovered threw experimentation that those empty bodies could still be killed.
Setiae wondered if theirs woman really cared about her at all. Still, telling her her age was of little consequence. “Sixty.”
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"I am, in a sense. I am the bridge between my people, the ones I chose, and their god. They, the god, are known to me as Kata'a Ma'rala. In your language, they are Red Tide. A fitting name for a deadly and many-minded ruler of the oceans.", High Priestess answered. Her gaze, briefly, rested on the puppet. As she was observed and studied, so, too, were her captors. What weapons they preferred. What tactics they used. What their chain of command was. What they hoped to learn about her that was not meant for her ears, discussed, on occasion, by those who hauled the criminals they offered to her from time to time away to be destroyed, or studied, or around those already consumed before they ever arrived at the station. At present, Red Tide was not paying more than cursory attention to the criminal, as it knew its Priestess would share all she knew, but to see the differences in the way its puppets and her acolytes stood, how they moved when no attempt was being made to hide that the minds that had once inhabited them were in those bodies no longer was something that fascinated many of her minds. Red Tide's puppets moved in ways that would be uncomfortable to humans, but got the most speed and power from the least amount of energy spent. Her own acolytes, to a one, moved much as she did, with the practiced grace and smoothness of years spent robbing tombs and evading traps and angry tribesmen. Theirs stood ready to strike, defend, or run at a moment's notice. Hers were more apparently relaxed and at peace.
"I have one goal alone. To serve my god. To consume, for them and those of their kind, is to grow, so I consume so that they may grow. There are those, however, who share my desire to serve. Those, I take into myself as my acolytes. In doing so, my devotion and my usefulness grow, and my acolytes are able to experience their god through me.", she stated when asked about her goals. In truth, she had one other, related goal: To escape this place. She was not permitted to proselytize to the other subjects here. She wished to gather more to serve alongside and within her, something she could not openly do here. But Red Tide wished her to remain, for now, so remain, she would. "To consume is a means to my goal, not a goal in itself. I am no mere beast.". Disgust, indignance, anger, hatred. These flowed freely through her as she spoke the last sentence. This human, too, would try her patience, it seemed.
"Sixty. Your age, I presume? It is not a name, and you do not strike me as one who has need to put purpose before identity. You are young, but you are old, as well.", High Priestess observed. There were flashes of what one of Red Tide's puppets was doing as she spoke. The impossibly loud sounds that passed for music in this modern era, a Pilot being tracked, the shower of water from the sprinklers of some building's fire suppression system. Anger at having been outmaneuvered, however briefly. She knew her god sought to find her, and hoped to consume a Pilot in the bargain. "My mother died twenty years younger than you. What is your calling? Do you have a god at all?", she asked.
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Setiae listened giving her full attention to the woman who sat across the table from her. The room was stark, a table and two chairs all bolted to the floor. She was still observing the now empty victim of the Priestess, he was more in the background of her thoughts.
She nodded. “Yes,” she confirmed, “I’m sixty years young and old, as you astutely surmised. You can call me Doctor Rea.” Which was not her last name but the initials of her last name.” She smiled faintly. “My calling is the same as yours, though I serve a different higher power, I serve and gather and apply knowledge to aid, better, and advance The Dragons - my Lord Dragon,” as they used to be called in the olden days. She liked the romance of antiquity. Though, for her it had not been a choice but an obligation to serve. Sometimes, it wasn’t even her pleasure. Though most of the time she could ignore those facts for the love of the pure science.
Setiae also noted, but didn’t respond outwardly, to the fact that somewhere some pilot being tracked by some being tethered to this woman or her ‘god’ had foiled some plot of theirs. One of the others monitoring the woman’s thoughts had had the sense to report it. That wasn’t was Setiae was here for though.
“Do you know how it is that you’ve managed to live so long? Few species can, naturally.” Properties of longevity were always of interest. “I’m also curious as to how you consume minds and how you’re able to maintain them as individual, independent personalities.” She knew they were, because she could hear them as general background noise, and more clearly when one bubbles up to the surface.
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"Well met, Doctor Rea.", High Priestess stated, "Though I would hardly call those abominations gods. As with much in the present age, dragons have declined and been degraded to the point of near worthlessness. What passes for dragons now pales to near-invisibility when compared to the dragons I once knew.", she continued, contempt and disgust being the chief emotions. "Regardless, they are but one mind controlling one mortal body. Mortal, finite, temporary. Kata'a Ma'rala is an ocean of minds controlling a legion of bodies. Even the ancients, knowing what they faced, could merely contain them for a time. The destruction of the bodies does not destroy the god.", she continued. She, and every mind save the ones who had not existed when dragons were the majestic beings of myth and wonder, despised what dragons had become. Those that were even willing to accept what now passed for dragons as dragons at all, anyway.
As to the question of her longevity, the answer was a simple one. "I yet live because Kata'a Ma'rala does. My life and theirs are as one.", she answered. The question of how she consumed minds, however, was one she could not answer, as she, in truth, did not know. It was another aspect of her existence that was a point of debate among the many minds she was composed of. "Even Kata'a Ma'rala is not certain how, precisely, it works. When they willed themself into being, it would seem they were not granted an instruction booklet.". Humor. "Independent is true enough. The many minds that comprise me are rarely of one mind, as it were, as you no doubt can tell. But individual is only partially true at best. We all have names. Most have chosen to discard them. Some have not. But we are all High Priestess. It is difficult, impossible, perhaps, to maintain true individuality when one is part of a sea of minds which form one being. It is the reason I discarded my given name. To even try to maintain individuality is to war against the tide itself. A losing battle. We do not assimilate, but neither do we remain entirely separate.". Agreement from the majority. It was only the newer minds, those who had not yet fully embraced what they now were, that hated the notion that they were no longer truly individuals. "To speak nothing of the fact that straying too far from unity means we must come to a consensus before we may act. Time is no longer precious to me, but that does not mean there are not times where action must be swift.".
"This place. What is it, and where?", she asked. She wasn't expecting an answer to that one. Many times, she had asked. Many times, she was told she did not need to know. There was little reason for this time to be any different, but she still asked. There was a shift in the criminal's posture as she asked, the blank eyes at odds with the other body language suggesting interest. High Priestess didn't need to be connected to her god to know why. The answer being plainly given here would obviate the need to interrogate or consume the Pilot. He could be allowed to escape and believe he was no longer of interest.
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Well, if she were perfectly frank, which she was usually inclined to be, she would have told the Priestess that she didn’t think the dragons or the, so called, Red Tide were gods. Powerful, long-lived beings, surly... but gods? No. God we’re all powerful all knowing, and as far as she knew neither Red Tide nor Dragons were either.
However, it was contempt that flashed across her features briefly. Dragons were might and majestic, whatever she thought. They were also the saviors of the world, and their sometimes cruel masters. They might only have DIRECT control over one being each, but they neatly controlled essentially all of the population of Aedlios.
Well it was disappointing it - they? didn’t know.
Setiae smiled and shook her head. “I think you know my answer to that question.”
The shift in the criminal’s posture caused Setiae to take note of him. “What are you doing with him?”
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The contempt was infuriating, but understandable. Doctor Rea had never seen her god, nor had she any reference point for how far the abominations parading around as if they were dragons had fallen. Hers was the contempt of one who had seen only a piece of the world, and assumed it to be all the world held, the contempt of one whose knowledge was limited to the point of having no comprehension of just how limited one's knowledge was. She would just have to be shown, it would seem. But not now. She would not do anything drastic until she was ordered to.
"As is typical of your tribe.". Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. "Eventually, I will get my answer. This place will only hold me so long as I choose to stay.", she continued. As the puppet's posture went back to normal, High Priestess noted that, for a brief moment, his legs tensed, as if her god had thought to attack Doctor Rea, then thought better of it. "I am doing nothing with him.", she stated. The consensus, as soon as the question of where she was was deflected, was that the scientist would get her answers and no more when she asked questions. Interestingly enough, her core personality had been inclined to cooperate more fully, in the interest of possibly getting the scientist to slip up and say the wrong thing, but her opinion was in the minority.
For a brief moment, though long enough that she was sure Dr. Rea would notice, she called lightning magic. It was both a test to see if she was under wards and an invitation to be asked to demonstrate her power beyond what she intended to show. When nothing happened, High Priestess asked a question. "Would you like me to immediately provide you with some water?". The question was phrased in such a way as to indicate she had no intention of leaving the room to do so, nor did she intend to have someone else bring it. She was already pooling the water magic necessary as she spoke. Although some minds, including her core, wanted to poison the water, there was no consensus on it, and therefore no toxins would be added. It would be pure, clean water. Trace minerals for taste, but otherwise pure.
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Everyone's reality was shaped by their point of view, and the knowledge they had on hand - the knowledge that fit neatly inside of Setiae's head was much more vast than the average person, but it also wasn't so vast as thousands of minds worth of knowledge. No, she knew that the Priestess was unique, special, in the grand scheme of things. It had also occurred to her Setiae, that the Priestess was to be viewed as not just a thing to be studied, but also an enemy of some kind. Even if enmity was not her goal, the Priestess was a conqueror of sorts, and no dragon nor their rider would ever bend to the will of someone who wished to take them over.
"If they are so great," Setiae said, though there was no malice of hint of her being snide in the remark, "how is it that so few know or have ever even heard of Red Tide or yourself?"
Knowing, somewhat, what she would be up against, Setiae had taken precautions. She'd had some protective wards placed on her - though not knowing the exact extent of the Priestess' powers, there were several layers of blanket protective spells poured over her. Magic, of course, also was not her specialty, but magics was not dissimilar to psyonics, which were her forte.
"I would like to see it yes," regardless of how clean the water looked, Setiae knew better than to try it. It could be anything. She would study it later, stripped down to it's molecules.
"How is it that you access magical energy?," she asked, "I know that magic, not unlike psyonics is... extra-planer," for lack of a better term. They were energies that didn't exist in the physical world, they were not molecules that got excited or cooled down... They were energies that weren't related to the laws of thermodynamics, though it was generally agreed upon that neither psychic or magical energy were not 'made' by people who could manipulate them... just energies that they could alter and moved around.
Just to see her reaction, she added, almost off handed-ly: "That Pilot you're chasing," if he's smart at least, "has probably already called his dragon... and I doubt he knows where you are either." It was a guess, at why she'd be here focused on her and also there, focused on the other... that or, maybe they wanted to catch him in retribution - an eye for an eye. Kidnap a Pilot sense the Pilots had kidnapped Red Tide's Priestess. That made good sense in her mind also. Maybe they really were shaping up to be true enemies.
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"You would be surprised", High Priestess's answer, likewise, was absent of malice or contempt, "How easily the past is lost and the present is hidden, particularly when a culture all but abandons great swathes of the world. I remember watching, from afar, an acolyte of mine lead a dig which found a fishing village made from the stones of a temple I used to live in. It would have been... two, perhaps three thousand years ago. Likewise, the number of their puppets and my acolytes would surprise you. When one does not wish to be found, it is almost trivially easy to hide when one has eyes nearly everywhere.", she stated. Her point was illustrated by memories purposely brought to the fore of other instances where records and sites had been altered to disappear.
With a simple thought, the water magic became physical water, suspended by a form of flux pinning in which the water was held in pace by a much smaller pool of water magic, with the water acting as the superconductor and the magic as the magnetic field. "How is it that you access psionic energy? How is it that energy can normally neither be created nor destroyed?", was the response to the question about how she did it. In truth, she didn't fully understand how it worked, only how to do it. The question had called to mind the training she'd been given all those millenia ago, when her affinity for lightning magic had been discovered, about detaching herself from the mundane world and feeling for the magical. About seeing the shape her magic would take and about feeling the power she'd need to make it. Guiding the energies of the magical world to the mundane, and unleashing it.
In more modern terms, she knew, what she did was take energy from one plane, transfer it to hers, and convert it into the energy or matter she wished it to be. The process, she knew, worked both ways. Matter could become energy, which could then be moved to the magical plane. To make or destroy magical energy, like the creation or destruction of physical energy, was impossible for mortals, as a rule. It was one of the chief laws of thermodynamics, and it applied to magical energy and, she suspected, psychic energy as well. A fundamental fact of the universe. And one her god had violated on at least three occasions in her lifetime. The first was the destruction of a lake, down to the very magical energy that mirrored it on the magical plane, that a tribe that had attacked during the early years of the village she'd founded relied upon for all of their water. No water had collected in that lake for nearly a thousand years as any water that got near it was instantly converted into magical energy and absorbed into the magical plane, as if the destruction of the magical plane's reflection of the lake had erased the very concept of a lake from that spot. The second was the creation of such a lake on a desert island she'd visited. The garden she fed with that lake's water had remained until a human discovered the island. This lead to the third time, when the island once again became a desert island and the human who discovered it was discredited.
The scientist's prodding had no outward reaction from the High Priestess. If the Pilot her god sought did not have the full story, it simply meant more pieces of the puzzle needed to be found. The dragon's arrival would likely mean the loss of ant puppets in the area at the time, but that was of little consequence. More could be made, and easily at that. From her god, however, there was a response.
"Perhaps not, Doctor.", the criminal was made to say, the voice coming from him a combination of many, many more voices than the High Priestess's, "But he will know enough. Many pieces of knowledge may mean nothing taken separately, but a puzzle is made to be combined, not looked at piece by piece. Your species forgets that it is the small clues, the seemingly insignificant details, that add up. A Pilot will be in the best position to know these clues.". The criminal remained silent afterwards. Red Tide had nothing more to say to Dr. Rea, and focus would be needed for the fight ahead.
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“Maybe not,” the clues that were given as instances of being able to hide, were noted and Setiae knows the other psychics monitoring this conversation were taking notes on them, to use as clues to piece together for later - the better to hunt down red tide and their puppets. “Part of the measure of greatness is being known though. To some extent, your numbers cannot help but be contained by the simple fact you hide in the shadows.” She didn’t mean to say they were small in numbers, in fact, she believed the opposite was true... but to be secretive, by default meant not letting everyone into the fold.
Well, she didn’t expect to get a super detailed answer there. The about of knowledge they had in magical energy was about the same as whet they had on psych energy. There was nothing lost in happening. Part of it was physical, in the DNA, that was why psych and magical abilities seemed to run in families, but much of it had nothing at all to do with that. Much of it had to do with how people went about thinking. You couldn’t think in mundane ways if you wanted to be a successful or even useful psychic.
Setiae smiled at the criminal, despite how disconcerting the voice that came out of his mouth was. She’d learned long ago not to give an outward reaction tot hints that made her uncomfortable. “I won’t debit that some of us... people” or perhaps mortals was a better word, “do forget that. You might note though - we are doing the same thing here. Picking out bits of information and piecing together the puzzle.
Some pilots might... but TRIM wasn’t run by Pilots, and few worked on the space station. Besides that she wasn’t particularly concerned that the pilot in question would be captured at all.
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"You asked. I answered.", High Priestess simply stated, as one might an observation of the weather or an insincere compliment uttered for the sake of pleasantries, "What do you do for sport?", she asked, again returning to asking a question every time she gave an answer. This was more of a personal curiosity, for a given definition. A number of her minds, to include what could (somewhat ambiguously) be argued to be her core, found the changes and similarities of human pastimes throughout the millennia to be a subject of great interest. It was always fascinating to see humans reinventing ways to do the same basic things, and repurposing their instincts and drives in new, yet familiar, if one removed the trappings of new technologies, ways.
Rehearsing for one's role as a parent, for example, had gone from literally being trained in how to hold and care for a child, to being given dolls and poppets to be stand-ins for children, to being given a device with a virtual creature in it and scored on how long it lived (High Priestess had kept hers alive for nearly a century, using her own electrical magic to keep the batteries charged, until the ovoid device physically stopped working and no parts were made that could fix it. It had helped comfort her for the loss of her garden, but was enjoyable on a different level, particularly to the minds that enjoyed caring for things, as well), to entire computer programs being written to simulate child-rearing, back to dolls (albeit dolls designed to mimic the genuine article so perfectly that some of the more... conservative... parents found the physical accuracy to be offensive, and other far less conservative ones simply found the crying to be annoying, but wouldn't have it any other way as they felt it made for excellent teenage birth control), and she was curious to see what the new method was.
Sports (a term High Priestess was still getting used to, as, to many of her minds, that struck her as silly as a modern-day person calling a group of activities "funs".) were another thing that often both changed and remained the same simultaneously. High Priestess could never quite get over how many different variations of "get the ball/disc from this side of the field to that side" humans could come up with. Even simply playing with balls changed over the millennia. In her time, it was a simple game, one humans today called the equally-simple name of "catch". Many sports seemed to have arisen out of combat training for methods of war that had fallen into disuse, such as wrestling, while others seemed to have come purely from the minds of people who were bored. It was all fascinating, and all of those things were being batted about her minds as she asked the question.
The criminal puppet was made to utter four words only in response to the Doctor's question: "So it would seem.". Images of a spell, made to resemble a waterjet cutter, cutting through the floor of the building shortly followed the words, along with a sense of both fury and calm confidence. Things were not going to the original plan, she knew, as surely as she knew that no plan survives enemy contact, but it had not been a defeat. The focus of the assault had shifted, and Red Tide seemed to intentionally prevent the transfer of the knowledge of what, precisely, it had shifted *to*, as if to show those listening in, as it were, only what they wanted them to see. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to have part of her god suddenly partitioned like that, but it was needful. It didn't stop a debate among her minds about simply breaking out of wherever she was being held, Red Tide's orders to stay and find out where she was first be damned. The argument was quickly quelled by a subconscious rebuke by Red Tide, a proverbial yank on the bite collar, as a reminder to fall in line.
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"Me personally?" Setiae shrugged, "For sport? I don't play sports, if that's what you mean. If you mean what do I do when I want to have a good time and enjoy myself: I like to have a drink, dance, and fuck. There's not much else I do for entertainment besides reading." She attended a lot of high cast social bullshit, and you'd never know to look at her at one of those parties, but she found them boring and predictable.
"I've never heard red tide referred to as Kata'a Ma'rala before, can you give me some information on the name and how it connects to your god?" She indulged the Priestess by referring to this being as her god.
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Ah, dancing, drinking, and fucking. Though the dances and the drink changed over the millenia, and, on occasion, new ways of fucking arose, they were three facets of humanity that never truly changed. Wherever there was human civilisation, there was dance, there was drink, and there was sex. Reading was another activity in the 'stays the same despite ever changing' category of activities. Though the activity itself never changed, the stories were never the same, beyond using the same themes and some of the same artistic shorthand. If you could imagine it, there was a book or an article where it had been written about from all concerned perspectives. High Priestess had, for a time, kept a collection of stories she found particularly interesting, but that collection had been lost over the years.
"You won't hear that name from any save myself.", High Priestess responded, "It is of my native tongue, one which had not been spoken in millenia when the dragons of old were at their peak. There are no others, save Kata'a Ma'rala, who would speak it. But for me, the language would be dead.", she continued, a faint note of sadness in her tone, "The name, I believe, comes from the tides of red plant creatures -you would know them as algae- which collect on some beaches, Highly toxic, to the point where beaches have been closed because of them. They are...". Another subconscious rebuke. What she had been about to say was not to be uttered or even thought of. "A symbol of the ocean's deadliness. The name, in its original tongue, was given long before my people came to power. There is some ancient mythology connected to it, but little, if any, of it remains.", she finished, creating and sipping some water before speaking again.
"Have you ever left the planet's surface?", she asked. Twenty Questions, humans called the game. It would take many more than twenty, but time was immaterial to her. While her god, a jealous one, grew tired of subtlety in retrieving what was theirs and visiting their wrath upon those who had taken her, High Priestess was generally more patient (for a given definition), willing to, when her minds weren't debating whether or not anything of value was to be gained at all, play the long game. That meant innocuous questions meant to highlight or eliminate possibilities.
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There was something there... that pause was telling. She noted that information as important, and to be looked into carefully, later. "Tell me about your people, from before you became High Priestess." That was so open ended... she hoped that the woman might give her something. Dead languages made things difficult, but not necessarily impossible.
Oh, that was clever. Good thing Setiae was on her guard already, and paying careful attention. "I have been," she answered, "most Pilots go off world from time to time for training. Have you been off world? Does your god desire to go off world?"
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"A people, Doctor, are not a thing to be summed up in a single answer. If you truly wish to know where I come from, we will be here for quite some time indeed, and your years will be gone before you ever achieve such knowledge.", High Priestess responded, "It will cost you a great deal, as well, if you wish to attain that knowledge. For now, a summary, though it may be as trying to ascertain the depth and content of an ocean by skimming a few scant droplets from a tributary flowing into it, will have to suffice.", she continued, pointedly calling to mind the layout of the hallway her cell was in with several of her minds, each noting different sets of features prominently, and none revealing that she actually knew much more of her prison's layout than she wished to let on.
"We were a simple people, by the standards of the present era.", High Priestess explained, "As far as tribes go, we were one of the larger of our world, but there were several larger. Our alliances were maintained by bartering for supplies and by marriage. I myself was to decorate my brother's arm until some son of a chief of a larger village came looking for a decoration to barter some... dowry, I believe the nobility of the Age of Castles called it... for. We hunted and grew our food, built our simple huts, and danced, drank, and fucked for sport. Our men ruled while our women adorned them like so many fur vests.". Her tone, at the mention of women being seen as decorations, bordered on venomous, "Shamans, as mages were known then, got better treatment for their stations, but the men were still men and the women still women. As the chief's daughter, my being a shaman meant only that I commanded a higher dowry and got to be an "honored" fur vest. For now, you need not know more.", she finished. If they wanted more, she would need more. More information on her whereabouts. Willing acolytes instead of unwilling puppets. Other concessions they were unlikely to make. "What is your favorite book?", she asked.
Off-world trips were regular for the ruling class. Meaning the exoduses had not been the only major space travel. For offworld trips to be so routine, even for only the elite, meant comparatively cheap, safe space travel and permanent habitations offworld. For it to be referred to as off world and not in orbit meant that such trips likely left the planet's gravitational sphere of influence. This also meant it wasn't unreasonable for a prison to be built and maintained offworld. The information was filed away for later consideration. That her interrogator was a doctor and not an officer suggested (well, confirmed) some form of research installation, which meant regular supplies of both sustenance and equipment. The information was also filed away for further consideration. "I have. Many times, in fact. I witnessed the exodus of those who would come to be called the Edani. Went with them, as well, at Kata'a Ma'rala's command. I have been aboard both the Cancer and the Libra, and am still, in fact, in both places, in a manner of speaking.", she answered, "The other question's answer is not so cheap. I'm afraid you cannot afford it, unless you are willing to offer something of irrefusable value. As I only gave one answer, I shall ask but one question: What is the weather like today?". Another probing question. She had no access to weather reports of any kind. The weather would tell her nothing. By itself.
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"I wasn't expecting a historical account of where you lived," Setiae replied. She listened to what the Priestess did tell her about the people she'd belonged to originally. It was interesting. Learning her origin story might be useful. It was part of the story of how she came to be a part of red tide, after all. It had to have happened in her first life time.
"To see and experience so much," Setiae said, though she didn't know where that thought was going. It was perhaps just an expression of a bit of awe at the thought.
Setiae smiled, politely, and shook her head in the negative. "I already told you, you don't need to know where you are." It was a clever way to, maybe, narrow down where she was being held. "I can do without the answer to that question. Or you can ask me a different question."
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"To see and experience so much."
It wasn't a whole lot. In the grand scheme of things, it may even have been meaningless. But such thoughtless utterances were, if used correctly, pathways. Handholds. It was not something thought so much as... felt? Perhaps? But the information was filed away all the same. It was of such thoughts that eternities were born, but a hasty action could just as easily seal such a future away irreparably. For now, nothing was said, as it was clear the remark was not so much aimed at her as thought aloud.
"I shall ask another.", High Priestess stated. In truth, her question had been answered by the declaration, and a useful bonus gained in the bargain: The doctor was not used to spontaneous prevarication. She was careful with her words, sure enough, but lies were not a natural thing to her, and it showed in the refusal to answer. By responding in such a reassertion that High Priestess need not know where she was, the doctor had inadvertently revealed that the true answer to the question would have given the information away, either by the weather being a pattern unique (or at least common enough to be well known) to the location, or by there being no weather to report. "Is it morning or evening? I have not seen a sunrise or sunset in overlong.", she asked. A throwaway question, one meant to obfuscate. No answer was expected, nor was any needed, but there was always the possibility that the doctor would slip again. In the mean time, however, most of her minds diverted themselves by attempting to predict the doctor's next question.
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Setaie smiled, politely, but not genuinely. She could lie, mostly to herself, but she didn't usually have to. She was a scientist, she depended on facts and clear cut logic.
"Right now?" she said, instead, "I'm afraid I've forgotten my watch. I don't rightly know." Which was a lie, she knew the approximate time, and also a suggestion that she wasn't going to let the Priestess know the time of day, anyway.
"In how long?" she asked in return, even though she hadn't answered the quid pro quo. "I mean... how long sense you last saw a sunrise or set?" Had it been very long, or just sense her capture? That was a curiosity she might assuage for free.
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Clearly a lie, in this age where even those living in poverty could look out a window to know the approximate time of day. One not disguised very well, but perhaps not meant to be. The doctor had no intention of sharing the time of day, it seemed. 'Or', one of her minds, a spacer by former trade, reminded her, 'she genuinely does not know. Time of day in space is arbitrary, as is time of day underground. If we are in either type of location, it may very well be that she has no way of keeping time without a watch.'. Either way, it was something to consider. Everything the doctor said would be mulled over, and was, in fact, by her multitude of minds.
"Perhaps months, perhaps years. Perhaps even decades or centuries.". It was a non-answer, and that was intentional. The good doctor had broken the rules, and none of her minds, at this point, felt enough goodwill to indulge her. It had been the day before her capture, but that was something High Priestess had no intention of revealing for free. "Perhaps you might be willing to find your watch and my sense of time might find itself precise enough to answer in the intervening time.", she suggested, smiling in a way more suggestive of malice than good humor, "Or perhaps we are done with our interview and you shall have to call on me another day, doctor. One's patience has limits, and I find myself distressingly late for communion and prayer.". As she spoke, calculations, spread out across her minds, were made for a particular bit of offensive magic favored by her god. There was a chance the doctor would insist on continuing to question her without answering any more questions. The spell would, unless the doctor was a sociopath with no sense of self-preservation, put paid to that and illustrate the pointlessness of attempting to force her to do so, but the calculations were kept beneath the surface, hidden among the clutter of thousands of minds, in order to give the two listening in as little time to prepare as possible.
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Saetie smiled and stood up, slipping her hands into her pockets. “I think we’re done here for now,” she said, “do enjoy the rest of your stay.”
She looked at the puppet - the criminal sacrificed to the priestess to gain her temporary favor. She watched him carefully as she moved out the door. The door locked behind her and the room staid under guard. Later, the puppet would be taken, blindfolded, from the room and placed in a solitary cell with no windows.
For now, Saetie has gleaned much. Not enough, but it was a start. Too bad they didn’t want her to dissect the Priestess and see what made her tick. She was wondering though what might the physical implications of her long life be.
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The puppet was not made to make a move against the doctor as she left. There was no reason to do so, and it suited Red Tide's purposes for the encounter to be taken to its logical conclusion. When the puppet was eventually taken from the room, the blindfold was allowed to be tied on, rather passively, in fact, as if the puppet was being ignored, though this could not be further from the truth. Red Tide, viewing the area on the magical plane, took detailed mental note of the route taken, everything in the cells along the route, how often guards were passed, and more as its puppet was taken to the cell, and, once within, the puppet was made to continue to observe. Everyone who passed by, everything in the nearby cells, proximity to other active puppets, even, little as it was, what could be heard through the door to the cell.
As soon as the doctor left, High Priestess focused on what she had learned, beneath the surface in case others were listening. One advantage to being made up of so many minds was that each could be given a different thing to process and finding even a significant part of the whole would be as trying to look at every grain of sand on a beach in fine detail at once. It was inevitable, if she was still under psychic observation, that some of what she was mulling over would be noticed, just as one might pick up and examine a few of those grains of sand, but the bulk would go unexamined, as next to none, in her experience, were foolish or powerful enough to attempt to read all her minds at once.