The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha

"Nyar nyar, now you know how it feels." I stuck my tongue out at her, to which she blinked, and a second later couldn"t help but chuckle.

"f.u.c.k, Mom. We all start out the same as a Rantha, right?" I nodded calmly. "And you don"t have a preincarnation?"

"No, I got spun up out of pure ether and soulstuff by our progenitor. First of my line. It"s why none of you inherit my Talent and are based on your presouls."

"I was an undead super-tech robot." Ronnie shuddered despite herself. "Okay, I am not going into the souldive until I"m Seventeen, promise. Now, tell me why you did this."

"Well, right now that Tekron is basically a static waveform existing in the Akasha, functionally non-finite and immortal. It"s a nascent G.o.d who is going to wake up as soon as you plug into it, since it is you. You"re effectively going to be its eyes and ears in the mortal world, your Curseline leading right back to it, and it"s going to start growing as it starts taking in data on new levels and types beyond what it was capable of before."

She stared at me. "You"re serious."

"d.a.m.n right I am."

"And you did this..." She held up a finger, thinking, then swore. "Can I take knowledge from it?"

"YOU... are it. Your whole Curseline is connected to it via you. Its knowledge is going to be wide open to you, and via your Curse, through your kids."

She stared at me, then swallowed and licked her lips. "I"ll have access to Tekron tech?"

"I don"t know why you"d refuse to give it to yourself..."

"Holy s.h.i.t, Mom."

I flashed a smile. "I is a clever b.i.t.c.h, is I?"

"Mitharinnabucket." Ronnie"s dark eyes, so nicely matching her brown hair, were almost glowing. "Knowing that"s all waiting for me..."

"It"ll drive you right to Seventeen, and make it deuced hard to wait that long," I sighed for her.

"d.a.m.n." She shuddered, that bright shiny ball of light at the end of the tunnel screaming to her Talent. "I am so glad you waited until I was a Ten to tell me this."

"If it required a save to stop you souldiving just to touch that data early, I figured it was at least a 30. You wouldn"t really be you right now if you did it early."

She grimaced. "You"re probably right..." She took a deep breath. "Okay, you"ve had time to think this through more than me. What are the implications?"

"It"s a metaphysical ent.i.ty. You and your Curseline are its eyes, ears, and voices. It can take in faith and send it back."

Her lips pursed for a moment, then her jaw dropped. "We"re priestesses?!" she exclaimed in disbelief.

"You can"t Cast. But you can store the power to Cast for those who can, and you"re their conduit to a Divinity. Straight download, don"t need to contemplate your navel in a vivic flame to charge up your Matrix."

"f.u.c.k me," she whispered, staring at me.

"Of course, you"ve got to build your congregation, but that shouldn"t be too hard." My smile was absolutely predatory. "The Mekkers have been making noise about the spirit of the machine for millennia, which is likely some Mythos creature manipulating their poor steel wires..."

Ronnie leaned forwards. "And it is the spirit of a machine..."

"A G.o.d-machine!"

Her smile was every bit as deadly as mine. "f.u.c.king Mekkers! I"m going to take them over with their very own fake religion!"

A Hag"s laugh is plenty d.a.m.n wicked. I imagine even a 90% cyberized mekker would have shivered to hear us right about now.

We quieted down with a t.i.tter or six, wiping away the tears at the sheer wonderful irony. "You are truly a d.a.m.n wicked b.i.t.c.h," she complimented me, hee-heeing with more glee.

"Mekkers bring out my best," I agreed nastily, matching her chortles.

Then she paused as she took the next step, and her eyes popped wide. "Wait, that"s taking over an established religion. And we"ll be able to actually answer prayers..."

I nodded somberly. "You"re going to crash the Cult of Humanity."

Her breath hissed out. "That"s a direct challenge to the Emperor. The Cult is so big... is that wise?"

"No and yes. No, it turns the conflict into a religious one. Yes, because a religious fight is one he"ll lose, because the priests of the Cult can"t wield magic. They"re just lip service psions, if that, and there"s very little true faith actually there."

"And the ones with true faith are the ones who will be the easiest to lure away." She inhaled again. This was a whole thing about faith, and Religion wasn"t R&D... except when you were covering new theological ground, an absolute interest of a certain undead robot. "How... how can it gather faith? The Warp G.o.ds will interdict it..."

"Your Curseline comes from me. So do those of all your sisters. Anywhere a Rantha walks, true faith can be gathered by our Curses and conveyed to you and yours." I made a weird smile. "We"re born to be the Good Witches, you know."

"You turned all the Ranthas into potential priestesses for an immortal akashic robot G.o.d?"

"Hey, its avatar is right in front of me, with all these emotion things it has no experience with. I think I have a good idea how said robot is going to end up."

She put her hands to her head, looking at the table. "Dammit! I thought I was a big thinker. Mom, that is freaking terrifying..."

"Well, look at it this way. You"re the nadir of two ma.s.sive, imposing forces of this universe: Faith and Artifice. Both of those are powers of non-psions."

"The complete opposite of the Warp G.o.ds and the Emperor," she agreed, nodding, almost shuddering. "Okay, I see why only I can do this, and not you. But Grandmother is in the Warp, and according to you and everyone she"s freaking powerful... why can"t she be the G.o.d?"

"And stick me in the pontiff"s chair?" I rolled my eyes, and she grinned. "Because she"s just another one of us, doofus. Sure, she"s further down the road, but she can"t do anything we can"t do. Can you grant prayers? Even with a Mark IV Vajra?"

"No..." she sighed.

"All we can do is give the raw energy to those who can Cast, which they can"t tap right now without us. We"re their Matrices. Funnily enough, we"re really, really high capacity Matrices, moreso then any non-Rantha Forsaken... but guess what? If the power they hold is pure enough, any Null could do the same thing."

She blinked. "And a Source just has to stand around and their Mana Matrix will fill..."

"Nulls always have to do it the hard way... except for a certain avatar and her Curseline hooked into a dispenser of Faith energy..."

She closed her eyes, sighing again. I watched her eyelids twitching as she calculated stuff out furiously.

They popped open again. "The Tekrons..."

"Potentially you"ll gain enough insight into them to wipe them... or elevate them, who knows? There are equal arguments to be made either way. After all, Faith is a limited resource, and compet.i.tion for worshippers is not something you want to encourage if there"s multiple Tekrons wanting to climb the metaphysical ladder to higher states of being..."

"But a.s.similating them into one..."

"Destroys their individuality, if they have it. Like I said, a complex decision, especially when dealing with an artificial race empowered by negative energy..."

"I heard that having Tekrons around reduces Dead Walking events..."

"Amazing how something draining all that excess negative energy doesn"t leave it around to animate the dead, unless there"s a freaking lot of it."

"So at the very least, I might be able to negotiate with them."

"Well, I certainly can"t." I thbbbbed for emphasis. "b.l.o.o.d.y lucky you were a renegade and still had the capacity to set yourself onto a self-destruct course that could lead to apotheosis. Most of the Tekrons have already devolved below the threshold."

Ronnie sat back, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose. "Sounds so d.a.m.n weird. Oh... this also sounds like a job that could last as long as Tek exists..."

"Yeah, funny how Hags have no maximum age and just keep going and going. It"s like we were made for this d.a.m.n s.h.i.t."

"Right?!" She gave me That Face, and we clinked air drinks. "It"s like someone... dammit!" She hit the table again.

I looked up at the ceiling. "You know, your Grandmother is, just like us, a Mithar devotee. The odds she is not chatting Him up is statistically Not There. So, who do you suppose is responsible for the design of us Post-Curse Rantha Hags that are definitely not really human Hagchildren anymore?"

"We"re pieces on Mithar"s chessboard," she groaned.

I held up a finger. "Ah, ah, ah." I waggled it at her, shaking my head.

"Ah, c.r.a.p. Nulls. He can"t predict us. He"s... trusting us?"

"Helps that He probably designed us. All of us coming from the same starting point is a ma.s.sive uniting factor. Suborning the Hag Curse..." I had to chuckle despite myself, and she got it, and laughed too. What Dark powers were seething over what Mithar had arranged?

"So, so..." she waved her hand at me eagerly. "Can we upgrade?" I lifted an eyebrow. "To ExLite, to Exemplar? I know all my girls are gonna be groaning at the sheer unfairness of having two points less in all Stats then me..."

"I"m pretty sure the only reason I"m an ExLite is because of Mithar"s involvement. Exemplars come from all the Luck and Fate getting together and having puppykittens. It"s possible to take the power from an Exemplar, like Mom"s Hagmom did, but just straight evolving to it?" I inhaled. "I"m pretty sure anyone and everything can improve to Advanced, it"s just a basic template. But we won"t know until someone who is not there gets up there and pushes that lever over."

"Fifteen for a Human?" she wondered.

I nodded. "That"s where I"d bet, based on when we fought those elite drow in Bloodheart. Twenty is Eternal, after all. One of the Void Brothers should be able to get there soon enough, and then confirm for everyone."

"Another goal on the Road to Eternity."

"Funny it"s not something you hear about from the Mentats and the like. Like it"s a secret of the uppermost ranks of humanity. Can"t have all those people who might be madmen chasing after Eternity, after all. They might turn to the Warp to get there faster, or something."

"Like the Warp is going to let them be Eternal without them being slaves," she snorted, and shook her head. "I"m going to be fuming how you turned me into Jesus Christ with a Soulsword in my head for a long time, you know."

"Don"t forget your slide rule." I grinned, and we air-tinked again.

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I advanced to Fourteen on the impetus of opening up the path to a Rantha G.o.d. More technology started to open up as a few courses of investigation made 67.914223-degree turns, and Briggs began to fine-tune our production facilities to start using it.

Fifteen was coming. I just had to save a few more worlds or something.