Ravens of Eternity

225 The Patriarch Falls, Pt Azrael’s heart thumped heavily in her chest. The sheer weight of that promise fell heavily on her, and she feared failure. She feared that she was unable to undo the damage, and that her skills were beyond inadequate for the task.

She feared that the Prophets would forever be stuck in limbo, as broken toys created by an egomaniacal madman.

But she shook those doubts aside and continued on. She told herself that if she didn’t take care of them, no-one would. The Federation would no doubt prefer to purge them rather than heal them.

The drone arm that was working on Callie’s memories alerted Azrael, even as she swapped out another set of genetic code. It rang out and demanded her immediate and undivided attention.

So she reached over to her side and slid over the main terminal in front of her once again. She opened up the histogram filled with all of Callie’s memories, and skimmed past many blocks of raw data.

As she went, she noted just how many had been rewritten and reshaped. And just how little was Callie’s own memories. Her heart thumped deeply when she realized that more than 90% of her memories were manufactured and those were interwoven so deeply into her psyche.

They were moments in time that were injected into her mind – images of Father as he lectured his will, his command, his ineffability. They were often the brightest memories, where Father was often bathed in some kind of purifying light, or serene waters.

Worse, they were the most reinforced.

With every version, their memories were reuploaded to their new body’s mind. At the same time, Father laid down another set of conditioning to help reinforce the ones buried deep in older memories.

.....

Layers and layers of memories and conditioning laid on top of each other. They strengthened each other, and kept the Prophet’s minds “strong”.

Azrael instantly realized that she wasn’t going to be able to undo a great majority of it, and that the best she could accomplish was peel away and remove any reinforcing layers. By weakening the memories imposed onto Callie, she had a chance at redefining herself.

But the damage couldn’t be undone. She would have to live with it forever. Azrael couldn’t restore memories that never existed.

No-one could.

Pain struck her chest the moment she came to the memories she was initially alerted about. These were the most obscured of all the others, and the shadows were heavily reinforced.

She peeled back the layers with shaky hands as her heart thundered in her chest.

People do this to themselves, she realized, when they’ve experienced pain too deep to continue enduring... So why would he do this to her on purpose?

And as she peeled them away, memories from every version of Callie began to surface. Memories too terrible to speak.

Tears began to well in Azrael’s eyes as she peeled back more and more of the obscurities. And more and more of those memories rose up. They turned to unending streams when she realized they went far back to the beginning, when Callie was first taken.

When Callie was just three years old.

Azrael’s eyes went wide as a thought struck her. She quickly hopped over to an unused terminal, and opened up the memories from a random Prophet. She scrolled through hers quickly and spotted it immediately – obscured layers with buried memories.

They too stretched all the way to the beginning of their abduction.

She pulled up another Prophet hurriedly and scrolled down his histogram. His was the same, and went all the way back to his abduction.

Her heart pounded in her chest at what it all implied, and looked out at the pods that surrounded her.

Then she looked through the histograms of a fourth. Soon it was a tenth, and a twentieth. All were the same. Every single Prophet was stricken with layers of obscurities over deeply traumatic memories, from the very beginning.

All of them.

At that realization, her heart fell away to somewhere deep below, and didn’t come back for some time.

~

“You know, drawing you in is far too easy,” Father continued gloating. “Baiting your anger and revealing a supposed weakness... Hah! Fighting you is child’s play.”

He gave her throat a quick squeeze, as though to punctuate himself. Then he reared back his other fist, and smashed it into her brow.

Freya’s vision blurred and her ears rang from the massive blow. Worse, her mind shook and her brow split. A trickle of blood fell from it, dropped down to her cheek, and rolled away.

As her vision cleared, she saw Father’s sneering, prideful grin. She wanted nothing more than to reach over and wipe it right off him...

And behind him, Callie threw T-Rex and Max around the room with ease. She slammed her hammer right into T-Rex’s side and tossed him a half dozen meters away from her.

He slumped to the ground and gripped his side weakly. One of his ribs had definitely snapped, and all he could feel was utter pain.

Callie walked casually towards him, and adjusted her grip on her hammer.

“Breaking you in is going to be the best experience of my life,” said Father.

He once again reared his fist back to strike.

And just as Freya was about to retort, a number of messages from Azrael came into view on her DI.

–

Amal: everyone – you need to know this

Amal: father assaulted callie

Amal: he assaulted all of them

Amal: violently, emotionally, sexually

Amal: didn’t matter their gender

Amal: male, female, everyone in between

Amal: didn’t matter their age

Amal: he took them all, from the beginning

Amal: then he took away their memories, over and over

Amal: and buried their trauma with implanted memories

Amal: so i get it now

Ama: i get why they’re so angry deep down

Amal: and i want us to help them break free of it

–

Freya’s eyes turned back to Father and narrowed with a predatory glare, even as her face turned a bright red. Her anger towards him knew no bounds, but in that moment, she realized that someone else’s anger far eclipsed her own.

And using the last bits of her breath, she said, “Issat ‘coz breakin’ in your kids not ‘nough for you?”

Father’s eyes widened at her accusation, utterly surprised by what he heard, as though she had discovered his greatest secret. And from that surprise, subconsciously let go of her.

She fell to the floor onto her hands and knees, and gasped as she violently drew air into her lungs. Freya looked up as she breathed freely again, but not at Father. Instead, she kept an eye on Callie.

And grinned.

The Prophet’s hammer was raised right above her head, and she stood right over T-Rex. But instead of swinging down, she merely shook in place.

“What’ve you done?” asked Father.

“No,” Freya replied, her throat hoarse, “what’ve you done?”

Callie was utterly frozen in the moment. All she could think was what Freya had said. Her words bounced around as her mind searched through her memories. For whatever reason, they caught her attention, held it hostage, in fact.

They pulled bits of memories to the surface, though they came slowly yet surely. There were layers and layers of shadows over glowing memories of Father’s lessons. Shadows of memories filled with Father’s grunts, Father’s sighs, Father’s sweat.

Father’s cries of pleasure, and her own cries of pain.

“No, please,” she muttered quietly. “Don’t.”

While her mind was deep within itself, her body backed up and away from T-Rex. She shivered slightly, as though she was cold, or afraid, or both.

Her mind quaked as it dove past those layers and found more and more masked memories, dampened emotions, hidden fears. All of them with Father’s presence, looming in the shadows. And yet he also shone in the light.

Memories of Father on top of her, panting heavily. She felt his sweat fall on her skin, and the heat of his breath on her face. She felt him move on top of her, over and over and over.

She felt herself push away from him, but had nowhere to go.

And even while he grunted and pushed himself into her, it seemed that there was a bright light all around him. He told her he loved her, and that her obedience was divine.

As she fell further, the haze lifted more and more, but never fully. It was all a confusing mix of agony and awe and love and hate. All of them swirled around her, and threatened to tear her apart.

But memories within the shadows soon blacked out everything else, and the memories of a Golden Father ebbed away. And suddenly, Callie remembered too much.

She felt rough hands as they explored her body.

She felt fingers around her throat, even as they tightened.

She felt blinding pain and mind-numbing pleasure at the same time.

And wept at all of it.

She remembered telling Father right then and there that it hurt, and that she was bleeding, and that she needed help.

But all she got in response were rough slaps, pinches, squeezes. She felt invaded, over and over. Worse, it all intensified the more she cried, the more she pleaded for things to end.

“Hush, child,” her Father told her, “don’t you worry – you’ll forget all this happened soon enough. Like you always do.”

Callie fell to her knees as the floodgates opened up in her mind. The barriers had broken, and her only few real memories poured through. Like a torrent, they rushed at her and threatened to drown her. Her body shook with anger and disappointment and helplessness and fear and confusion.

She clutched at her chest as she felt a stabbing pain, far worse than when Freya had physically pierced her heart.

Callie, eyes filled with tears, turned her head and looked straight at Father. The hate in them immediately began to bubble up as she rose back up to her feet.

.....

“Father,” she said, her voice flat. “You took something from me.”

She pulled her hammer back into her hands and began to walk towards Father, her face dark and her eyes red.

“You took something,” she continued, “something that didn’t belong to you.”

“Callie,” he replied, “you’re having another episode. It’s time for you to lie down and take a little nap.”

Though he spoke, she hardly heard his words.

Father immediately became incensed the moment she ignored him. He turned his body to face her, and pointed right at her.

“Callie,” he yelled. “You listen to your Father. Right. Now. Return to your quarters and lie down!”

But Callie’s eyes only narrowed further. She seethed in anger, powered by memories long since buried.

“Why, Father?” she said. “So you can keep taking what isn’t yours? Well, I’ve got news for you, and it’s gonna break your heart.”

Her deepening anger swirled around her, and along with her hate and frustration, poured it all into herself. Just like she had done in her fight against Freya an entire lifetime ago, she began to break through the chains that held her down.

Only this time, it was all focused properly, on the very person who had caused it all in the first place.

Her vision darkened with a deep crimson as everything else around her faded. All she saw was Father, bathed in blood.

Wild energies whipped all around as fury settled deep into her body. And with a guttural, primal scream, Callie shot forward with her hammer raised high. The entire marble floor cracked in every direction, and caved slightly from the point she jumped from.

The anger and fury of all her past lives poured through in that single moment in time, and destroyed every barrier that kept them all hidden. Every instance of Callie gripped her hammer and poured absolutely everything they had into it.

And in a blinding flash, Callie brought her hammer down onto Father’s chest, and crushed it with overwhelming fury.

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