Qidravem

§ 2021-01-13 01:53:21

[01:57] The perceptive jump was sudden and jarring, with only the vaguest smear of sensation between states to suggest a transition. Gravity lurched from below to beside him, nearly tipping his perception into nausea. The supportive restraints of the Torunyema evaporated. The room's lights had spontaneously rearranged and it had become smaller. A Nayabaru appeared as a grotesque, hovering shadow in the background and Valcen's paws were suddenly naked, his eyes clear.

Past the disorientation, an awareness snapped into place – they've made a copy of me. Valcen had explained this was how it would be – subjectively, Baishar would go from being copied to the first conscious gasps of his clone.

The rational knowledge did nothing to pave over the sense of violation – it felt too soon. It was an absurd emotion; he had no means of telling how much time had passed, other than that Valcen-za had not aged in a notable way. That gave a wiggle room of months, possibly even two years.

But it felt like an instant and no knowledge could take the feeling away from him.

When the initial sense of the shift faded, a different poison overwhelmed his cognition: Everything was wrong. His body was wrong. His limbs were wrong. The colour of things was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, made worse for how subtle it was, how hidden in the details, like a parasite worming its way through his very existence.

All sounds were wrong and a voice at once familiar and alien said: "Baishar?"

His gut howled: No. Not Baishar. Far too wrong to be Baishar.

§ 2021-01-14 01:18:48

[01:18] The Torunyema's gentle embrace suddenly vanished, and the world went sideways.

The discontinuity was jarring, nauseating. What just happened? For a moment, the thought of him slipping out of the Torunyema wrenched at his gut. Did I get damaged? But no, he couldn't have just slipped out of the Torunyema; his thoughts felt intact. This was the wrong room; Valcen wasn't wearing his gloves, it didn't make—

Suddenly, it made sense. They'd made a copy of him. The realization gnawed at his gut. Had something happened? Was his first incarnation dead, so soon? How much time had just passed in the blink of an eye? Months? Years? Valcen-za was still alive, so it couldn't have been too long.

What happened?

His eyes sought out Valcen's, confused. "Sinu—?" His throat closed around the word, choking it off. This isn't my voice. His eyes squeezed shut. Breathe. Deep breaths, inhale, exhale. His tongue ran along unfamiliar teeth. Everything was wrong, the colors were wrong, the sounds were wrong, his body was wrong.

[01:19] After long moments, his eyes opened again, finding Valcen-za; a silent plea in his gaze. Please help. Please make the wrongness go away. I know you can; you can do anything.

[01:47] Even his muscles didn't quite want to work correctly; any motion he made felt corrupted, as though it didn't go far enough or the angle was wrong. There was no way he would be able to walk.

A dull pain at the back of his skull gradually crystallised out of the chaos, gnawing at his senses like a fresh wound. No doubt it was exactly that – a missing patch of feathers, a hole in a skull that was now his, a spot where the qidravem had been inserted and loaded with Baishar's identity.

They would have replaced the bone with something of equal consistency and hardness, but it would still take a while for his skin to heal back over the coin-sized wound. It would hurt, then itch, then gradually return to normal. He'd witnessed the process in Valcen-sha.

He hadn't witnessed this wrongness in Valcen-sha. Either Valcen's new body had been a better fit for him, or – and this was not unlikely – Valcen had simply steeled himself for it better, anticipated it, managed to deal with it in the same way he dealt with all other intolerable assaults on his psyche.

"Don't panic," Valcen-za was saying in Naya and a soothing voice. The Nayabaru nearby gradually resolved in Baishar's alien perception as Probably Tanak. Tanak would indeed want them to speak Naya. "You'll adapt to your new body in over the next couple of paro. The worst of it should fade in about one paparo, even."

Valcen-za eased himself closer to Baishar's copy, eclipsing the view behind him, including – mercifully – Tanak, and curled himself loosely around his muzzle, running his forepaws through a young kavkem mane. With his mentor this close, it became clear that this clone was smaller than Baishar had been – younger. Valcen-za was not quite a giant, but he was an imposing presence, regardless.

The touch crept through him as dysphoria and pleasure, both. This body wasn't used to being touched yet and the skin holding his feathers reacted to the fingers gently fussing through them with an electric intensity.

§ 2021-01-16 22:44:16

[22:44] It took a moment for him to parse the words, the shift in language melding with the disorientation and the dull, throbbing pain in the back of his skull. Don't panic. The enormous, indistinct Nayabaru-shaped thing resolved into Probably Tanak. He was probably amusing himself with some perverse thought about the situation, a kavkem with its brains scooped out and replaced with a piece of metal.

Valcen's words were reassuring, though the thought of enduring this wrongness for even a paro was nauseating. The worst will be over soon. Valcen-sha had endured it, and while his mental fortitude was nothing compared to Valcen's, it gave him some hope.

Valcen drew close around him, thankfully eclipsing the Nayabaru from view. Though it was alarming how large everything was. How old was this child's body? How long was the gap in his memory? Was Ryrha, or what was left of her, still alive? Most likely — 'za was, after all, and the Nayabaru were excellent at keeping kavkema alive.

There was a shudder and a soft whimper as Valcen's fingers brushed through his mane, eyes squeezing shut. An intense pleasure jolted through him, reminiscent of the Torunyema's grasp, but with a distinct wrongness to it all, still flooding through everything. It was tempting to lose himself to it, to forget all that he had ever been, to be whoever he was now.

But he couldn't. Valcen wouldn't want him to. If Valcen wanted to transform him into someone else, he could do so with tremendous ease. Valcen wanted him; he wanted Baishar; he'd made Baishar into the thing he wanted. Now he was here, forged into a new body — the first of many. The worst would pass; a few paro was not that long in comparison to eternity.

[00:48] It was remarkable anything was working at all. Valcen had tried to explain it to Baishar once – all the connections that had to work, everything that was usually unique in a host body, and how even these genetically engineered vessels had enough variation that a qidravem needed to be flexible in its interface, in turn.

But he could move. He could see, taste, touch and hear. That it all tasted foreign was objectively a small price to pay – but as with all ailments, it was easier to consider them in theory than it was to endure them in practise.

"Tell me what you're feeling," Valcen was prompting him, still soothingly fussing with his feathers. It was only part nurture, that much Baishar knew – the main motivation was surely Valcen's sense of scientific curiosity. Valcen-za in particular had never experienced this waking into a qidravem, but he would have discussed it in-depth with Valcen-sha. But how different was Baishar's experience?

With Valcen's attention came a thought: Would the wrongness fade faster the more he used his new body? Was the physical attention there to draw him further into this new shell, bind him to it more comfortably more quickly?

[01:25] The gentle command dug claws into his gut; the thought of describing it all was overwhelming. He tried to whisper something, but no words came out. A few laborious moments later, he managed a very soft, "Everything feels wrong."

It wasn't helpful; he knew it wasn't helpful. But it was a start, at least, a foothold. Maybe he could take it one step at a time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. One thought crystallized before all the others. "My voice isn't mine." It was jarring to hear what he sounded like. "The colors... the sounds... your touch... it's all wrong." His breath caught in his throat, tears forming around his eyes. "This isn't me. I— I want to go back. I want my body back."

It was a ludicrous wish. He knew it was. If he was here, it meant his body was gone; he wasn't going to get it back. It was completely unhelpful to make such a request. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

[02:03] Valcen-za closed his eyes, leant down and rested the side of his muzzle against Baishar's face for a few seconds of radiated calm, then drew back just enough to lick lightly at the feathers of his face. "You're allowed to feel crummy," he assured Baishar, the voice still an eerie disconnect to what he ought to sound like, calling its sincerity into question in the most fundamental possible way – was this all an illusion? If he was indeed running in a qidravem, they could just be feeding in fake sensory data. But to what end? Punishment? Even the Nayabaru believed in applying punishment strictly to the consciousness that committed the crime and Baishar had no recollection of upsetting them in a way that hadn't been otherwise resolved in the past.

"In a few paro, you'll look back on this moment with some wonder at your own reactions. You'll feel at home in your body, you'll likely feel better than you ever remember feeling before, and the thought of rejecting it then will be alien to you. Please just hang on," Valcen-za encouraged. Not that there was any other choice – the Nayabaru in the room made death an impossible escape.

[02:30] The wrongness in Valcen's voice didn't help matters. For a brief, terrifying moment, the entire world threatened to fall apart. How did he know this was real? How did he know they weren't just feeding fake senses into his qidravem? Could it all be illusory? Why? To punish him? What had he done wrong? To extract information? Surely the Karesejat knew that Valcen wouldn't share his plans with even his loyal assistant; surely she knew he wasn't so careless.

And if they wanted to feed him fake sensory data, surely they could do a better job of it.

Baishar gradually curled in on himself; the motions felt awkward and misshapen. For long moments, he was simply breathing, hiding in Valcen's shadow, under his master's protection. Eventually, once he'd calmed down a little, he quietly observed: "I don't remember 'sha having this much trouble."

... Which raised another question. He opened his eyes again, scanning what he could see of the room, trying to ignore the queasiness of the mismatched colors. "...Where is 'sha?" There was worry in his voice; had something happened? Why was only 'za here?

[02:49] "Threadwielders are used to constantly switching out sensory perception," Valcen reminded, gently. "I'm reasonably sure it was no less jarring a transition for him than for you, but he weathered it in the Threadwielders style," Valcen presumed.

He glanced to Tanak for a moment as though there was something of importance to be found in the Nayabaru's body language. The lapse of attention lasted only a few seconds and returned to Baishar at full strength as it passed.

"Valcen-sha and Baishar-za are out of Katal at the moment," Valcen-za explained. "They've been gone approximately eight days. We have some alien visitors they've gone to meet, but as they're not quite back yet... there are complications. While my status is that both are currently doing well, it's perhaps best not to wait for them."

[03:21] Ah, of course. It made sense that Valcen was very much used to this; he had jumped from Threadwielder to kavkem, so from kavkem to kavkem couldn't be much worse. How did one get used to this? Living long enough to outlive kavkema, to outlive entire species even. Echoes of a half-forgotten creed flitted through his mind — We shed our souls like dead skin.

This was what he'd sought in that prison cell, a memory that already felt like lifetimes ago. One more step that felt like he'd been torn to shreds. He'd find a way to put himself together again, to find out all over again what being Baishar meant. This time, though, he had a foundation harder than bedrock — he was Valcen's assistant. That was the core of it; so long as he clung to that, he could weather any storm.

The response to his other question hit him like an avalanche — one word in particular. "Baishar... -za..." he repeated softly, dumbfounded. Baishar-za. He closed his eyes, tuning out the world, trying to come to terms with that.

Valcen-sha and Baishar-za were out of Katal. He was... he was two people. Like Valcen. Baishar-za, the person he was before, just minutes ago from his own perspective. And now, Baishar-sha, this, this body that felt wrong all over. Though, it did feel like perhaps it was starting to subside a little; the edges of the wrongness were slightly less sharp.

Why? How? Out of Katal? Alien visitors? Would they come back? What would happen when they did? How would he react? How would either of him react? He didn't know. The implications were too much for him.

[03:32] Valcen-za hummed gently and soothingly in response to the implicit query, his only response for long seconds. His hands ran through Baishar's feathers, the sensation subtly and gradually losing its dysphoric quality, although the pleasure of it remained. "Baishar-za," he confirmed. "And you are Baishar-sha, because I needed my assistant," he purred down at Baishar affectionately.