Godclads

Chapter 6-14 Seize the Tempest (I)

Ambushing a knot is easy. You just have to be sure that you're hitting them when they're disembarked.

People are easy to kill. Heavens? That's another story. Its own story. Changes the rules you gotta play by.

Listen. I'm old. Well, old by the standards of this city. Would be awfully cocky to compare myself to the High Seraph herself or ol' granny Thousandhand, but I've been living in New Vultun long enough back to remember the day the colors first rolled in.

The memory's illegal but, let's just say I still got a few recollections of the Masters shitting bricks in front of us. Almost made all the shit that followed worth it.

Anyway, the point of my rambling is that you always want the fight on your terms. You see one of those streams of the Stormsparrow just choking her enemy's options away, right? Do that. Always do that.

Even a Godclad's gotta vent some time. If you manage to cage their choices enough, sooner or later, they'll have to show their godsdamned neck.

And then, bury your fucking teeth deep, and never let go.

Seize the tempest, gleamers. Seize it, or someone else will.

-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens

Seize the Tempest (I)

Being out in the urban open always inspired a focus in Avo. Staring up at the valley of metal rising from both sides, blocks two and three rose like parted molars, grinding against the resplendent arteries of air traffic spilled wide across the false firmament of Layer Two.

Walton once told him that the feeling was instinctual. The city made him feel small. The buildings looked like the fangs of a gargantuan beast. The inhabitants that lived within its jaws? Prey. Such a contrast played a symphony of confusion on a ghoul's baser appetites, driving it to want to eat before it was eaten.

If New Vultun was an allegory, it would be a domino of closing teeth, each clamping down on the ones below. The idea of being the topmost predator kindled a warmth deep and primordial within Avo.

Claiming his "companion" from the back of the van, Avo threaded his blood into the yet-chilled corpse and infused the former enforcer with animation. Heeding his whims, the body shambled out like a shuffling puppet, its monochrome rig untouched. The exoskeletal armor remained unblemished beyond aged stains of blood and filth. No rifle came with the enforcer, but within his arms remained a gauss repeater and a fusion burner.

Those would prove to be most sufficient for the coming task.

Draus wasn't lying about leaving the corpse mostly unharmed. Problem was she really understated the damage she inflicted upon the half-strand's neck.

The enforcer's bowl of a helmet was faced backward. Flicking through the broken shards of vertebrae that lined drooping pockets of shredded flesh like a poorly installed ladder, Avo twisted the head back into place and sighed. +Did more than just "break the neck." Everything's shattered. Pieces are jabbing against the padding of his inner rig.+

Through their shared link, mirth dripped over from her like dollops of caustic honey. +Aw, shucks. I'm real sorry 'bout not killin' him as neat as you wanted. I'll be sure to only snap 'em part-way next time. Let you half a snack on the neck for your trouble.+

Sarcasm. How unbecoming of a Regular. With a tug of will, the corpse snapped to a stand and stumbled away from the vehicle, coaxed into motion on thread-thin leashes of blood. Beneath the surface of existence, a second reality pushed through, Avo's Frame projecting a reality deviant from the limiting chains of baseline metaphysics.

+Making for the knot,+ Avo said. The streets ahead littered his cog-feed with leaking thoughts and intrusive phantoms. Machinery around him wailed and sang as parking slots shifted to make way for new landers. A stretch of gore-caked flesh extended along yellow-striped lanes for disembarkers. Avo sniffed. Sweetness greeted him. A creamy sheen of stickiness clung thickly to the blood still. The nectar of joy was unmistakable, and with who the smear used to be.

This wasn’t the first joy-fiend that Avo saw painted across a lot. Probably got caught in the blast back of an ascending aero pulling a rapid liftoff. Though the topmost layer of their parking slots was coned with lift pads, more than a few fliers found impatience more their persuasion and made to accelerate beyond their stationary boundaries.

The outcome was fatal. But how many imps was the life of an addict worth?

A wave of static-instilled red splashed over Avo, basking both he and the corpse with letters bold and crimson.

STAND BACK: VEHICLE LANDING

The aerovec descending groaned upon the strain of its own thrust. In the deepest folds of his ears, a low whine sang out from where the three engines met the central chassis of the machine.

He picked up the pace and had the corpse shamble ahead. It skid under his power more than it strode, body limp where the blood did not reach. More glove than a pure puppet, the motions of the dead enforcer were sharp and exaggerated, each foot traveled made possible by eldritch vectors of force.

Inside, Avo felt his Heaven of Blood rumbling deep, sinking the jaws of its spire into the softness of reality’s underbelly before pouring itself into the wound, filling a groove in existence with the shape of new canons.

Hovering drones swayed over the intersecting lanes of the lot like titanium lanterns. Another splash of light cleaved across Avo’s feed. Yet, this time, the scan tore away from him in but moments, slipping back to his puppet. Ah. Finally, they noticed the enforcer. It took them far longer than he expected.

Casting his Whisper high, he counted the fifty other surveillance drones working the lot and turned the flowing waters of his perception beyond. Washing the horizon with his scrying gaze, the shine of a thousand accretions dotted his notice, but all paled beneath the marker that blazed like a translucent sun.

Mem-locked to his Metamind, the position of the knot was halted. Unmoving. And a scant four hundred feet away. The environment beyond the lot was akin to a ravine at the bottom of a cascade frozen in chrome. Countless decks extended out from each level of megablocks two and three, joining in the middle by bridges and G-Tubes. Upward, each extension pulled back further than the last, looking more as if a step on a staircase if looked down from on high than the cliffs they were.

Shuttling his Whisper ahead, he laid eyes on the Galeslither and its accompanying Sangeists for the first time. Not yet in person, but they were there. And they were parked. A level above the lot, outside a riotous bar front, the warded minds of enforcers and technicians mingled for drinks and other manners of debauchery.

Parted from the passing riff-raff of the FATELESS, the Scalpers partied with clean-shorn skull fragments swaying from their hips. A line of defensive drones hovered on standby in a defensive formation, twelve to their cluster, each armed with enough firepower to make coppery mist of a flat. Minds were linked in chains as ghosts flowed free, sprinkling shared thoughts and memories between dozens of people. Four guards stood on watch at the steps leading up to the pseudo-patio.

The Scalpers had pursued him with more focus and precision than anything Conflux demonstrated. Here, though, they made a mistake. They thought themselves safe and secure from harm. Drowned in deceitful allegory, they saw this district of theirs as a sanctuary and hearth. Impenetrable.

Perhaps in the Tiers, protected by the burning sigils of the Paladins, they might’ve been right. But these were the Warrens. And in these depths, even wolves could be made prey.

A presence shuffled within his marrow, raw and angry from being caged. All were meat to a ghoul, anyway. And it had been too long since he indulged.

With a thought, he deactivated his Morality Injector. The beast rose, spreading like wildfire from sinew to sinew, the worst of his nature called back to purpose. All at once, his repressed urges struck him like a bomb. Nearby heartbeats taunted him. He could sense the fluid within them, the weight of his Heaven reaching out, caressing nearby aspects of its domain.

He wanted to turn the Injector back on. He wanted to leave it off forever. He needed to reach the knot. He wanted to make a butchery of the crowd.

Shaking his head, Avo put one step in front of the other. Across the lane, his pet corpse walked parallel with him, strung to his will.

Violent acts strained his Morality Injector and fed his beast. Keeping it active meant choking his mind with feedback of shame and discord in the fray of bloodshed. Such was unacceptable now. Before, when he lived in the Tiers, he played a silent game, cutting at threats from darkness and asymmetry.

Now, the demands of his Soul called for tactile contact. For his ontology to press its blades into the supple nature of his prey. In this, his beast was joined, and his bloodthirst was justified.

Part of Avo quavered, wary and fearful. He cast another look behind him, looking upon the mangled splatter of the joy-fiend. A fate he could also share should he drown himself in vice. Yet, something greater and deeper had yearned for this, had strained to stretch the totality of his being and remember the taste of true liberty.

Such was a question provoked by being a Godclad: why shouldn’t you feed your desire, should even reality succumb to your whims?

All he needed to do was stay his brutality from the choiceless. A strange sensation passed through him. He could do that.

He did do that.

A flash of an icon planted itself upon an overpass four levels above. Across the session, he peeked through Draus’ cog-feed and found her moving. In her grasp was a rifle. One of old make and poor condition. In the corner of her visual display, he read its make and model. Valquist G-7. Same one that shot her down in the Crucible.

+Thought you hated that gun?+ Avo asked. He turned his Whisper and noticed that the drone that scanned his corpse was launching a cluster of ghosts outward to the nearest Nether lobby. The Scalpers were going to be pinged soon. Good. The messier this looked the better. And the more eyes that were on the enforcer in the exo-rig, the fewer that lingered on him–expanded his opportunity for surprise.

From out of the aero, Draus was moving, her holocoat tuned to project colors of white and black. Doubtless, she was trying to get the drones to see her as well. Shouldering her rifle, she clenched her fist around a trigger of some kind. No ghosts clung to its shell, and no locus gave it any shine in the Nether. Pure coldtech. Something that Avo didn’t know about.

That was a good thing. Until the matter with Ninth Column was made clearer, some knowledge should remain siloed between them. What he didn’t know, Ninth Column also didn’t know. At least, that was his working theory right now.

+Gonna make my way up that bridge,+ Draus said. +Twenty seconds. Less. You get in position beforehand. I’ll shoot first. Then, you send in the stiff. I’ll drop the location for exfil after. Make sure you peel out right after, you hear? Not runnin’ around eatin’ folk or peelin’ skin.+ She paused. +Your hunger’s back and it’s mighty loud, Avo. Sure you can’t do this with the Injector on?+

+Can you shoot well if a flood of regretful memories assaulted you? Every time you made a kill?+

+Just keep it zero and under control. Like before.+

He grunted. +Minute window?+

Draus chuckled. She clenched a trigger on her coldtech device. +A mite bit more, maybe.+

Thunder rumbled in the distance. No. Not thunder. Explosions. Gunfire. And a beat later, sirens.

He didn’t know what Draus had left for the Scalpers across the city, but he could feel a flood of ghosts choking the nearby lobbies already. The Nether traffic was increasing. The Scalpers were likely scrambling blindly right now, conflicting information and emergency alerts pinging their network, making them wonder if the attack was focused on them or elsewhere.

Anything that put the enemy on the back foot was worth it.

As Walton once said, much of conflict was inflicting chaos on your target while enforcing desired order on one’s environment.

A grim thought followed. Was Green River an emissary to deliver upon him chaos, or just part of the environment, being arranged into place?

Pushing the enforcer through the holographic perimeter, Avo followed at a distance, the wisp-thin chains of his blood extending, but unbroken.

REND CAPACITY: 3%

Already his Hell was filling. Barely had he begun to strain. It was growing ever-harder to ignore the impatience burning within him, yearning to build upon his circle of Hells. Strange how a mere week ago, his new gifts filled him with savage euphoria. Now, despite possessing gifts absolute and divine, all he did was suffer his deficiencies.

What little chance stood the echoes of fading satisfaction against the hunger of the present?

Behind, drones tracked his puppet, the shine of their optics still locked to him. Ahead, the path festered with moving bodies and gawking wagers. At street level, the pathways were lined with decay kiosks lined with mem-codes and haptic advertisements. The shine of the upper levels bled over the lip of the deck above, but only barely. Those walking these depths were harried to make their way up.

The only ones that stayed lingered against the cool metal of the walls, joy fiends sagging against trails of piss and refuse, smiling at nothing, wasting away to sheets of skin molded upon embrittled bone.

Across the session, Draus was efficiency in motion. He had no idea when or how she was already up two levels, only that she managed without drawing much attention to herself. Cast down from her former station she might be, the skills she claimed wrestling against the closing jaws of death were not so easily stripped.

Not without the utter ruination of her mind itself.

+Almost in position,+ she said. He doubled his pace upon her conveyance. The pedestrians parted wide as the corpse within the rig stomped through. Avo trailed behind, blending as best he could, savoring the taste of apprehension and fear pouring free from unprotected minds.

The path cleared for his corpse. From his Whisper, he watched as two Scalpers moved down the steps to intercept, minds already fed with knowledge, prudent portents pressing their guns to the ready and their path to descend. Accompanying them came two dagger-shaped drones, twelve feet long, gauss barrels spinning to action.

In Avo’s cog-feed, he watched as the distance between him and the knot trickled from fifty feet down to thirty. People were fleeing past him now. Running around as a flood would part against a mountain. Masked by the flow of bodies, he altered his holocoat to paint him in hues of monochrome.

Now, it looked as if three of Conflux's number were in play. Still suicidal. Still reckless. More acceptable.

His puppet moved ahead.

The Scalpers descended, twin drones taking point, the enforcers drawing up the rear.

Above, the patrollers of the knot continued their revels, their senses blunted to all that was happening, all that was to come.

+In place,+ Avo said. +Ready to tear into them. When you’re ready.+

A flash of light folded across the upper left corner of his sight. For the first time in over a week, Avo fired his Celerostylus. In a fraction of a heartbeat, the roar of gauss fire followed. Her first four shots deliberately struck wide, but her last sank through the shells of the descending drones, tungsten needle tugging micro-materials and armor plating out in a concomitant eruption.

Avo flung his puppet around the corner. With a twitch of his fingers, the dead enforcer’s arms spun up, gauss-repeater primed from his left, fusion burner building up in the right. The Scalpers, to their credit, fired back and shot true.

Some of their flechettes slipped under the corpse’s armpit, tearing through the localized thinness. Blood plumed. A flap of flesh came free. Machinery sparked. The rest rang against the rig, cracking the reinforced alloys and jolting the meat within.

Alive, the enforcer would have been driven back by the impacts. Driven forward at an impossible pace by a Heaven? The flechettes were the ones that succumbed.

Avo forced the corpse’s left hand to close. The repeater rattled. Shots pinged and cracked against the enforcers. Their exoskeletons spared them early deaths but not from losing their footing.

It also failed to protect them from new threads of blood slicing out toward them. Thinner than threads, Avo slipped his newest limbs into the cracks of his foes’ armor. Deeper still he plunged, his needle-tipped ichor worming past folds of clothing, coiling into flesh.

This was something that Kae inspired and recommended; the collapse of a delicate system rather than the destruction of the whole. More damage for less Rend. He didn’t need to slice and rip and smash everything they touched. Sometimes, all he needed to do was reach into someone's veins and pop their brain vessels.

REND CAPACITY: 11%...

THAUMIC CYCLER: 274 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [217]

Within the Scalpers, blood called to blood and they shuddered. Fragments of tungsten burst through their brains as they shuddered, their gunfire ceasing, their seizures hidden as Avo consolidated his grasp on them. In an instant, his control widened, and he found new sacks of flesh to ply his influence.

Suddenly, his Conflux puppet wasn’t alone. He had it celebrate by firing its fusion burner up into the air.

Across the session, Draus, synced to his mind, ducked down and closed her eyes. He did the same.

And then, a cleaving spire of bright and blindness stripped sight from all unfortunate enough to be gazing out into the open air.