Godclads

Chapter 7-7 Apotheosis III

“There is no more excuse. There is no more time. The remainder of my patience has been expended. I am done waiting for him to learn sense.

Abrel. I know you still speak to your brother. Spare me the surprise, you know my capabilities, daughter of mine. He might think himself capable of hiding from me. He isn’t. Until now, tracking him down was merely not worth my time.

But I cannot risk his… childishness undoing the redemption of our family. Especially after the mistakes left by your mother.

Go down to the Warrens. Take whatever you need. Find him. Bring him back. I tell you this not as a father, but as your ruling Authority.

Deny me and I’ll send Vator. And we both know what he’ll do to Jhred, don’t we? Wouldn’t want that.

-Authority Uthred Greatling to his daughter, Instrument Abrel Greatling

7-7

Apotheosis III

There was a time once, in a world that was both recent and yore, before the falling rains were slaved to the powers of palliation, that New Vultun reveled in vice.

Walton spoke of those times as bitter fables, the blankness in his voice befitting a son who had lost a parent to some manner of degenerative disease.

“Those were days of honey,” Walton said. “Joy flowing so free that the veins of the stick grew thick, that aeros drifted and crashed, that with every hour of work, some Guilds offered rightful recompense in return, not in the form of currency but pleasure, by the milliliter.

Before the weight of the rash stripped the normalcy of human contact from society and handed the keys of childbirth to wombs of science and steel, there was a savage epoch that preluded the ghouls.

A short peace amidst all the fighting; little more than a collective hallucination.

Perhaps those who lived then thought if they just loved, lusted, and lingered in place long enough that they could clog the avarice of divinity.

Strange how hope made fools of billions. Stranger still how, after the rash stripped the privilege of physical intimacy away from the living, the people continued to kneel, placated by what meager enjoyments the city still had to offer.

Or maybe they were hopeless instead. Afraid. Given reason, the Guilds could break the will of the FATELESS on a whim. One lamb or a billion. It made no difference. When the storm spoke and the ground shook, the prey were made sacrifices.

Some laws ran deeper than contracts or agreements.

When the Guilds willed, the existence submitted.

The rabble should find themselves fortunate that they have any bread and circuses at all.

Might just be why the powers that be leave the Crucibles and Circuits untouched. Fresh blood. Fresh blood and fresh thrills for the lowest joy fiend to the hidden deviants playing voyeur in the heights of their personal Elysiums.

Whoever they were, tonight was going to be a bad night to be in a Crucible, because Avo was feeling a certain way. A certain way he couldn’t quite put into words. The wrongness infesting his mind yearned to be expressed.

In summation: he sought another vessel to fill with his damage, and there was no shortage of volunteers in the gutters. It was about time someone put the Crucibles to better use. Butchering the helpless could only stay interesting for so long.

“I… I checked them again. Haven’t… haven’t heard anything. They… they seem to be normal. Just merging.”

Shards of his scattered focus slid back together. Avo noticed Kae again.

RESURRECTION - 25%

He had slowed the pace of his return, his ability to alter the root functions of his Frame far easier with the vacancy plaguing his being. Outside the bubble of his Soul, his corpse lay unmoving in an aerovec. Kae and Draus were with him, the latter taking them to a place where he could put “hurt to purpose.”

It took no effort on her part to invest his attention in the butchery of Scalpers and Conflux alike. Those of the Syndicate made for good killing; their Essence was fuel, their struggle was practice, and their minds were canvases ripe for the sullying.

For now, though, his awareness remained dull of anything but the craft. He offered no response to Kae as he lowered the extra Galeslither and two Sangeists he claimed into the in-facing fires of his nucleus.

Drawn to his grasp, the Heavens tumbled toward the blazing singularity that was the nucleus of his power. No voice came from the Sangeists as blood boiled away into eldritch scars–sigils marring the codes of reality. Much the same, the triplet steeds of the Galeslither gave no final neigh and breathed nothing of wind nor thunder.

Silence ruled, and along its reign, Avo and Kae watched, waiting for something to finally break the laws.

RESURRECTION - 36%

Time passed. As did patience.

Dragged the drifting isles of his mind and held himself together. Perhaps it was the fate of all Godclads to be subsumed by a superliminal madness. But if so, the Agnos spoke nothing of it.

“Said I could make a Hell from Heaven,” Avo asked.

“Y-Yes,” Kae answered. The constant flow of the tears bridging her between her False Heaven extended further toward the nearness of his Soul. She looked upon the pattern of the Galeslither first. They existed here like two forlorn beings; she a broken guest to a growing reality, him, the genius loci–unable to separate where this realm began and he ended. “All it takes is a command. A… a thought. You should connect the… the sigils to… to your Galeslither and… and command it to make something op-inverted. The Meta-Fac… it interprets…” She paused. “I… I think that might be what’s talking to you…”

The quietness of her voice lent weight to her fear.

“Thought it wasn’t alive. Thought this was all tied to me.”

“It… shouldn’t be… no-no other Frames are like this.” A beat passed. “But no other Frames… Frames are like yours. We… we will have to be… be very–uh, vigilant.”

Her theory sank somewhere between the clefts within him as he shrugged onward to his task. The symmetry of the sigils paired themselves to those twinned within his Heaven of Air, and of the two patterns, the Domain of space inverted itself, twisting away into entropy.

ASSEMBLING HELL

HELL - [SECOND CIRCLE] - GALESLITHER

  DOMAIN: (AIR/ENTROPY)

  THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 55 THAUM/c

  REND VENTS ONLINE

HELL - (SECOND CIRCLE) - GALESLITHER

CANON: HALT OF THE PASSING - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW CREATE A POCKET OF SPACE THAT DRAINS VECTORS OF MOMENTUM UNTIL THE NECESSARY REND IS BALANCED - THIS CANON IS ABSOLUTE

DAEMON: IF THE POCKET IS OVERFILLED BEFORE IT CAN BURST, THE RESULTING RUPTURE WILL BIRTH AN ANATHEMA OF RUIN TO SERVE AS THE MASTER’S ANATHEMA; THE ANATHEMA CANNOT BE SLAIN AND MUST BE STARVED

“It’s… it’s always the opposite of the prime Domain that is… is made entropic,” Kae said, gesturing as a concentric wound opened beneath the Galeslither. It was as if a funnel drawing the shadow of the Heaven above downward, creating a twisted reflection in opposition. “So–so the prime concept in reality that… that is being usurped remains… remains unimpeded.”

Yes. It would be twisted a subreality if he warped in contradictory waves. But that begged a question. “What if another Godclad vented Rend. Vented into blood.”

“Backlash, most likely.” Kae pondered the question a moment longer. “But… but if the canons are not affected–then–then maybe not.”

If Avo was still rooted in flesh, he would have grunted in acknowledgment.

It was easy to just be here. Distracted. Without thoughts. He let her guide him further.

“This… this should allow you to use the Galeslither,” Kae said. “For… for a reasonable duration, at least. They’re equal. Opposite. If… if you exert the scale of your miracles and their vulgarity, it will–uh–still make your Rend climb but… but… You know… the Rendsinks are really useful for a few hours. Your Hell is comparatively faster to fill. B-but more efficient! It will also let you catch… uh… contain things. Eats away… momentum.”

He gave her no reply. The desire to communicate did not come to him, so he let it pass, and let her speak to the void. Between her words, he found himself listening still for the voice that lurked within him, his attention locked on the Sangeist, the Galeslither.

HEAVEN - [GALESLITHER]

  DOMAIN: (AIR/SPACE)

  THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 55 THAUM/c

“You can’t use this at the same time as your San–Sangiest. Heavens with… with overlapping Domains can be paired. And Heaven-shifting will… will need you to bind them to… to a new Thaumic Cycler, as I said. But changing is easy. You… you just need to die, and then come back.”

How absurd she sounded. If those words were spoken to him a mere month ago, he would have thought himself speaking to a joyfiend.

“Its use comes as naturally as the Sangeist?”

“Ye-yes,” Kae said. “Heavens are like… ontological implants. The… the Frame is bound to your Nous… lightens… lightens the load on your cognition.”

That also explained why wielding his Sangeist came so naturally to him. The blood was more than just a muscle, more than just transplanted limbs when he called upon the Domain. The Sangeist was animated by his literal will, his every thought a sacred commandment issued from himself, to himself.

Walton had told him once of a saying. Something about no man was an island. But here Avo was, a reality unto himself.

But his father’s words and oaths were as dust by this point. What was another decayed lie from the past?

Shifting reach now to feed his Sangeists the one he had long used, he brought forth the sigils and considered the paths of his Domains.

“Is there a pre-written path?” Avo asked. “Known enhancements. Developments from before?”

His inquiry made the Agnos pause once more. “Thaumaturgy… it’s like we’re carving structure into reality… the engineering of ontology is… is art and empiricism both. So… it’s not like there are blueprints but… but… but we do have an Onta-Sim!”

“Onta-Sim?”

Kae’s pedestal bobbed enthusiastically amidst the shine of his unreality. She was nodding. “Most Agnos… we have a phantasmic. Comparative designs brought from Fallwalkers or claimed from… from recovered Frames. Wait! M-maybe your root has that as well? In-built? Check! Check!”

Herded by her enthusiasm, he descended again. Data pelted his mind in waves of raw information from the foundations of the eldritch mechanism. Again, the dive this time came far easier to Avo. The data seemed to flow through his cracks like water, passing through him as he passed through it.

Interfacing with the depths, he issued a request and a response followed. Something flashed in his subreality. An overlay. A shroud.

As he refloated himself back into the broadness of his being, he found a transparent lattice lining transparent structures around his Sangeist. Kae’s exuberance was of tertiary concern, though how she zipped and streaked around the presently simulated Heaven reminded him of how a moth was drawn to a flame.

For someone who was watching the easy automation of her entire discipline, she seemed far too joyous.

“Look at it!” she cried, her thoughts pealing loud like a chorus of bells. “Just… just look! It’s giving recommendations. Showing outlines of changes. Builds!”

True to her words, the extensions looked akin to a layer of new bones; components, and augments to be added; changes to be made toward bettering the architecture of the Heaven as a whole. It occurred to Avo then that he was, in a sense, an autonomous grafter working to strengthen the corpses of gods long broken. With such an understanding, not even the ravaged state of his ego could stop him from feeling the low ebb of satisfaction.

Again, the relative pain of his imagined self was nothing to the absolute pleasure of being able to inflict change on the world. Such was the flavor of his heart, anyhow.

Little wonder why the Guilders saw existence as scarcely more than a sandbox.

Greeting his Sangeist the growing lattice took no heeding from him to begin its reassembly. He was the Frame. He was the Soul. He was the reach of the light and the shine of all that existed here. With absolute sovereignty, words were not needed, only a vector of want paired with the cost incurred.

Both Domains of the Sangeist flashed, blood and matter aglow with the burn of change. The lattice whirled around the Sangeist, expanding it in width as mem-data bled in lines, the increase of the Heaven’s mass growing incrementally.

Remembering how he blindly asked for impossible canons during his engagement at Burner’s Way, he refocused himself on what he wanted: damage. To inflict harm. To break the world and feed on the supple.

A passing thought recognized his desires as a reversion to simplicity, that he was defaulting toward a more predatory state to gather comfort. He knew this. Understood it. Didn’t care.

All thinking brought to him was more dissociation. It was hard to focus on what he was now that… that it had been broken.

He just wanted to play the ghoul for a while. The idealized form of one.

In all his life, he never had the chance to be the apex predator his kind was meant to be. Now, though, he was going to savor the dream. He wondered how his brothers would feel, with him the avatar of all they failed to achieve, and them, bound for eternal use and slaughter.

A skein made from threads of translucence coiled into existence around the topmost section of the Heaven where the spire was. The improvement of a single pattern increased the Sangeist’s mass to sixty thaums.

Still, it was an additional physical construct he could mimic. He had wanted to mimic the make of a locus for some time now, and with the two Sangeists he subsumed, he had two of each domain to expend.

CANON: ALCHEMIZATION (II) - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW SUBSUME AND MIMIC THE STRUCTURE AND EFFECTS OF TWO PIECES OF PHYSICAL MATTER; BOTH FRAGMENTS OF MATTER WILL BE SUBSUMED AND THEIR QUALITIES WILL BE CHANNELED

He seeded another egg into his canon of matter. But this time, instead of demanding that it grant him another pattern to store, he yearned for flexibility.

CANON: REMEMBRANCE OF MATTER - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW PERMANENTLY REMEMBER ALL PATTERNS OF PHYSICAL MATTER IT HAS SUBSUMED; THAUMIC MASS OF THIS CANON WILL GROW WITH EACH PATTERN PERMANENTLY STORED

STORED PATTERNS

  “TUNGSTEN”

He watched as the thaumic mass of his Heaven spiked. The Sangeist was sixty-five now. A faint cage fused along the wolf-like jaws of the spire as if protecting the patterns from leaking.

“Why is the cost decreasing?” Avo asked. “Was twenty for alchemization. Other Sangeist isn’t modified.”

Kae looked upon his design and frowned. “You’re… the Meta-Fac is building… building a growing canon… Enhancing. The… the weight it’s exerting on reality is variable.”

“Confusing.”

“It’s not arithmetic, Avo,” Kae laughed. “I… I remember my… my master saying the same thing.” She hummed. “Some Heavens… they–they even lose weight from certain canons. Gets more subtle, if you can conceive of such an improvement. You’re adding… adding additional part. More but… but not any… worse in vulgarity.”

Which was when her attention turned to the widening lattice growing around the base of the Sangeist. Lines of unseen armor ridged it with rippling vascularity. A haemokinetic replica of a spine extended down the back of the tower like the base of an exo-rig. Additional supports to the weight it was to exert on reality.

The cost of such a boost was high. Higher than any canon that Avo asked for.

And necessary.

He remembered dragging the Rendsinks, burning both synapses, and drinking Rend to see the task done.

So long as his canon of Haemokinesis was tied to his physical feats, a weak link lingered within the system.

He seeded the Sangeist again, his Soul carving a deeper gash into his Domain of Blood, the sigil growing truncated by a crimson wound.

CANON: HAEMOKINESIS (II) - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW ACCELERATE AND MANIPULATE ALL BLOOD THEY ARE IN CONTACT WITH; SPEED AND FORCE WILL BE AUGMENTED BY EACH TON OF BLOOD CONTROLL–

CANON: HAEMOKINESIS (III) - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW ACCELERATE AND MANIPULATE ALL BLOOD THEY ARE IN CONTACT WITH; SPEED AND FORCE WILL BE MULTIPLIED BY EACH TON OF BLOOD CONTROLLED

The new requirements of his designed creation lit the flames of anticipation within him. This was what he desired. What he wanted.

He wanted to spread the damage. Here was what allowed it.

All it cost him was two hundred more thaums.

HEAVEN - [SANGEIST]

  DOMAIN: (BLOOD/MATTER)

  THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 265 THAUM/c

WARNING! REND VENT EFFICIENCY LOW

HEV/HELL - 30:1

ADJUST MASS–

“No,” Avo replied. The system suggested. He decided. When he was done… realigning himself, he would seek the Fallen Heaven in Burner’s Way with his Rendsinks, and see this ascent made complete.

“Well,” Kae chuckled, a slight nervousness to her tone, “I… I suppose you’ll be doing a lot of–of damage. But… but you’ll maybe have… a few… few seconds–”

“It’s enough,” Avo replied. “Not looking for fight. Looking to hur–”

“HURT,” his Sangeist said, its form rumbling as it finished his sentence for him.

Silence return. But within him, Avo felt another presence, another nous crawling to full consciousness.

“DREAMED… DREAMED I WAS BROKEN… BUT RETURNED… MORE THAN WHOLE.”

And with that, his Heaven began to laugh, its form evolving, its jaws opening as it yawned loud for the first time in eons.