Godclads

Chapter 8-13 The Four Famines

“Kindred, the Strayer enters our cage.”

“The cunt seeks to mend that which he hid in this vessel; folly. Fucking folly. Raw, rancid fu-cking folly!”

“To kill an entire branch of ourselves… over this…”

“It matters little. We will see this made right. The missing Helix will be received. From there, we will amend the branch with a new fork to replace the Strayer. The fourth Famine must be reborn. This one, without the sentimentality of the previous.”

“What if… what if they were right? What if our ghouls–”

“Speak no more of this. Our will has been made stone. Hear: the fabric of a lure has been disrupted. The turncoat. Our access point. The Strayer has come to reclaim that which they hid. They have descended our twice-made cage…”

“But Emotion, I did not see them enter.”

“Where the fuck is he! Where!”

“Nor I, Peace. Nor I. Keep looking. Hmm. He has deviated from how he wields our art, but there must be a presence. Scan the loci. Scan the minds. Send Specters to the surrounding blocks. He leaves a trace. There must be a trace.”

-Conversation between the “Low Masters”

8-13

The Four Famines

To watch a mind collapse around you was one thing. To realize that a second layer had been built beneath the bones of the first was another matter altogether.

It was impossible for a single Necro to do in the scant time since Yosanna was contacted by her husband.

Avo knew then he faced not one of his father’s nodes, but more. Vastly more.

A towering mound lifted him higher as the facade finally broke, mem-data around him changing faster than he could adapt, The ground he stood on mutated from a pallid path to a mangled pile, remains of countless ghouls slopping beneath the dancing memory-strands of his avatar as a thunderstorm of ghosts resequenced all around him, each lashing new orders into this pseudo-reality.

Nothing of the current palace was outright destroyed this time, only changed. Usurped. The mountain in the skies dissolved like flakes of paint peeling from a wall, and through the fissures, the clasping bones of a creature too vast to fully fit itself in the pocket of his gaze materialized, its skeletal midriff fusing around him as tumors of darkness spread from each length of rib.

The bodies beneath him hardened, with flat backs rising to provide balanced ground for his legs, and from the sides snapped rails made from severed arms. He was ascending on a column bearing a dais, and its foundation was death.

All around him, he felt new signatures enter, his cog-feed screaming as mind after mind entered the palace, jumping in through the Auto-Seance–the last working phantasmic left of Yosanna’s mind.

“Master, staying here is unwise, we must–”

‘They’re not attacking,” Avo said, his intent clear, cutting off the Woundshaper’s words. “They don’t know where I am in the real.”

There remained a risk to staying. That was indeed true. But where your typical Necro could not escape being nulled, he presided over two planes. For him, escape meant ejecting a ghost and ending the dive before pulling his Whisper back through the winds. Hunt as they might for the source of his phantasmics, there was nothing to find in the real.

He would be deep in the Yondergales blowing his way out of the building, his mind beyond reach. For now, however, he wished to gaze upon the family who wore the flesh of his father but possessed none of his warmth.

It would please him to finally lay gaze upon the nature of his adversary–perhaps the oldest of his adversaries.

There was an ineffability in knowing your caring father was but an offshoot from those who enslaved you. A new desire ignited inside Avo. A new want rising amongst many others. He wondered if eating one of these “Low Masters” would offer a taste equally ineffable.

To eat one’s own father was sacrilege of a particularly vile nature, but what was Avo now but a perversion of a ghoul if judged from the standard of Old Noloth? Not often do slaves get to feast upon the entrails of their masters.

Perhaps in the trauma he would claim from swallowing mouthfuls of flesh from their bodies, he would finally find himself free of Walton’s shadow.

No scent of citrus pervaded this simulation; the absence of Walton’s most defining trait felt wrong in more ways than Avo could describe, like a piece of the man he knew was missing, like there was something else piloting his corpse as if a golem, like an effigy of mockery.

“Greetings, Strayer.” From out of the darkness, podiums of rounded paleness drifted forth, their design a thing of flesh-shorn bone leaking a haze of smog along the sides. The first of his father’s alternates greeted him, a tall figure garbed in ashen robes stitched with shamanistic fetishes.

Their mem-data was an inscrutable kaleidoscope of schizophrenia memories, the builds of their minds a scramble of feverish instants. It was like beholding a labyrinth of ever-changing shape, and simply looking upon the Walton made Avo’s nerves shiver.

What he beheld was beyond skill. Beyond anything he could fathom. One could change their sequences, but to do it unceasingly without a deep dive into one’s own Metamind…

There was more than just a mastery of Necrotheurgy at play here. The nodes possessed something greater.

Walton had never been a hyper-materialist, but Avo couldn’t assign him the title of spiritualist either. What was valued, however, was a sense of pragmatism. Of practicality. This one stank of tradition and rote forms, their person approaching on a plate spilling darkness, bearing only emptiness to their gaze and a hollow wound in their chest.

In place of a heart, a dead owl shook to the unseen winds in the Nether, its body chained in place within the cavity via aortal arteries. With each pulse, the owl hooted, the sound haunting, taunting, its visage encroaching as a ponderous weight on Avo’s mind.

In the panes of darkness lining the rib-like cage of this eldritch sphere, more minds glinted. Countless more, like peering out into the stars at night. Of course, Avo had never known the stars to stare back, to bleed their scorn and hate down upon the lands on which they shine. From beneath the supple flesh of oblivion, more nodes molded in symmetry to the image of the heartless approached, and with them flowed winds of the harshest cold.

Here, there were no lands. Here, he stood alone, in the hollowed remains of a long-dead Guilder, face to face with a face belonging to someone long dead, and a truth that filled his veins with a frozen ache.

The heartless came to a halt a mere sequence away from him, the distance in the palace but a foot or two. “We have wanted to greet you in better circumstances, Strayer, once named Defiance,” the node spoke. The voice was an echo cast from the void, the similarity reaching as sound without cadence, tone without warmth. This Walton stared without blinking, the meat hanging from his body like something stitched onto a mannequin. “But you fled. You forced this upon us. It is of no form at all for a finger to break from the body–you must now see the folly of your betrayal. The path is stone. The ending will not be changed. For sake of Noloth, be still and relinquish your Helix. You are unfit for the mantle. You are unfit to see the arrival. Only as sustenance fed to the Hungers may you be redeemed. But this is without cruelty. We will see your mind reseeded from a prior iteration. One unmarred by your time on the surface. One still dedicated to the great work.”

A beat passed. Avo let the words dissolve and realization dawned. They thought he was still Walton. Or one of his nodes. They were speaking to him as if a brother would, the judgment cast from their minds a bifurcation of familial animosity and self-loathing.

“You are comprised,” the heartless prodded. “You know this.”

“He’s pretending to be fucking dull.” The harshness of the words slashed at Avo as traumas lashed out from the darkness. A new Walton came forth from the left, the angle of their arrival a full ninety degrees from the first, riding upon a skeletal steed all armor and blades. Atop its back, another of the nodes came forth, but his hands were caked in ever-dripping gore, and his body was a coat of scabs. Scabs that crawled, that danced and fought upon the surface of his flesh. Crusty shapes of small soldiers locked in an eternal war, battling to claim their place and not be swallowed by mouths of gore-carved trenches running across the node’s body.

Violence radiated from this Walton, the distillation of his urge born of rage and sorrow so potent Avo almost mistook the flavor for that of a ghoul’s mind, for by the node’s all-consuming hate, their natures were nigh-near perfect symmetry.

“You half-strand fuck. You stupid cunt. You low-blooded stillborn bastard of spoiled flesh. You break from us like a piece of wood; you run from us like a fleeing slave; you return to us a fucking mute!” The last words were shouted, the ghosts comprising this node’s avatar booming loud. Behind him, other nodes bearing the same visage filtered through the dark as well, peering in through the thinness of minds. They were using the Auto-Seance to enter, a memory shared between similar minds.

The scabbed one continued. “What now? Hm. What purpose did this all serve? Did topsider life leave you a mental invalid as well? Or are you so empty after your progenitor nulled himself? Did he break his mind too soon? Fail to finish forking before he was forced to see the deed’s end? Did you develop a sense of fear after swimming in the festering soup that these topsider cunt-fucks call a fucking mind you corpse-born fuck!”

A loud sob came from the other direction. A new Walton approached. “Enough, Peace! Enough. Flagellate him no more. I can’t take it. The pain goes to me! It always goes to me!”

Something akin to a chariot slipped past the darkness, and unspeakable atrocity filled Avo’s gaze. Upon a tear-made chariot not so unlike Kae’s False Heaven, the last Walton rode forth debased, his nudity only masked from sight by filth. The beasts of burden pulling him were likewise no bioforms. Not of the conventional variety, anyhow. Instead, castrated clones of Walton himself pulled the vehicle forward on amputated stumps. Their mouths were burned shut, a misshapen lump where their mouths were. Wires of fluid shaped from their joined rivers of tears ran down to bolts attached to their spines. The mutilated Waltons pulled, strained, and wept all the same.

Avo averted his sight, filtering what he was seeing before something inside him snapped.

Fresh wounds stung inside his mind, but he survived.

Was this why the node in the Deep Bazaar forced him to use the Secondhand Fatality. To be inured to this?

However even those parted from prior faith can feel distaste when beholding the defilement of all they held holy. A sickness roiled inside Avo, sourness filling his veins. His mind boiled as he struggled not to break, to flee.

He wanted to avert his eyes. To turn from this.

But he needed to know the truth about his father’s nature and tied to it, his own.

“I don’t want to linger on this. I don’t wanna be mad at him anymore.” The weeping node sobbed, the display of fragility counter to Walton's eternal placidity. “I can’t do this… I can’t bear this…”

The scabbed one laughed, a joyless sneer audible in his voice. “You worthless fuck. Tears. Tears and pity for this… this confused mongrel. I swear, with him, it’s like looking into the mind of the Unborn. Empty. Vacant. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t argue. And now, you’re here trying to plead clemency. Pathetic. If I knew parting myself was going to do this, I would have found someone else to fork instead of my own mind.”

The weeper keened a low note that made Avo’s guts water. Unconsciously, his winds lashed at the ground.

The scabbed one growled. “Let’s be finished with this, Emotion!” He turned to the heartless and held up a gore-caked hand. “Call the Hungers. Call the Unbirthed Fucking Divine. Let this mistake see what became of his progenitors.” His face cracked into a savage expression of cruelty. “Let’s see how much acceptance you truly embody, Defiance.”

“Enough, Peace,” the heartless node said. “Traditions should remain.” A chill flooded the palace, the indifference the heartless felt to all things total; absolute. “He was of our mold once. As such, his ruination must be witnessed by the chains.”

“Chains.” Such was Avo’s first word spoken to the derivatives of his father. Offshoots or other branches. The true nature of the Low Masters design remained beyond the boundaries of his comprehension, slowly though, things were taking shape.

“Oh, by the Hunger,” the scabbed one sighed. “He’s fucking dull. He’s dulled himself, crippled his own mind to spite us.”

A loud mournful cry sang out from the two mutilated Waltons pulling the chariot. The weeper sobbed harder. “Why Defiance… why would you do this to yourself… Why would you do this to us of the Oldest House? Are we not of an origin? Did you not taste the waters… the waters of the Hungers’ dream? When we were one? Did you forget our bargain? For our people!”

For their people. Of Old Noloth? Confusion spread through Avo, and Woundshaper rose to answer. “The oldest house? The… the Tongues of the Hungers? Tell me not that this is the same self-breeding servant-king of Old Noloth? Wahakten? The Thief of Dreams! Servant to a false pretender, naming itself a god!”

“False entity?” Avo asked.

“I have lain gaze on many a god. We sense each other, our natures kindred mirage-infused flames. Beacons caged by the rigidity of reality, we see each other. The Hungers, though, were no true divinity. Whatever their make, they rendered no shine. By words spoken from these… facets of humanity, they could be little more than mere delusion. The Nolothi had their gods, but I never tasted the presence of any ‘Hungers.’”

But how could that be the case when he saw the Low Masters wield thaumaturgies? Use Heavens? Were those memories false as well?

A dichotomous pause echoed in the depths of two minds, across two realities.

The owl inside the heartless’ chest cocked its head. “Have you nothing to say still, Defiance?”

Cowardice did not run strong in Avo’s nature, but faced with a tribunal of immensely skilled Necros bearing semblance to his father felt like being a whipped ghouling waiting for the sadstick again. The beast screamed and wailed, confused as to why he wasn’t capitulating, begging the Low Masters for clemency.

The agony he felt turned into a tearing hurt as part of the fear flowed toward himself, toward something new slotted within his being.

The Helix trembled inside him. He felt like he was still flesh in the real, and not wind.

Avo spoke with every last mote of strength, in defiance of his nature, straining to keep his dread's numbness from spilling through. “I… I am broken. Need–I need you to… explain.”

The scabbed one rolled his eyes and turned his gaze skyward, toward the pale-white ribs that seemed to run on forever, higher and higher, like a malignant spine fusing protruding from nothingness. “He starves us. He fucking starves us. We can’t even exact righteous retribution because the ignoramus can't grasp the meaning of his demise.” He turned to the choir of other scabbed behind him, their clenched teeth and seething hate reopening wounds across their bodies.

The heartless held up a hand. The owl at the center of his chest flapped its wings. “Strayer, do you wish to know the meaning of this tribunal? The nature of your transgression?”

“Yes,” Avo said.

“So be it. We, four from the one, are the Famines, servants to the Hungers–the Inverted Dreamer, from that which the waters of this Dreaming Unsea flows.”

Masking confusion under the pretense of mind-fray, Avo spoke his next question. “I… do not remember any of this.”

A high gasp from the weeper. The scabbed one jeered, his avatar a cauldron of leaking traumas.

Only the heartless remained unburdened. “We were one, once. All of us. A lord of many changing names and changing forms, our rule descended from mind to mind, across countless titles. Such was the way of things in Noloth. By the wisdom of immortality and favor of the Hunger, such was our mandate. And with the blessings it offered, with the flow of its Dreaming Unsea, we rose as a nation to immortality, our chains unending.”

“Dreaming Unsea?” Avo asked.

The scabbed one jeered. “The 'Nether,' you simple fuck! What the topsiders call the Nether. Those crystal-fuckers up in the Tiers lie, we sailed these waters first. We. The Hungers brought us into its pool to be the first sailors–the first! And now everyone speaks of Ori-Thaum Ori-Thaum Ori-Thaum!” He roared, scabs unfurling into jutting blades. “Those shits stole from us! They took the broken pieces of our Heaven and called it a utopia! We guided the dreaming! We! Kept our peoples eternal! Immortal! We were destined for a shared oasis and then… and then….” One of the weepers let out a mournful howl. “And then that stain-blood Jaus Avandaer used us to break the Heavens.”

“He shattered us,” a weeper cried and broke into incoherence. The Waltons pulling their chariot wailed. Another spoke in their stead. “Ours was the eternal water! The Dreaming Unsea! Where all could reign in the dreams of our god regardless of their station in the flesh. So long as the stillborns flowed! So long as the tax was paid.”

The Woundshaper rumbled in confusion. “But a Soul sups nothing from a life unshaped. The infants–the unthinking… These beings incapable of belief offer no Essence. What could such a ‘god’ feed from nothingness.” It scoffed. “Only one that is no god at all.” The Woundshaper paused. “Not a god perhaps, but a liminal being all the same…”

“Peace. Joy. Enough.” The heartless let their head drop. “We speak in fragments. I sense he remains lost. Perhaps it is time that we show him the presider of his fate.”

“No,” the weeper quailed.

“Yes,” the scabbed one hissed. “Call it. Call the Hungers. Let him greet the Inverted Dreamer once more.” He smiled. “It will be a pleasure to see his mind shatter.”