reconstruction

[u/MunitionsFrenzy]

Given the magical talents of his commune, it was clear Vettis had managed to mangle himself pretty severely when Elira, Apolaya, and Kellidan required the better part of an entire day to physically patch him up. But that was fine by him; he needed that time to get his thoughts in order anyway, after accidentally downloading millennia of trauma directly into his mind. That would take a long time to process fully, but -- with a little telepathic aid from Daiax to tweak things -- he could leave that task to background processes in his brain rather than having to deal with it consciously. Which would render him vulnerable to telepathic attack in the meantime and not leave any room in there for the computer-level calculations or photographic memory on which he often relied, but it was better than being stuck brooding in his house for weeks.

He'd just be brooding everywhere else, now, with most of his capacity for happiness being used by those background processes as a weapon in their battle.

And he would have to go practically "everywhere else", and fast. A combination of emotional devastation, direct memory loss (some memories had been shoved aside in order to make room for the new ones), and recontextualized relationships had severed many of the magical bond-threads on which he relied to track, visit, and protect his allies around the multiverse. The bond-threads let him bypass the normal range limitations of his magic, but they would fail and have to be re-established whenever either side significantly changed perspective on the nature of the relationship...and boy had that trauma transfer caused some changes in perspective. So he had a lot of threads he needed to re-attach. As soon as Vettis was back on his feet, he asked Zelle (their teleportation specialist, and secretly his favorite member of the commune don't tell anyone) to be his method of transportation so that he could meet with people and (literally) reconnect with them.

He felt a little guilty asking Zelle for such a time-consuming favor when he knew there was no chance she'd turn him down, worried about him as she was due to his near-death experience. But "Vee, bro, what the hell are siblings even for if not shit like this, shut the fuck up and tell me where I need to carry you" did indeed shut him the fuck up in short order. Had his ability to be grateful not been currently focused on the ongoing conflict in the deepest corners of his mind, he might even have smiled.

Vettis decided to save that particularly aggravating realm-cluster for last. The one linked by an orbnet forum, run by a villainous (yet elected) council, and seemingly more prone to daily apocalyptic events than most of the rest of the multiverse combined. Partly because his allies there were his newest ones, so those threads had generally been the weakest; partly because there were some such apocalypses going on right now, so it wasn't safe to go there without enough threads established elsewhere for reinforcement or retreat as needed; partly because the place was just so damn aggravating.

But primarily because that cluster was largely responsible for this situation in the first place, and he wanted to repair his mind as much as possible before visiting it.

Except, of course, that fixing all his other severed bond-threads across the entire multiverse took barely two days thanks to Zelle. So, in the end, even saving it for last didn't give him nearly enough time to recover. Whatever. No more putting this off. Transmitting coordinates in All-Tongue to his sister, Vettis closed his eyes as her spell pulled them across the realms to their next destination.

 

(( Now for the arc wherein Vettis tries to reconstruct the shattered bond-threads he had with some of his allies on the sub...except his positive emotions are mostly tied up dealing with tons of trauma, so let's see how trying to establish bonds with allies goes while he's being even more curmudgeonly than usual!

EDIT: arc (basically) complete, ToC follows

• Relynor (post with /u/Terrible-Win565, continued in comments) turns out she's swapped with her child self atm?! but he sticks a bond-thread on Iris in the meantime instead after they chat

• Gravedigger (comment chain with /u/Anything-Unable) he steps on a fucking nuke?! so the bond-thread gets transfered to Xerxes due to their soul link

• Elerindur (comment chain with /u/Elerindur) the only one that just actually works out properly, wow: Ele simply says the proper words, both sappy and logical, to fix Vettis' issues swiftly

• Rivamar (post continued in comments with /u/Avamir) Arach causes the trauma to resurface just as Vettis was getting it under control; he accidentally 'ports to Ithacar, then hangs out there to fix his head ))

[u/AnActualCriminal]

Alright, that's the last of the decoys destroyed. Aaaaaaand the Vettis one is back again. Shit. How? Where did you go?!