Godclads

Chapter 7-6 A Necessary Wound

“Captain! Captain! He is dead. You will be my second now. If he… You should follow my commands better if you wish to survive to claim glory. One more district. One more and they break!”

-Instrument Lorea Greatling to Captain Jelene Draus, The Battle of Orphan’s Stand, Fourth Guild War

7-6

A Necessary Wound

The aftermath came, and Avo found himself exiled from thought. Coherence rose free from him like how steam sought the firmament, fleeing from his mind even in the nest that was his Soul. His Heaven was speaking to him, but he did not hear, for he was not present in spirit or focus.

Typical traumas did not follow one across the thresholds of mortality, but the wound inflicted upon Avo burned like an unhealing wound. From it, he bled in spirit and ego, the enormity lifting up immortal scars within him, parting the Avo who was from the one that will follow upon his resurrection.

Ghouls did not grieve, and grief, in turn, never came. He did not weep from in the material and the immaterial, he possessed not the means to shed tears. Again and again, the fact of his inhumanity was proven, but this time, something finally struck bedrock.

For all the humanity missing inside Avo, he remained defined by personhood. Personhood molded by code and nurture, a prison-vehicle fit for a creature mutilated in mind and meat that was made a monster by ingrained malice, and now made more by a greater desire for mastery; to be a worthier student, to be a better Necro, to serve his father’s code.

A code now shattered, at the hands of his father no less.

On the periphery of his notice, he thought Kae had come down to gaze upon him. Her questions were punctuated by mind-damage, but also worry. Like his Heavens, she went ignored. His sense of self felt slick to the clutches of his mind. Broken in places ineffable, Avo, missing the feedback of a physical body, existed dreamless in the womb of unreality.

It was a pleasure, to be without thought.

What was respite, besides the absence of strain?

But what was time, though, if not inexorable?

RESURRECTION - 100%

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

DOMAIN RESPAWN [ERROR!]

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 299 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [242]

LOADING PHANTASMICS…

Reality shuddered, but this time Avo willed it to still. Capitulating to his will, his Soul attempted to interpret the ineffable desires of its host. He wanted to stay pardoned from the world. To return meant to face truths and pains within screaming flesh, but in his thoughtlessness, he had not attuned to the pace of his resurrection, rendering him too late to linger.

From the nearest pool of blood, he rematerialized, his new self overlapping with that of his corpse. The taste of copper assailed his senses; the flavor was a spice, awakening the engine that was his hunger. His cog-feed was a kaleidoscope of screaming mem-data as he clawed, digging through a compact jungle of sinew and tissue, the path to freedom caged by lengths of bone.

Faintly, he could hear someone calling his name. He ignored them. He ignored everything but his emancipation.

Unexistence had been bliss. This was like a trap.

Avo had enough of prisons. Of any kind. He wasn’t going to stay. He needed to choose for himself.

Around him, blood heeded his unspoken command, his reach sinking into the Domain. Petals of gleaming ichor hardened into fans around him. They opened with a thought. The matter of his confinement shredded, peeling into expanding fans in a blossom of gore.

A newborn hatched from the mangled egg that was his former corpse, Avo stumbled back into the world, his mind gasping as it twisted between flashes of coherence and incomprehension. Details and information speared into his mind as ghosts danced across his cog-feed.

His Phys-Sim traced impact trajectories through his head.

Draus was holding her wrist out at him. Why was she doing that? Lines of text played as his Metamind tried to calm his confusion; there was a projectile launcher in her wrist. An implant.

She was pointing a gun at him.

Behind her, Green River and Kae were standing, backs straight, eyes fixed on his stumbling form, like hunters tracking a wild animal. A brush of wind flowed in from beyond their apartment door. A shadow slithered. A flash of someone with a gun passed.

Avo looked down at his hands and blinked. Struggling to bind his drifting thoughts, he felt his gaze fall to strips of flesh swaying from his blood-soaked body like sanguine garlands.

“Avo,” Draus said. Her voice was clear, cast from her throat with a presence; a weight.

It struck his attention like a jab.

His focus slashed across her like the swing of a blade. Behind her, Kae stumbled back, toppling onto the sofa. Green River’s fox swam into her skin before spilling over her person, the now animated creature taking on a painted quality, shrouding her in a sheen of an anomalous tapestry. Draus remained as she always did, a pillar until she decided to ape the qualities of lightning.

There they stood, a snapshot in time like parted phrases of a moon: the prey; the wary predator; the warrior pure.

“Avo!” Her second call was deeper. Harsher. This time, she demanded his focus. “That you in there, consang?”

For a stretch that could have lasted from a second to a minute, he just stared at her. In the ambiance of his mind, his Morality Injector struggled to bottle the creature that raged within him, with so many around him behaving like prey.

All except for the Regular.

The nature of a hunter was different from that of a victim. Though they were composed of flesh and nourishment, even Avo’s basest self knew which to target for easy feeding, and which to avoid, for even victory might cost him a life.

“Kae,” Draus said, speaking to the Agnos without turning, “what’d you see when you went in?”

“E-everything was f-fine in… uh… in structure. But he… he didn’t respond.”

“It’s the Strix,” Green River said, her frown on her face dark and weary. “Fucking half-strand just had to play his games.”

And of all the things to restore some semblance of control to the ghoul, it was the insult that shoved the pieces of his straying mind together. Broken though the idol of his worship was, an idol it remained. “Talk about him like that. Do it. I’ll… drink you from your eyes.”

Green River tensed. The fox was more watercolor–a living tattoo–than solid armor. Across her flesh it was as if calligraphic ink was dancing upon her, and pooled at her feet, the nature of her shadow twisted from that of a woman to something far more immense.

A chuckle pierced Avo’s attention again. Draus just laughed. She lowered her gun. She approached.

“What are you doing, Jelene,” Green River hissed.

“Calm down, River,” Draus said, the intensity leaving her body, “he’s still with us.”

“He’s–”

“Bit cracked in the mind right now.” The Regular snorted. “Big fuckin’ whoop. Just makes him more like the rest of us.”

“If he’s feral–”

“I’ve seen feral. Feral don’t stand around starin’ at floors and shit. Feral just wanna eat. Ain’t that right, Avo?”

She said his name again. That was his name. That was the name that Walton gave him. Walton. Walton was dead. Had been dead for years. Had forced Avo to null him again. Had… other versions of himself?

The taste of what he now knew was bitter, knowing that he never understood his father, knowing that his father had used him in an act of unmatched violation.

They were supposed to spare the choiceless. But he wouldn’t let Avo choose. What kind of suicide was it where one wielded another as an unwilling instrument? And in the end, there was nothing but satisfaction and oblivion.

Pride and assurance.

It was like Walton–the node–had thought itself doing Avo a favor.

“He made me do it,” Avo said. “Made me break him.”

Draus tilted her head. “Your father?”

“No. No. Father’s dead. Still dead. I think. Can’t be sure anymore. Can’t be sure of anything.” A growl slipped free from his throat. His claws shot up, his sense of self fleeting. He was trying to catch the admission like a bug. The tips of his fingers dug through roughened skin to needle parting meat. “Didn’t want to do it. I didn’t!”

“Hey,” Draus said, holding both her hands up, “hey. I kno–I can see that. I ain’t doubting you. So, why don’t you go sit down and you can tell me ‘bout it. Or be silent.” She paused. “Your choice.”

Choice. Avo’s hand quivered. Within him, he heard faint laughter echoing through the canals housing his blood.

ONLY CHOICE IS YOURS! ONLY CHOICE IS YOURS! NO ONE ELSE IS GOD! GOD ABOVE ALL! GOD IS ALL!

His head turned. Draus froze. Avo spun looking for a voice he knew that couldn’t have come from the outside. Reaching down into his Heaven, he felt another presence reach back, the faintness of another intelligence brushing his. It did not struggle against him. It couldn’t. It was a part of him, but also itself.

A slave that dreamed within the confines of his ontology. The Sangeist was dreaming inside him. Dreaming and awaking in bouts of delirium, its voice a primordial baritone, cast down across the annals of history, something antediluvian: ageless and omnipresent, leashed to his being.

Chains binding chains binding chains.

Was he but a link? Was their other purpose to his being beyond serving as puppet or pawn; an unwanted carrier to a divine prize?

“Avo?” Draus asked. A trickle of blood ran down her nose. She barely looked at it. Behind her, Kae touched her eyes, confused as to why she was weeping blood. A trail of something dark spilled from Green River. Slowly, the Sang looked up.

In the aquarium, all the fish swayed upside down, their bodies rocked in a post-mortal cradle of shivering blood.

“It’s awake,” he replied. “Heaven. Sangeist. It’s awake. Talking to me.”

Naked geysers of alarm erupted from the Agnos’ broken thoughtstuff. “That’s… that’s impossible–the gods are–”

“Avo,” Draus said, her expression heavy with uncertainty, “can you… turn that off.”

Avo blinked. He stared at the aquarium, the blood trickling from the faces of the others, at how the flow in his veins was dancing in reverberating echoes. It took less than thought for him to release his grip on the Heaven.

REND CAPACITY: 1%

Something unseen when slack in reality. A quiet skirmish against the laws of existence culminated.

At least for a time.

Avo stared at Draus, and realized that the gore that encased him had unspooled from his blood what resembled tungsten wiring. In weaves and webs, they expanded his presence, a nucleus to the chaos. “Didn’t… didn’t realize.”

Draus nodded. She took a step back. “It’s alright. You good now?”

A stake of silence was driven into him again. “I don’t know if I ever was? Don’t know what I was? Don’t know anything.” He touched his neck, feeling his claws click along hardening scabs. These, at least, belonged to him without question. “My diet is broken. Or not. Don’t know. Can’t… can’t tell anymore.”

A flash of confusion spread across Draus face. Her forehead creaked. Like lines before an opening. Lines before the spill of organs. A Scalper had made the same expression she did in Burner’s Way, but theirs was a perplexity at the suddenness of death.

“He didn’t give me a choice,” Avo continued. “I… chose. I told him I wanted to save him. Didn’t want to null him. But he made me. Made me do it. Made me feel it. Feel his mind die.” A secondhand death using a secondhand death. Was the trauma meant to increase the severity of the effect?

“It is for preparation,” Green River said. When she spoke now, it was bare of any twists or games. Her attention was fixed, like that of a fox cornered by a tiger. To flee would be more her liking, but they were both predators, each to each, and the idea of dying in a final exhalation of violence was not beyond her. “For when you must do it again, I believe.”

“Again?” Avo said. A snarl rumbled out from the bottom of his lungs. He understood. He didn’t want to face it. His father had left a seed.

He wanted Avo to know what it was like to kill him.

“Interview,” Avo said. His mind felt battered, and the more he allowed it to simmer, the more it was likely to boil. He needed a task at hand. Something to subsume his focus and spur him toward momentum.

The node had left him something. Inside the mind of the Ori-Thaum turncoat. Resources. Information. He needed to see more. Perhaps it might sunder his sense of self entirely, but he had to see. To understand more.

A desperate part of who he was screamed for him to tear the memories from his mind–abandon the pain like debris and return himself to comparative bliss. Yet, he could not. Would not. The node had warped the totality of his self-perception.

Who was he now that his father had broken their code of virtue? Who was he to be with that which burned inside him?

He was too far above the banalities of his kindred to collapse back into beasthood; more than purity, his hunger had also grown, his palette yearning for greater prey. Even should he want to descend into baseness, his tastes wouldn’t allow it.

Why should the beast be offered rodents and vermin when it has known the flesh of gods?

“River,” Avo said. “River.” He was moving toward the Sang now. He didn’t even notice until he was halfway across the room and Draus’ fingers were locked around his arm. He didn’t look at her. She could kill him. She could let him go. It didn’t matter. Death had no hold on him. He would not be deterred. “Set up interview. Want to see her mind. Want to see what he left me.”

The Sang frowned. “This is unwise.”

“Unwise not to know,” Avo said.

His patience was a frayed lattice. If the Sang would resist him any further, he would kill her, and take what he needed from her ghost. Draus couldn’t stop him from that. The other Sang? They could serve as kindling. Kae needed to be kept alive. Missing a mind. He needed someone to show him how to grow his Soul. Keep growing. Outgrow the cage. Outgrow the threats.

“Tell me you can muster up a stable dive right now?” Draus said. He turned to look at her. “Tell me, and I’ll call you a liar. You’re a mess. Fine. But you jack into her mind, you do that while stayin’ zero. Not whatever this is.” She leaned closer. It would have been easy to construct a bladed tendril, to drive it through her eye. “That killin’ stench is on you again. Is your–”

“Injector’s fine.” It wasn’t. He could feel it straining. Something left it damaged earlier when his Heaven was speaking. “It’s me. It’s just me.”

A beat passed. She was studying him. “Alright. Alright.” She swallowed, the accretion of her mind spinning. “How ‘bout we all… get out of here and do somethin’ useful, yeah?”

“Useful?”

“There’s a war that could use more fuel on the fire. Maybe some huntin’ will lean things out for you. Like it does for me. Have Kae check your Frame along the way. See what she can make of you.”

At once, both person and beast within Avo went silent. In the depths of his blood, something vast and alien chittered with growing greed. “What kind of hunting?”