Chapter 31: New Experiences

Perspective: Claw


Claw woke up roughly six hours after he had moved into his private room. That was all the sleep he needed. He knew this, but he didn't remember ever having properly slept before, it had only ever been a hunt followed by being imprisoned again. Claw's memory of the hunts was hazy at best, he only remembered small fragments. The pain of a weapon here, the rush of a kill there, maybe a split-second image of the face of his prey. Just for how long had this gone on?

The voice in his head, which wasn't quite his, answered his question: "Three-thousand five-hundred and seventy-two years."

Great. So, the other one had kept him locked up for that long, perhaps longer even. Claw knew the other one was older than that, he also knew that he had been created by him in a way. That he had existed as even less than he had been while he was caged. The time that the voice told him must have been when he hunted for the first time.

Claw had tried to despise the other one, hate him but he somehow couldn't. To hate you needed a clear vision of the object of your ire. Other than the body he was now inhabiting, Claw knew very little about who the other one was. All Claw knew were facts, about almost anything he laid his eyes on or thought about. That he could shatter his bedside table with his bare hands and exactly how much force was needed to do so. That his body had three hearts. That his claws were in fact a telescoping arrangement of small prisms made from an almost unbreakable material. That retreat was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in battle and a well-organized one could do more damage to an enemy force than a head-on confrontation if correct preparation and follow-up steps were taken. That brewing hypermobility potion derivatives was a hazardous endeavor that could end up stranding you in another world… huh, that one was oddly specific.

What Claw didn't know was where all of this knowledge came from, aside from the fact that the other one had acquired it at some point. Claw had never shattered a bedside table, had never commanded an army, had never even seen anyone command an army. It was frustrating to have all of this knowledge that he knew was valid and useful but no actual experience, it was like a large part of him was missing.

Claw grunted and got up from his bed. His private chambers were adequate according to a sense of interior design he only just now discovered he had. A bedroom, a bathroom complete with a shower, a living room with a table, empty shelves and even a couch. More than sufficient, the only thing that was missing was a kitchen, but the Tower had several canteens so there really was no need for individual cooking.

It only took Claw a minute to get dressed, his uniform consisted of a set of underclothes and obsidian armor, similar to the one the Ender was wearing, just missing the purple gems that decorated hers. Getting into the armor was easy for Claw, as though he had done so countless times before. Another thing that annoyed him. How was he supposed to be able to know what he could and couldn't do until he tried? What if at some point the voice in his brain just said "Sorry, I got nothing." and he'd just stand there like a total idiot.

Speaking of idiocy, during his sleep Claw had been shown a mostly incoherent stream of information, a dream as it were. However, since you apparently needed memories to dream, which he had very few of, he instead was treated to perhaps one of the more pointless things humanity had thought of with the ample spare time it had collectively: Philosophy.

Claw understood the appeal of course, if your survival is all but assured and you have nothing better to do, why wouldn't you think about all the pointless theoretical scenarios and fabricate models of how certain people may act under certain circumstances. Claw was currently too preoccupied with his own position to care about such things, perhaps at a later point he'd indulge in this navel-gazing himself, which would be a real challenge since he lacked a navel.

Claw's dream had treated him to detailed descriptions of various fields of philosophy, morality being one of them. Claw found that most things that that field concerned itself with may sound good on paper but really, who had time for all those lofty ideals when it really came down to it? The prey never willingly gave itself up to the predator for the "greater good of both their species", no matter how overpopulated the prey and how starving the predator was. It turned out that if you wanted something and had the means of taking it, it was already as good as yours. Of course, philosophy had its own name for that concept and some related ones, "might makes right" it was called, and Claw found that it was one of the only concepts that could be applied no matter what. It was what it all fell back to when the cloud castles collapsed in on themselves. It was how the Entity managed to command an empire this vast.

With a smirk Claw let that line of thought trail off. Apparently, there was a meeting scheduled at some point where he'd be formally introduced to all the important people of the Tower. Perhaps if he hurried now, he could get something to eat before it all started, concentrating on an empty stomach was difficult, at least that's what his brain told him.

Just as Claw reminded himself of the way to the closest canteen, something appeared before his mental eye: A grid-like structure of thirty-six squares, some were empty, others depicted some kind of object. Almost reflexively he focused on one of the squares that held a green-colored bag. The grid disappeared and Claw held the bag in his right hand. This was an inventory, apparently. A pocket dimension that could store all manner of things, useful but it still didn't explain why exactly he had chosen this particular bag.

Claw's question answered itself a few seconds later, a faint scent of meat was radiating from the bag. He opened it and found that it held more than its size let on, then fished out a piece of dried and salted meat and immediately began biting down on it. The taste was strong, and the meat was tough but proved no match for Claw's teeth. At least the other one had good taste in food and preservation methods. After eating another two pieces, Claw stowed the bag back in his inventory and drank some water in the bathroom. This had simplified things, no trip to the canteen was needed.

It turned out that finding the preserved meat was lucky. Less than five minutes later, Claw heard a voice in his head, a young girl, one of the Tower's telepaths. "Mister Claw, the meeting is scheduled to start in half an hour in the Command and Control main meeting room."

Claw replied: "I'll be there, also just 'Claw' is enough."

He got no reply from the telepath, she probably had to tell a whole lot of other people too. It was time to go. Claw opened the door of his private room, walked out, locked it behind himself and slid the key into a pocket hidden beneath one of his armor's plates.

The corridor he was in was where a lot of the other important people of the Tower had their private rooms, his was directly adjacent to that of Archmage Wisp, whom he had only met briefly. The next one over belonged to Dr. Veronica Mercury, the woman who had run a series of tests on him after he had been freed. She had collapsed almost immediately after reading the results of the last test, from exhaustion apparently.

The Ender's room was after hers, then followed Freak's room, then Glibby's. That also happened to be the order in which he respected the other members of the inner circle. The Ender was by far the most competent of the three. From what Claw had seen, her troops respected and followed her, she was also single-handedly responsible for the Tower's military operations, though he supposed that was not the case anymore since he would work alongside her now. Freak was odd, a phantom of fear did not fit the pattern, he commanded no troops, had no administrative responsibility and yet he was still in the inner circle. Claw suspected that his real job was spying on various other employees and extracting information from prisoners. Glibby, the great pretender… was not worth wasting thoughts on.

The walk to Command and Control would have been a long one, however Claw made use of his command power to just order one of the endermen to take him there directly, in the end he still had fifteen minutes to spare.

The meeting room was dominated by a large round table with the Tower's insignia on it, one wall was almost entirely occupied by a screen, which was currently displaying a stylized top-down view of the area surrounding the Tower. Many of the seats in the room were already filled up, Claw recognized a couple of faces. There was General Marcus, the head of Command and Control himself, basically the top dog below the inner circle. Next to him was General Issa, head of Reconnaissance. In other seats sat General Forgelight, head of Acquired Worlds, Dr. Mercury of course, and Clark Belmont, a dimensional cartographer, who apparently had a habit of stealing snacks, which seemed like a completely irrelevant detail to remember.

Of the inner circle both the Ender and Freak were already in their seats, the Ender gestured for Claw to come over and pointed at the empty seat between her and Freak. Claw made his way over there with quick steps.

After Claw sat down, the Ender asked: "Remember anything more?"

Claw replied: "A few things, apparently it goes faster when dreaming. Mostly found out about humans and their philosophy and how much of it is irrelevant when it comes down to it."

On Claw's other side Freak snickered: "Sure does sound like humans."

Claw turned over to look at Freak, as their eyes met, he felt something strange, as if Freak was looking through his eyes instead of at them.

Freak continued: "Humans, always thinking about whatever might happen and missing the things that do happen. Fine by me though, so many delicious flavors of fear that shouldn't even exist. What about you Claw?"

Claw knew where this was going, and he was not having any of it. "Drop it Freak, you don't have an angle on me. The only thing I truly fear is going back into that cage and as long as the Entity is around that is not happening."

Freak blinked, then cleared his throat and turned away from Claw, an intersection of two lines on the insignia having become very interesting all of a sudden. Claw saw Freak for what he was: weak. He might be adept at exploiting others' weaknesses, but he was ineffectual to a true hunter like Claw.

Right on cue, as if to demonstrate that while weak, Freak still was a long way from being the weakest, Glibby the Ape threw open the doors to the meeting room with an exaggerated motion. It was funny, Claw had barely even interacted with Glibby and yet he already had a very good idea of how he functioned.

Glibby made his way over to Freak's side and sat down in his own chair. A single quick look from Claw was all it took to almost break the Ape's composure. He had suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the other one. Evidently, he was not happy to now have to work with Claw.

Over the remaining time the meeting room gradually filled up. Once the doors closed, the Entity materialized in its throne, thus declaring the meeting as started. It didn't speak, it seemed that General Marcus would be the one leading.

Marcus looked his notes over and then began: "Greetings everyone, you might notice that this is the second full assembly in a short period of time. The reason is that we captured Fire, the rebel leader, the exact details are classified but Fire shared his body with Claw, who has now joined the Entity's inner circle. Claw, would you mind introducing yourself?"

Claw stood up and waited a few seconds, when everyone's eyes were on him, he said: "I am Claw, I will be in charge of the Tower's military matters along with the Ender. That is all from my side, we have more points to discuss."

What Claw had said wasn't his first choice of words, but they had felt appropriate to the situation, professionalism and that. It seemed that the other one was no stranger to public speaking, which served Claw well.

General Marcus continued: "As Claw said, there are other points. The main one being the operation currently underway in the nearby village, as well as the rebel situation. It would be best if the responsible heads presented those themselves."

Dr. Mercury stood up first. "As you might know, we have seized the nearby village in order to build up a forward military and research post. A strange phenomenon was sighted there that may be the source of the recent negative energy readings. This site will be dedicated to researching, understanding and possibly harnessing this phenomenon. The villagers have been evicted."

The Ender stood up after Dr. Mercury had sat down. "Speaking of villagers. It is very probable that they joined the rebels now that they lost their homes. That was expected, sadly we were unable to plant spies in their midst, so the location of their 'Shelter' remains unknown. With their leader captured, the rebels will most likely be weakened but they are certainly still a threat. Scouts confirm that the Prophet has left his hill behind, and rumor has it that he joined the rebels or at the very least was granted refuge by them."

Claw had no idea who this Prophet was, he certainly knew what a prophet was, but this was apparently the capital P Prophet.

He leaned over to Freak. "Who is that Prophet?"

Freak surprisingly gave him a straightforward answer: "First guy the Entity possessed, completely brain damaged and deranged. The only way his prophecies come true is by sheer quantity and vagueness."

Something about what Freak had said set off an avalanche of thoughts in Claw's mind. The Prophet was not just a madman but had genuine precognition, something about following the strings of fate and magical contracts, Claw would go down those rabbit holes and explore this newly uncovered knowledge after the meeting. More knowledge streamed in, this time from a different source. The Entity had its gaze fixed on Claw, one by one the thoughts appeared in his head.

This had happened before, not like it was happening now but in principle. The Entity hadn't just formed and created all of this from nothing. This was only one of many cycles of building up before failing for one reason or another. The Entity only had partial memories of past cycles, much like Claw didn't remember much about his own past. Each time it resurfaced it needed a seed, something to start from, that something was always the first person it possessed. It would use the enslaved will and intelligence of its first possession to formulate a plan of how to proceed while avoiding past pitfalls. This had some interesting implications, interesting enough that Claw needed to speak up about it.

He waited for a pause in the Ender's speech, then he said: "That Prophet? He needs to die."

All eyes in the room were on him. The Entity slowly said: "The Prophet is-not a threat."

Claw replied: "Sorry boss, but I'll have to disagree with that one. Without going into details, he knows things that could get very dangerous in the wrong hands. You might not realize it, but he might be the last remaining chance for our failure."

The room was dead silent. Apparently disagreeing with the Entity was not something people did around here. Claw had no such concerns, his arrangement with the Entity was different from that of the others. It was no wonder this matter had gone unresolved for so long if nobody ever asked questions, or possibly because the Entity had never thought to tell anyone else this vital detail.

Now Dr. Mercury spoke up: "I agree with Claw, if the Prophet only vaguely poses a threat, we should try to eliminate him if it does not compromise our other operations. It would be one less risk."

There was something different about her, she didn't show the fear the others did, perhaps she too knew something the others didn't.

The Entity said: "Pro-ceed if you can… guarantee nothing else-is-affected."

Claw said: "That newly fortified village is a juicy target for our rebels, close to the Tower but just far enough out that a military response would be too slow to prevent them from capturing it if they overwhelm the garrison. It's a prime opportunity for them to establish a forward base. And a very fitting retaliatory strike for capturing their leader."

"I'd rather you not use my research as bait." Said Dr. Mercury flatly.

Claw replied: "The rebels will most likely try to take it regardless of our actions, what I'm proposing is to make the best of the situation. The hill is reasonably close to the village, it would stand to reason for the Prophet to return there to help rally their troops. If that is true, we can occupy their forces by engaging them near the village while someone assassinates the Prophet."

The Ender asked: "And who would be the assassin? Kay, that general of theirs, is a formidable opponent with his borrowed magic. The Prophet will be guarded."

Claw's mouth turned into a smirk. "I'll handle the Prophet myself, I just need an enderman for getting there and getting back out. I am not at risk, the Entity has seen to it that I do not die. I also believe that I have my ways of dealing with this general."

Marcus said: "Good, now that that matter is done, I have a couple more things to discuss before concluding this meeting, would you agree to plan in detail later?"

Claw and the Ender looked at each other, then silently nodded. There would be a lot to discuss if they wanted their plan to work out, the Prophet's assassination was only a small piece of the bigger picture that was the battle that was up ahead. The rebels could have thousands of soldiers at this point, even if they were not well trained, they still posed a threat that couldn't be dealt with using just the Ender's troops. This would be an effort that concerned the entire Tower and Claw was looking forward to putting it in motion.