Godclads

Chapter 8-15 The Inverted Dreamer (II)

“Avo, listen. Being a Necrojack is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy. This art is like… building a house with bits of truth and much more falsehood. Memories are fickle. Malleable. Even history might be reshaped.

Logic won’t be enough. Intuition’s like letting your nose lead you when the room could fill up with smoke at any time.

You want to find out what’s true? Look for the mistakes. Mistakes are my favorite thing in the world. Mistakes tell you what someone else wanted to do, and how they failed, and what else might not make sense.

Want makes fools of even gods. Like a favored drug we’ll do anything to get. You hold that desire, and you hold the keys to any mind.”

-Conversation between “Walton” and [Redacted]

8-15

The Inverted Dreamer (II)

Waste.

Waste, not even a monster.

The withering winds of truth winnowed away a piece of Avo. It didn’t hurt when the dust of it left him, but the hollowness lingered. Even before he belonged to Walton, he thought himself a creature of purpose, a failure of design though he might be.

Now, however, the waters of the Nether seemed to wash through him, his ego whistling from the crevices made from his fissuring concept of self.

“Not even a dog,” he muttered. The second blow hit him with the delay of a second. The child. They said that he had the memories of a child implanted inside him. The emptiness spread and lathered itself over the unhealed wound left by Walton’s final node.

Pain greeted pain, but one served as a foundation for the other, preventing a true internalization.

Was this why the last of Walton’s branch stole his choice? Forced his hand? To innoculate him from these greater torments, deliberately castrating him of his filial piety to deaden the hurt following the coming blows.

From one note of pain to another Avo’s mind swirled. The Hungers said something of his memories being copied. Installed into him. What did they mean? “Child. There was… I copied the memories of a child. What child?”

A dog-like bark of laughter came from the scabbed one. “The cunt forgot why he did it in the first place. This would be pretty fucking comedic if it wasn’t so godsdamned sad. And if you weren’t literally a replica to me. You fucking shamed us, Strayer. Shamed us all. Shamed the man we used to–”

“Silence.” The dragon twitched.

“Stupid shit,” the scabbed one finished. With a spill of anger, he returned to silence as a bitter wryness stained the atmosphere around the dragon.

“We shall be the sole judge to your failings,” the Hungers said. A bout of conjoined laughter lingered at the tail of its words, notes building upon the rising foundation of Avo’s loathing like descending bricks.

It reminded him of Mirrorhead. And that in of itself made Avo quite inclined to engineer its eventual death.

“You truly do not remember the child, my priest?” The Hungers hummed, its mind a cleave between curiosity and growing suspicion.

“Do not be shaken, master,” the Woundshaper interrupted. “Hold to your silence for now. Betray nothing.”

"You have a recommendation.” Avo inner words came not as a question but as permission. He allowed the Heaven to speak freely.

“Vagueness should not merit clarity. They play using your blindness. Inflict the same upon them. The dance of deceit need not be done alone. They clearly wish for you to make comment on this… mystery child. Yet, that is not our game. We seek to understand what occurred with you. Lure them to speech. Ask them why they think Walton bound the memories to the child. Make them wander through the topic.”

The loathing inside Avo shifted, the turn spurred by the Woundshaper’s advisement. His hatred rang inside of him, and this time he let the beast bray its hate, using it to focus his ire. There was something poetic about deriving strength from the hate poured inside him by the Hungers, and as he used the passing of time like a whetstone, sharpening the tension of the palace, he broke the silence of minds with a hurled question.

“Why do you think I bound the Frame to the ghoul?”

The directness with which he spoke struck the Hungers and incredulity leaked from its being like blood seeping into the water. “Are you asking us to justify your betrayal?”

“I’m asking you to describe it,” Avo said. “Understand it from your perspectives.”

“Defiance, does your hubris–”That was as far as the weeper made it, the rest of his words descending into heave of chaotic sobs.

“Very well, my priest. I will grant you the courtesy of gnosis, so you understand the sacrilege you inflicted upon us in full.” Along the wounds of the dragons, the accretions turned inward, their discourse growing internal. The tides shifted: when he had once forced them to wait, now he was left the pace to them.

“Remember master: pivot everything back to your origins, to the details you seek. Drive the attack. Take from them all you can, and give unto them only smoke and vagaries. This is not a trade. This is not a negotiation. This is but a false trial of tradition with one desired end: your demise. Or should I say your father’s?” The Woundshaper laughed then. “Little do the fools know that he remains a step ahead.”

“Sentimentality.” The Hungers' words came as a scything gale, the winds of the Nether hot with their hate. “We made you with a modicum of wholeness left to you, Defiance. You were our priest of Defiance, the version of yourself that accepted the transgression of our fates but never forgave. Your charge was understanding and freedom: to live amongst our betrayers. To learn their ways. To subvert their causes and drive them against one another for reasons true and manufactured.

“But the years must have eroded your will, grinding you down from mind to mind. You began to… care more than you accepted. Grew distracted by the phantom lives you lived amongst those people. So much so that you must’ve thought us ghosts in place of the waters that flow from us. You have forgotten the face of your people. You have forgotten the face of your son.”

Jealousy clung to every word the Hungers spoke, and even an amateur Necro could have sensed the neediness. Whatever these Hungers were, they clung to the Low Masters, to their priests as personal property.

The Hungers continued. “The recreation of his nous was just another mistake in a long line we acquiesced to you. Our pity, misused. Your long-dead son could never nest properly in a human’s ontology. Watching you fail time and time again was pathetic. Then came your ‘brilliant ploy.’ The ghouls. You suggested these creatures to your fellow branches. Convinced them of their veracity. Blank creatures of expendable fury meant to contain our trauma and fuel new Heavens. A thing procured through an ill-thought deal between the Old Banner, the Sang-curs, and the Ninth Column of Zein and her attack dogs.”

The Hungers stopped speaking, the unity of its being collapsing as a discordant clash of clamoring voices spoke over each other. Discontent radiated from the keepers of Old Noloth.

The Woundshaper took notice. “They are not joined in this. They disagree as to the cause of your betrayal. How… indecisively mortal.”

“It matters not,” the Hungers said, voices reconvening in an instant. “The ghouls… you masqueraded them as tools for us, deliberately designed them so that they would be lacking. Easy fuel for the fire. But also blank. Blank and easy for one to shepherd their minds. Or infuse them with something of your own desire. saw them as vessels for the boy’s resurrection. A tool to ensure Avohakten’s immortality, to prevent you from ever losing him. That which you did with the Frame was merely the final pillar to your tower of sin.”

The Woundshaper laughed at the Hungers as an elder would a raging adolescent. “How fascinatingly embarrassing. It’s like watching someone pull themselves away from obvious truth.”

“Which is?” Avo asked. A note of annoyance came from his Heaven of Blood.

The Woundshaper sighed. “Do not debase yourself by committing to the same hubris, master. They think of immortality in such a negative sense. But little that your ‘Walton’ did was negative. Recall then that he held your hand and guided his own suicide when you couldn’t. Recall him teaching you to control your nature. You are more than just loose parts fused into a ghoul. You are… a new instrument. Divined to better purpose.”

The Woundshaper fell to a whisper. “Recall the construct you call the Morality Injector. A thing designed by him to help you master yourself. Would such a thing be necessary for a meager mortal child? Rehoused immediately as a slave. No. Your father might have implanted you, but he clearly raised you. Cherished your potential, made at his hand or not? And would a child installed directly into a being of your instincts have the refinement to master themselves against the fury that dwells within you without it? No. You were practiced. Refined. Your character was always the first cage around your nature. Not otherwise. You were shaped to bear a Heaven long before you bore a Frame.”

The Morality Injector. The clouds within Avo’s mind cleared. If he was only a loose collection of memories fused into a ghoul, why then did he remember lessons of self-discipline? No. For all that was nested inside him, he was more than but the beast, but a construct of thought piloting the instincts of a ghoul.

This was not a matter of opinion: his ontology made it so.

Above ghoul, above waste, above whatever else he may be, he was a Godclad.

And he chose to speak.

“No,” Avo said.

The Hungers froze. “No?”

“To put the boy inside a ghoul isn’t immortality,” Avo said. “It’s death. It’s torment. The natures don’t align. The ghoul isn’t the dead boy. He’s something more.”

There was something amusing about hearing a few hundred million voices all jump the octave in disbelief. “You accuse us of deceit?”

Avo, past the point of caring, let his scorn be known with a chuckle. “No accusation. You are lying to yourselves. Being a ghoul is to die. To die. Over. And over. And over. But also to kill. To keep killing. To always hunger. Always hunt for more. Bigger prey.” Avo smiled then. “Even something like you.”

“And that,” The Hungers roared, “is the truest nature of your sin. Hubris. That is your crime. You think you know better than the lines and great families of Noloth the Eternal, Noloth the Everlasting. You think you know better than the very man you were forked from. You were made to be the infection that sickens the betrayers yet you–”

“--Changed,” Avo said, stealing the moment from the Hungers. “Yes. Not sickness. Mutation maybe. But not sickness. Not anymore. Learning new… purpose now.” A build of anger came from the Hunger. He met it with his own. “Something you don’t understand. But you’re trapped. A slave to time. Slave. Should make it easy for you all to understand the ghouls.”

The Hungers’ tone dropped. “Slave? Us?”

The scabbed one hissed, unable to bear the heresy. “Shut your cunt-mouth! Strayer! Or–”

“Silence,” the Hungers hissed. The Walton bound to the idea of “Peace” obeyed. Avo cast out an emotion, and its flavor was mockery. Mockery for the other branches of Walton.

“Slaves one. Slaves all.” Avo turned his gaze back to the Hungers. “Tell me of the dead boy. Why do you think I bound him to the ghouls? Why do you think I have him in the Frame. To spare him death? Frames don’t spare death. It just makes it a cycle. No father would inflict this on a son. But you are all severed. You should understand. No. The ghoul is more. More than the boy. More than the beast or the fragments. Made to be Godclad. Made for choice.”

“You deny the worth of your own child?” The dragons spun, a new shape flowing out from their blood. The face of a young man greeted Avo, shorn of hair and with ears rimmed with rings of gold. Clasped in priestly robes, he bore a faint resemblance to Walton, but it was the flash of a golden tangerine that caught Avo’s eye.

Citrus. The smell flowed sharp and true.

That was the taste of Walton.

The heartless clenched his jaws. The scabbed one began snarling curses. The weeper moaned in pain. “No… no, I don’t want to remember! I don’t! Avohaketen! Forgiven me!”

The image faded. The Hungers froze. A cold realization dawned, its ichor freezing as its minds turned. “You did not react…”

Avo worked to keep the ploy. He cursed himself internally. “He is long dead–”

The temperature in the Nether shifted. The waters grew chilled. Ghosts shivered.

Ripples came from each of the Low Masters, their conjoining ghosts screaming out into the Nether in plumes of trauma, seeking a target they just couldn’t find.

For the first time, the heartless looked confused.

“But…” the weeper said, “he has the helix! The mem-data shows–”

“I can’t fucking find his mind,” the scabbed one said. “He doesn't have any of the memories I have…”

The Hungers spoke then, its anger suddenly cold, impersonal. “The hurt my priest felt for his son was eternal. Immortal! It does not just fade. He started wars for him! He cleaved his mind into four for him! He spent the past centuries… You are not my priest. That is hate that vibrates from your design. Not true pain. Just… loathing. Who… what are you?”

“The fool has finally noticed us,” the Woundshaper said. “A pity. We were learning so much from this charade. Let us be away. Let the question form a tumor inside them. Afflict them. Let nothing be answered.”

Avo did not do that. Instead, he committed the only act a Necro would. He lied. He misdirected. “Ninth Column sends their regards.”

His deception struck the Low Masters and the Hungers like a thunderbolt. A surge of ghosts recoiled in outrage.

The scabbed one snarled. “Zein! You insolent bit–”

He cut his Metamind off then, ejecting himself from Yosanna’s palace.

His return to the real came with as every last mind in the block detonated, the totality of their beings turned to shrapnel. Slipping his Whisper through the currents, he sealed the pathway to his Yondergales, and began his crawl outward.

With the wind as his being, his touch drifted across countless spasming bodies, their minds fracturing into nothingness, the devastation like a block-nullifying blastwave certain to see collateral damage.

A low feeling of pleasure began to build inside Avo despite the wounds lingering on his ego, despite the unwanted truths. With his Heaven, he evaded certain nullification. With the Galeslither, there was likely little he couldn’t escape.

Such were his thoughts when the veil leading into his plane was sliced open by the sweep of a blade.

And as the metal licked wind, Avo felt a flare of agony open across his back.