Godclads

Chapter 8-1 The Shape of Worship

The old cults had various terms to describe the process of Oblation: The act of creating a Heaven.

It took eons–years upon years, death upon death. Sacrifices and feats fed over to the old gods by post-mortem messengers along an unending pipeline of death, and through these building blocks, the Soul appears to have… accumulated certain metaphysical scabbing–ontological scarstuff that can be used to grow the tissues of new subrealities.

The Symphonists of the Seraphims referred to the act as Hecatombing. Much as Highflame operates today with their transgressors, the forebears they usurped practiced a hyper-regimented form of brainwashing and mass sacrifice to fuel and shape their gods.

Often, these would result in backlashes. Fallen Heavens formed naturally during that past era due to contradictions–uh, inconsistencies between the functions of Heavens in the lore, more like–not a hard thing to achieve considering the ignorance that pervaded society back then. Thaumaturgy really doesn’t need to obey science but without a thing to root itself too–

Oh, sorry. Rambling.

Anyway, I think that, if this plan is successful… if we can implement the thaumic cycler into a geometry-variable demiplane of time, perhaps we can ease the creation of additional Ontologics for further study…

-Agnos Kae Kusande, “Project Godshaper”

8-1

The Shape of Worship

It was uncanny how fast the winds of desire could shift, but strangeness was becoming all too common a companion for Avo.

With but a thought, the spearships heeded his commands to descend, and the cages of prisoners withdrew their paralyzing teeth from the flesh of aching backs. Released, the five hundred survivors huddled close to the edges of the ships. Most amongst them were pale in color and sheened with sweat, so weak in their constitution that a sprint might have seen them dead, let alone a run from hunters equipped with the firepower to thread clean wounds through steel.

Landing one after another in a line, the ships formed rows, two by two, with the last one inching beyond the premises. Prisoners flocked out to stand before the cascade of ruins that once was the Ultimart, not knowing this was to be the pen of their slaughter. Like aimless cattle they strayed out from their slave ships, some openly weeping, overjoyed to be striding upon still land again, some drifting in a daze, mind decapitated from the flesh, meat shambling ahead of shattered minds.

Those incurred the lust of the beast the most. It hungered for them. Desired to strip them of dignity and lather its meals with the spices of torment. The children and frail called to it first, then onto those possessed of more corpulence.

The creature’s wants were a matter of pain to it. Nothing of taste or caloric need.

Avo scoffed. It was pitiful.

He had guided the ships down in the form of the Galeslither, the manifestation of his Heaven spiking his guts with the thrill of their awe. They knew what he was by power. They were cowed by it; feared it; and from the passing of stray thoughtstuff drifting into his mind, were dependent upon it back when they lived in Fallwalker enclaves.

He heard it especially from those parted from the bulk of the refugees, those broken, yet still active.

Still making choices, choosing to pry at the choking brambles of fate with little force they could muster.

The man that implored him on the ship stood one such deviant. He, and perhaps six others.

From the exposed waters of his mind, Avo sipped knowledge and knew him to be Req Tnaqin. Former tribesman of the Gulclines, its jagged gorges extending past Sangshan’s ever-rising borders, just a few dozen miles outside the Silken Spiral, nest city and No-Dragon trade hub.

Of a nomadic tradition born in the wake of the Godsfall, he lived as his parents did, plying their trade as a weavehead–one with the mental fortitude to carry experimental bioforms in their skulls across the slavering eldritch teeth that gnawed beneath the soils of the border.

He had twelve sisters, a time upon a time. Thirteen aunts. Five uncles. Grandparents even.

Then, on one routine walk, a package inside his sister’s head ruptured free, and the thing she was carrying emerged, understandably agitated.

After that, it was just him, and home wasn’t quite home anymore.

Req, along with all the others, was pain-shaped. They rang with a chill that blunted their thoughts, too hurt to fully feel, but unwilling to give in to the call of the void.

They strayed from the rest of the refugees, accepting their situation, but not cowed by it.

Not as much they were cowed by him.

As the scream of a passing aerovec sounded from the skies above–presence alight with Draus’ wards and Kae’s ruination–Avo scooped each of the remaining Scalper jocks out from their modules. Lashing their minds into submission with his lesser traumas, he lay them across the sundered ground.

Right ahead of the row of open ramps, facing the buried main entrance to the Ultimart, the Syndicate technicians lay, twitching and mumbling before all the gathered survivors, pried away from their drones and their network.

Beneath a Nether-scarred sky, in the festering gloom that sprawled leagues far, and leagues further unseen, the mob of refugees, desultory and destitute gathered. Beside the ruins of a collapsed theater, their forms were blurred by the basking glow of custom-installed neon, motifs of skull and bone flashing across their periphery.

It is not often a herd of lambs is offered the savage remains of a lion's meal.

Avo wondered if they would finally feed. And should they, could lambs take on the traits of wolves?

Truth be told, his own desires confused him. Surprised him. Inured to butchering the weak, he chased the ships like a nu-dog, looking to catch its bumper, and ride it to discover some ineffable new experience.

Upon boarding, however, he found it.

A cocktail simmered in the air. Hate. Fear. Loathing. Want. Worry. Hope. All of it smashing, blending, bleeding, billowing with the wind.

Gently, Avo sank a phantasmal talon into Req’s mind, binding himself as a passenger to the flat’s mind as he felt the man’s mixtureof emotions filter over. Unbecoming as voyeurism was, it added a flair to what Avo desired. A flavoring.

Stitching flows of wind into matter and sinew, he manifested again beside Req and the other few standing. They stumbled, a clash of curses and exclamations greeting him. A few backed away. Req stood, ignorant to the wants of his fellows, or the subtle subversive weight on his mind.

Req stayed and stared, his face a mask of wonder and uncertainty. “I–I. Owe you my thanks.”

Avo said nothing. Within him, the Woundshaper rumbled. “Thanks? He owes rightful blood and an eternal tithe of sacrifices from his bloodline.” The god scoffed. “Look upon these serfs and see their missing decorum. The simpleton thanks us! Thanks! Where is the offering? The oath? All manners lost.”

Avo took a step closer to the man. A few others shuffled. One tripped upon a severed arm, the limb rolling out from under their leg. The pop of an ankle could be heard. A cry followed by moaning and pain.

“Oh, joyous day: that one’s leg is broken. I believe this leaves us no choice but to put her down.”

The Woundshaper’s words went ignored.

For an uncomfortable few beats after, Avo just stared, listening to the survivors. For long he expected at least one of them to make a move on the Scalpers. To take revenge. Or maybe even flee into the darkness of the Warrens.

Instead, the meek and the young wept while the wary clustered themselves into groups, content to delude themselves with the warmth of numbers, not knowing that their assembly merely made them more convenient to butcher.

Untethered from his companions, however, was the matter of Req. “M-my name–” Req Tnaqin.

Avo grunted. “Know what you’re called.” Quietly, he reached down and picked up a sharp piece of plascrete–its length comparable to a crude shiv. Now, Req inched back, the jutting protrusion in his throat shifting.

Hm. Adam’s apple. Apple. Avo remembered biting into a few. He couldn’t imagine the fruit to be as delicious.

Avo offered him the shard. He blinked. He hesitated.

“Take the knife,” Avo said.

Req stared. He could choose not to. He could choose anything. So could the person across from you. Such was the problem of choice growing increasingly clearer to Avo. Choice begot choice, and also devoured them in the same decision.

In the end, the options one had were always limited by what little room was claimed or offered.

“You want me to kill them?” Req asked.

Avo leaned over, his helmet reflecting a scar of red in the pools of the flat’s eyes. “Want you to choose.”

Fingers shaking, the refugee nodded. A near-feral smile spread across his face.

It was, much like the frivolous exchanges of formalities between the Sang, a smokescreen. A facade. Req wanted to impress his benefactor, cloaking himself as a willing servant performing obedience. The fact he was to butcher his slavers helped, but that didn’t translate to pre-slaughter ecstasy or overflowing bloodlust.

He plucked the shard from Avo’s grasp. He turned. He turned and walked up to one of the Scalpers. His breath was hitched with growing tension, his lungs choking on air as his heart screamed to over a hundred beats. As he approached the Scalpers, he tried to shed his fear by digging at old wounds, trying to use trauma and flare anger.

He thought of the thing that emerged from the hole in his sister's skull, how it slithered with her corpse flopping behind as if half molted skin. He alone had survived that. He alone had been lucky.

Tonight, he was lucky again.

Lucky to be saved.

Lucky to be freed.

Lucky that all he needed to offer in return so far was a suggested murder.

The Scalpers screamed. Had been screaming and wailing this entire time. Animal noises. Broken syllables, their damaged minds trying to reassemble in time to remember language. He hadn’t noticed. Too focused on what he could do with the refugees. Truth given, the Syndicate thugs bored him to kill now. There wasn’t the thrill, and the notes their minds played upon greeting the final threshold of death had become a repetitive melody.

But through Req–in a different shell–Avo felt new sensations.

A man but half a step taller than five feet, Req found himself at face level with the jocks even as he approached. They knelt, some hugging themselves for comfort, the others staring off into the fracture in the Nether, eyes wet with envy for the mind-dead, for absent was their pain.

Req’s breath hitched. He pumped his fist several times, the sharp biting through the edge of his calloused palm. Images flashed over his eyes. Running. Weeping. Listening to the echoing cries of his family as the thing from his sister found a want for their teeth and bones.

He ran.

He ran alone.

Req Tnaqin was a coward. But he didn’t want to die. He really, truly didn’t want to die.

“F-fucker,” Req hissed, wrestling the rage he felt at himself outward. Avo blinked. Self-loathing was a potent stimulant. “Yo-you think you can’t just–hurt me and walk away?”

The Scalpers replied. Moaning.

Req sucked in a breath. He stood before the first of the jocks. Her hair played glimmering constellations in a shape of a nu-cat. A beloved pet, if the broken pieces of her memory served. “I said,” he lashed out, the swing sloppy and loose. It was as if his arm was being pulled at from two directions: stronger toward, weaker away.

The shard’s edge sliced through the paunch of her cheek, bounced off chipping teeth, and left a bouncing flap along her face. She reeled, toppled with a cry. Something came up inside Req. Sour strands came loose from his mouth as he struggled to mask his desire to vomit with a cough.

“Pathetic,” the Woundshaper sighed. “And you wish to spare him? To let him go if he does not finish? It would be more honor than his paltry being is worth to cycle within us eternally.”

“Us?”

“It is a turn of phrase.”

“Find another.”

Req’s heart felt like a stack of loose bricks as he uprighted himself. Turning around, his gaze first fell upon Avo, then to the others in the crowd.

A voice punched through. The cry of someone younger. Anger. “C’mon. Fuckin’... Stab the half-strand.”

“Yeah,” a woman said. “You… you already started…”

That got her a few laughs from the crowd. Ever malleable, amusement is.

Nodding to himself, Req swallowed. Reeling his arm back as if he was pulling something, he stepped forward, looking away at the last moment as his stab went off course, slicing through the Scalper’s brow.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” younger voice came again. From deep behind the gathered refugees, a limping Scaarthian youth with a knot of braided hair lumbered forward, his immense height hidden by his slouch and hobble. He had something in his hand–the severed limb one of the refugees popped their ankle on.

“Fuckin’ lowlanders never killed nothin’ fuck’s sake’s,” the boy muttered.

“I concur.”

Seeing the approach of the Scaarthian and fearing Avo’s disappointment, Req inhaled sharply and mustered the totality of his courage. The creature of his nightmares came to him then. An instant. He imagined he was holding onto his dead sister. He imagined stabbing the creature before it broke free, before it could slaughter his family.

“Die!” Req cried. Hand cupped behind the Scalper’s head, he forced his shiv into her left eye. So broken was her mind that she was still trying to recall how to lift her arms and push his hand away when he pushed harder. A satisfying jolt ran up his arm. The shard had met the softness of brain.

The girl was dead. The Scalper was dead.

Req’s family was dead.

Releasing the shiv as if it was poison, Req stumbled back and the Scaarthian pushed him aside, muttering a slurred demur at his slowness.

“This is how you fuckin’ kill a half-strand,” the Scaarthian wrapped his cudgel-thick fingers around the throat of one of the Scalpers. The girl choked. He brought the severed limb down. Gore speckled free, and with its rise, more cries came loose from the refugees turned mob.

Avo gasped. The eruption of their bloodlust was divine.

He turned and witnessed as they moved forward, as he finally discovered what his instincts were pulling him toward.

Catharsis. The feeling of consequential brutality. The beauty of symmetrical violence.

Men, women, children. Humans of all clades and makes, flat and not. They descended on the Scalpers with reckless abandon, snarled curses and shouts of rage shuddering free from steaming breaths.

Apart from them, a single note of crushing sadness poured down the link.

It was nectar.

It was sublime.

It was all Avo was missing when the node took his choice away.

He walked over to Req, enjoying the ambiance of the mob slaughtering and mutilating the Scalpers.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 432 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [407]

Sobbing, images ran through the refugee’s mind as he looked at the blood in his hands. Hands that soon became enshadowed by Avo’s encroach. A cold nail of pure dread bit deep into his guts. He looked up slowly, eyes wide, tears trailing. “I–I’m sorry.”

The beast licked its fangs.

The Woundshaper scoffed. “Kill him.”

“No,” Avo said, replying to all three. The city was filled with easy prey. His Soul would be made ever greater by the lives of these survivors, but would that be his decision? Would that make him more aligned with the beast? Or a living echo of the Woundshaper?

No. Req chose. Chose though it hurt him. Chose to satisfy another, absurd as it was.

Avo understood Req. And never wanted to be him again. He had more choices than he thought, but his path was shaped, and so was Avo’s.

He needed to do what was different. To shape himself with broader worship.

The refugee blinked. The beast whined. The Woundshaper fell silent.

Avo alone spoke the next words. He shaped Req’s future. He gave choice.

“That was wonderful.”

Req blinked confused. “You… you liked that?”

“Liked…” Avo said the word as if he was sampling its taste. “No. But I… learned from it. New.”

“New?”

The sound of incoming engines sang from above. Avo looked up. Massive shrouds of flowing phantasmal armor approached, their potence so heavy he could feel the weight from here.

Exorcists. Paladins as well, perhaps. Guilders to follow after most assuredly.

His tasting was at an end. He needed to depart. Disappearing.

Gathering the winds around him, he moved to manifest the Galeslither.

“Wait!”

Avo paused. He shot a look at the man, on his feet.

“I–” the refugee swallowed. “Thank you?”

Avo grunted. “Thank me by making more choices. Kill again. Kill more. Want to know those tastes as well.” He stepped through the currents and rose. “And dream more of your family.”

He left the refugees there, some slaughtering, one shivering in body and mind.

Reaching his billowing limbs across the gutters, he drifted toward the familiarity of Draus’ accretion, a new momentum building inside him.

Flavor.

The city was full of flavors he hadn’t tasted. In more ways than one.

And with the winds, he was unfettered.

He wanted more.

And so he was going to take more.

Faintly, he felt a budding weight build, budding in the heart of his flames.