Godclads

Chapter 10-2 Death of the Ideal

+Treaties. Always with the treaties and the posturing and begging. And for what?

Peace? Peace is a lie! We all know there will be blood in the end, sisters to be, we all know! But our “allies” seem to have lost their cocks prematurely.

Remind me again, because old Pragma gets to forgetting sometimes: Who won the last war? Who won? Was it the Massists or Saintists?

Don’t give me that rust-shit about damages or lives lost. That doesn’t matter. I’m talking about Souls claimed. I’m talking about Frames taken–Sovereignties captured.

Who won?

Did Highflame win? Did I misremember that half-ont Greatling sow screaming her lungs out for half the city to hear? Like she didn’t have it coming–like the Golds weren’t peacocking like a godsdamned pack of gleamers when they let the fucking Sang detonate their Fleshweaver plagues into our districts, pour their rash-cursed spores into the air.

Nine billion stillbirths. Nine billion. Not even the vatborn spared. And then the rash. The rash sisters.

Think of this: Aside from the castrates from the Thousand Plains, who else has the means to bend blood and flesh into abominations? Who else!

I–I know I’m rambling but I cannot stomach this. I cannot bear this!

Peace? Fuck peace. We’re not finished here. We’re never going to be finished. Not till every last Saintist fuck is dead! Dead! Dead!

The Ori are glassjaws. Fine. I get it. Old Pragma gets it. Their lives were nice. They got to live on sunny, happy little Uuvako–their pretty island chain undisturbed. Got to mine their corpse crystals and trade them to outsiders. Messing with their minds to get better deals and avoid wars.

But while they were having a fun ol’ time in the sun, some of us had to fight, and bleed, and struggle to stand. Even steel broke in the Skuldvast. Even steel.

So, Ambassador Kitzuhada says peace? I say war! War! Fucking war! Leave peace for transcendence, because right now, there isn’t an existence big enough for all us…+

-Pragma das Ench, The Moon’s Edge, Stormtree Extremist Propaganda Thoughtcast

10-2

Death of the Ideal

Drooling, hunger, and delight blended within Avo. A quick command to his Metamind was required to contain any spillover of emotion.

Thirty-two golems. Thirty-two Heavens. Thirty-two new branches to expand his apotheosis.

A scoff sounded from the Woundshaper, its attention fixed on but a select class of golem. “The focus, to me at least, is clear master. We must build strength upon strength. Raise the tower already risen. The others are… acceptable, perhaps, but it is unwise to trade the reach of a branch for the hairs of a new root.”

Like Kae said. Tower or sea: The divide of Ontological builds. Of course, with the uniqueness of his Frame, Avo just might find himself able to walk both paths.

As the initial rush of gluttony faded, confusion joined his elation.

Conflux was sparse of golems. Sparse of numerous resources–even for a gutter crime Syndicate. Meanwhile, Mirrorhead had well over a dozen in his personal inventory.

Lessening the tonnage of blood, Avo felt the flow of time increase as Mirrorhead began his slow trek across the boardwalk. The water here bubbled and swirled with eye-catching oddness, the waves sloshing back and forth as if this place–or plane–was tilting in random directions.

Details came through via Phys-Sim. Numbers and movement vectors charted impossible paths for baseline reality to manifest; the water was circling the island, the trajectories painting a new simulation into Avo’s mind.

Dimensionally, this location was more a sphere than a flat plane. In function it worked similarly to Zein’s demiplane, wrapping in on itself. Only without any visible temporally altering miracles at play.

Slithering into Mirrorhead’s outer cognition again, Avo surveyed the island before him.

On first glance, it seemed real enough. The first thing to break the masquerade was the sun. A phantasmal, shape-shifting sun that went from being a perfectly normal imitation of the daystar, to the shape of a cartoonish duck.

Connected to a central locus buried beneath the sand, the star morphed several more times, each to the form of an animal. Nu-dog; nu-cat; hippo; duck. After repeating the sequence, it would default to being a normal sun again for a few moments and start over.

Through it all, there was a juvenile quality to its design, with the eyes of the animals far too big to be natural, and their cuteness exaggerated to a level of edible unpalatability.

Such was quite a feat–it took a lot to confuse a ghoul’s instincts so much it was no longer sure if it wanted to eat you.

Patchworks of tall ivory-white palm trees glittered with crystalline enamel under skies of false-blue. Beneath them, small mechanical crabs played jingling lullabies as they skittered to welcome Mirrorhead. Overhead, more traditional drones circled the sky, their bodies diamond shaped and armed–with single-shot gauss harpoons installed at their core and micro-missiles at the side.

Scrying at the mem-data they were transmitting, Avo felt his mind lurch to a halt. He had his Metamind play back a line of information.

A-12 MINIATURIZED NUCLEAR WARHEAD DETECTED

Well. Those were priority targets for spoofing. Zein had taught Avo about all the fun that came with nuclear explosives. Aside from diving into the subreality of wind using his Galeslither, his means of avoidance were few. Prevention was the better method anyway.

The sand of the island shone like gold. It might actually be gold. Before he could study it further, Mirrorhead halted at the edge of the walkway, gaze drifting past the neat arrangement of trees to stare at what looked to be a marble figurine of two individuals frozen in a moment of play.

The statues were human-sized, with the larger lifting the smaller beneath the arms in a motherly embrace. For seven heartbeats that followed, Mirrorhead just stared, his forlorn heart hollowing his mind of stray thought. Within the Metamind, ghosts caught fire, sparked by the intensity of his melancholy.

For all the Guilder’s power, for all his Heavens and influence, he just couldn’t remember the face of his mother.

The pain tore soul deep.

Seizing the opening of Mirrorhead’s festering trauma, Avo copied the sequences to structure a new instrument for the future. Something he looked forward to wielding against Mirrrorhead later. To be struck by pain harvested from one’s own mind left wounds deeper than most egos could withstand.

The fact that Mirrorhead could resurrect offered unique opportunities for experimentation as well…

DOWNLOADING TRAUMA-PATTERN [FORGOTTEN MOTHER]

From there, he slipped his reach beneath Mirrorhead’s, grasping out for all the loci around him.

Unlike the travesty that was Conflux’s N-Sec, all things connected to the Nether here were reinforced with ample protection. Each one ran something at least comparable to a Tortoise Omniguard–something that Aseleri, the dead slaver captain who sold him used to use. Bulky. Strong. A solid chunk of trauma manifested as a mass of faces petrified mid-scream into the shape of a gate.

Slipping past each ward was less than a trifle with each of the three categories of golems being bound to eight groups of three–one less than even a classic strike knot. All the more to Avo’s benefit. Copying over essential mem-data from key sequences, he planned to have Kae review the functions of the Shadowcrawler and the Fulgerhound. The Sangeist he was already familiar with and thought he had good odds against.

Installing a few changes within their structure to leave gaps for future intrusions, Avo did the same to the ghosts and other phantasmal structures present.

Herein lay the ultimate fault of Highflame Nether security–passive centralization. Wards could muster the metaphor of being a fortress at times, but thoughts and emotions were fickle. When two things blurred in a Meta, it took an attuned and aware mind to sort through the overlap.

Mirrorhead was not attuned. He was focused elsewhere. And these defenses, though useful against withstanding direct blunt impacts from crude traumas, were woefully deficient without a master guiding their ghosts.

It was only by the grace of Ori-Thaum’s twisted political interests that Mirrorhead was still stable of mind.

With thirty-two golems compromised and most of the drones under his sway–the mini-nuke drones specifically marked and separated from the rest–Avo sank back into the Syndicate boss, still standing in place.

Stuck.

It took the better part of three actual minutes for the Guilder to act. Yet, what followed surprised Avo. With a shrug, Mirrorhead stepped forward and free from his reflective shell–a blank mannequin of glass slipping loose from the man in the suit.

Soft. That was the first thought that passed through Avo’s mind as he found himself using the mottled glass to peer upon Jhred Greatling’s true visage. The years had carved new aesthetics into the Guilder’s features, but still, he resembled the boy playing within the memories Abrel accessed.

His time in the Tiers granted him luxuries few others could ever dream of possessing. A grafter had clearly perfected him in skin, sinew, and skeleton. Not a blemish touched his symmetric face, and his flesh practically shone with the glow of vitality. His bone structure was sharp in a similar way to Abrel’s, but he looked more vulpine than avian if a comparison to an animal needed to be made.

Something about the pointedness of his chin reminded Avo of Green River’s fox when it lowered its head to hiss.

Twin irises of soft white lit his eyes like lanterns at the heart of full moons.

More and more, the tastes offered by Mirrorhead teased Avo’s bestial nature. Everything within the ghoul screamed, braying for him to crawl his way out from the memories and into the real, into a place where it could rip, torture, and feed.

Topsider. It would be an exotic delicacy to savor Mirrorhead; to break open this stranger of decadence, a delight.

All this time, all this struggle leading to this moment. Worth it. It was all–

HOST AWARENESS: 7%

Avo packed in his hunger with a muted groan and sank deeper into Mirrorhead’s inner memories. The man frowned momentarily, wondering where the sudden peckishness came from.

The cooing breath of an unnatural breeze ruffled the feather-light sand. While the Syndicate boss walked, Avo worked, trying to press through the last few layers. The final few wards spun far faster than the previous ones, but with inner memories revealed, there were sluggish openings for Avo’s phantasmal agility to exploit.

The real issue was assembling the right recollections needed to bridge the hidden entryway.

Sand rose with each step. A command rippled out from Mirrorhead’s Meta when they were fifteen feet away from the statues, summoning ghosts to animate memories long past.

This close, Avo could see their design with clarity.

The disfigured face of a tall woman in a floral-shouldered sundress tilted at a beaming boy held high. Carved from marble, Avo beheld the scene before him for what it was: an idealization of the past, of childhood, lost and never to return.

Slowly, Avo's understanding emerged from the fogs of mystery. This place was a neverland. A playground for a boy missing his mother.

Diving out again, Avo accessed the locus of the island itself and filtered through its memories.

Confirmation came in seconds.

This demiplane wasn’t just a little refuge but a familiar retreat. One bequeathed from mother to son, and revealed to no one else.

Whatever could be said of the former matriarch of House Greatling, her love for her son clearly ran deep and true.

Staggering up before the eroded face of his mother, Jhred’s lip quivered as he struggled to master himself.

In that instant, Avo punched through the final layers of the Guilder's memory. There, he found himself standing before the burning heart of whatever Elysium Jhred grew up in. Even with it being the final layer, its stretch was vast with the legions of ghosts at the Guilder’s disposal.

Avo installed a new session here and slotted his Metamind to deconstruct and retract all the ghosts used for the one in the fifteenth layer after he jacked out.

With most of the systems around him subverted Avo decided to release some of his blood. Speed returned as time rushed back into pace. He wished to see what his victim to be would do now.

It was a cruel voyeurism being able to watch Mirrorhead suffering. Amusing it began with Avo saddled with the indignities of an audience for his suffering in the Crucible, and now it was Avo playing the role of watcher.

A response sang out from the ghosts tethered to Jhred’s Metamind. A stored sequence of memories summoned wisping whorls of ethereal wind, coalescing ghosts activating phantom functionality.

The ghosts stretched and phantasmal representation of the current environment around them overlapped their present reality

At once, scenes from days of yonder youth played. Phantasmal coconuts swung where none remained in the present. The sands were fuller then, like an hourglass yet to be turned. Through the tallness of the trees, a series of echoing giggles pealed as a tiny Jhred Greatling toddled on the beach.

Behind him, a distorted shadow of a woman followed, the outline of her form a mass of hollow scar stuff on his memory. A simulation of the person themselves was missing. If these moments were to be put to paper, it would be as if someone had cut her loose from every page.

A mind-stinging noise tore through the air. The ghosts wailed, unable to load what was spoken.

“Run, Jhred,” the Guilder muttered, playing the role of his own mother. He didn’t even seem to know what voice he wanted to fake. “I’m coming to get you.”

Avo had to look away from the memory of the child. The plumpness of the flesh was phantasmal, but needled at his hunger all the same.

Again, Jhred’s younger self laughed and hid behind the tree. If he was trying to hide, he was doing an exceptionally poor job at it. +Not gonna find me, mommy.+

Fascinating to see how the Greatling’s intellect had barely developed since then. Predictably, the miasma of unsimulated paleness suddenly teleported next to Jhred–who squealed in delight–and picked him up.

The pose in that instant was the same as that of the sculpture.

Digging through Jhred’s memories, Avo discovered the man had the moment recreated via an architecture drone repurposed toward the task of marble sculpting. Countless hours of work went into digging up how tall the mother was, her apparel, and her general morphology.

What remained missing was her voice, her face, her touch, her personhood.

To be forcibly withheld from the mind of someone you loved was a punishment most severe, and a torment most sublime.

All the other Greatlings had the last traces of her pruned. Only Jhred held on, even to her absence.

Only Jhred.

The simulation froze. Looking between the boy, face bright with joy with his marble copy made of stone, and the blank look of defeat on Jhred Greatling, now grown, it seemed a degeneration had taken shape.

Instead of rising with his apotheosis, Jhred clung to the past, stuck to what was lost. He did not grow. He refused.

“And so he will meet true death,” the Woundshaper whispered. “Gods ascend, and in ascension, widen. Bloom. Stillness is the path to fated demise. Know this, master. Know this.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, lying. Stripped of his reflective shield, there was a softness to his baritone, like he hesitated to project force without the mask of his Mirrorhead identity protecting him. “I do not feel anything for this. I do not… There’s no more time. Abrel… she broke my h-heart…”

The first sob escaped from him then. He wrapped his hands around himself as he heaved, trying to keep himself together. “I won’t… I won’t believe that she betrayed me. I can’t. She’s family. She’s the only one that cared besides me… The only one.”

He turned to his mother’s absence. “Please don’t hate her. Please. She held on for as long as she could. But it got too hard. Everyone was so… cruel.” The blankness of her memory self was too much, so he turned to the marble instead. “I just want to know what your voice sounds like again. I just…”

Jhred Greatling sank down into the sand and wept. Deep as his voice was, he wept like a child, shaking with each coughing sob that escaped from him. He wept openly, kneeling by the statue as Avo watched.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. I tried. I burned everything I had left. I tried–tried so hard. I c-can do it. I can kill him for you. I can still make this hurt.” Anger flared. And sizzled away into hissing nothingness as it came into contact with the ocean of his sorrow and was swallowed. “Oh, gods…”

Peering at Jhred Greatling’s weakness from the inside, a strange dread settled on Avo. A twist of something caught his attention, the shadow cast by the statues reaching out to him, forming the shape of a man in a long coat.

The scent of citrus stung at his memories. For a flickering instant, he saw him there: Walton stood, towering over the faceless form of Mirrorhead’s mother. Avo watched as his smiling father ran his fingertips down the missing face of the statue and then, using the same few fingers, repeated the action on his own skin.

The apparition vanished.

Avo shuddered.

Jhred sobbed, unaware of the second turmoil hatching inside him.

When Avo had been forced to null his father’s image, a break had opened within him.

Like no typical trauma, the hurt indelible and strange, it plagued the corners of Avo’s mind. And with each subsequent encounter, he felt himself being pushed further and further away.

Until now.

The epiphany came to him then. The death of idealization. This was freedom. Perhaps not absolute freedom, but freedom enough to decide his own path, his own destiny. In destroying the image–the idealization of his father–Walton had shattered one of the only fixations Avo had.

Unchained through mutilation, the path ahead belonged to Avo, and in beholding the nature of the Low Masters, the Hungers, control they had was atrophied at best. The wound had already been made on his spirit, and would not be struck twice to effect.

In destroying the anchor of his own perfection, his idealized self, Walton granted Avo a gift few would ever come to know.

Choice. Choice untethered. Choice unfettered.

And so, the ghoul stood while the Guilder succumbed.

Once again, Avo looked upon the shadow where he once saw his father. This time, there was no dread, only lightness. Only anticipation for what was to come.

Thank you, Avo said, offering words to someone long absent. But unlike Jhred Greatling, what dwelt in him was gratefulness and not pain.