Godclads

Chapter 9-16 Mindblitz

+Shard-2 is no longer responding. All indications are that she has been nulled. As of this moment, we go thought-silent. No communications outside our cell. Within the cell, do not contact the other shards. Direct your messages to me. I will relay all the necessary information.

All in-field operators: Burn your identities and blur your minds. Extraction is go. Assume your covers are blown. Assume that the leaks are coming from the inside. Trust no one. Proceed to take on secondary burner identities in the meantime. Re-establish contact via mind proxies.

All shards who do not report in on time will be considered burned. Good luck. Godspeed. Watch yourselves.

We are being hunted.+

-Mirror-Convex to Incubi Cell “Peregrine”

9-16

Mindblitz

Popular entertainment portrayed duels between Necros like a shooting affair. Ghosts bearing trauma loads crashed together in blasts of trauma. Wards rang like shields parrying falling blades. The duelists talked and taunted, their thoughtstuff alive as the waters of their ego struggled and strained, two oceans seeking to wrestle the other into placidity and compliance.

Reality was considerably uglier, and battles were fought in chaos-fraught desperation or slow, methodical intimacy.

Here was Avo detecting a threat unseen. And here was the same threat, unmoving, uncertain between engagement and escape.

Their hesitation would cost them.

Nether-lag crackled in Avo’s mind as he fired his Celerostylus and re-imbued himself with the powers of his Heaven of Blood. He checked his Rend momentarily, and once more found himself relieved to have strengthened his Hell.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 4%

The world around him slowed. He cast a peek into Mirrorhead’s palace and tasted continual despondence. Good. The Godclad was uninvolved and unaware. That meant this was a third party, and this dive was not yet blown.

Now to keep it that way.

Avo had been too complimentary in his denigration of Essus’ wards. The analogy of its architecture was a large crude wall made to blunt impacts, the surface of which had the frozen screaming forms of various ghosts frozen in place, there to project their suffering, there to drink in more.

Behind it, was a man who experienced far too much alongside Avo. The ghoul had spent hours looking upon his naked mind, was there when the greatest wound was inflicted on his ego and the world came apart for him.

Finding symmetry to slide into Essus was a task of great ease made near-instant thanks to Avo’s enhancements. What lay deeper, however, was call for concern. Right then, the unverified integer continued to quiver, their indecision writ into ripples of the mem-data, sluggish to near-stillness.

They were, however, prepared for his intrusion.

The first hidden phantasmic Avo detected was laced within several memory sequences Essus had of his son. The boy himself had been primed as a turret for trauma, the variables of his simulation packaged with the anguish and pain of several other parents who lost their children. The build was respectable, but Avo himself would have avoided placing it in such a position.

It was ultimately too obvious.

He extracted himself from that sequence and changed his approach. Using his Metamind to filter for other parallel memories, he sought one that contained instances of himself–his foe had the advantage of fortification, but he had actual history with the father. Such would be a hard thing to use against him in any situation.

What came was Artad. Rather, the moment the man had told him about his dead god. Little weight or reverence remained attached to the deity. Faith died in despair. Convenient. Made it easier for Avo to sink into the sequence without faking religiosity.

For the second time, Avo used a past variant of himself to shuttle him across another’s mind. He knew where he was heading, but more than that, he knew the memories well. Being a direct participant provided one with such useful insight.

Over three hundred trauma phantasmics and two dozen planted Specters lined his path. Even enhanced, he could not deny his adversary's skill. Obvious mistakes hid greater dangers, with blatantly corrupted mem-data left to lure a rival Necro out into the open for a direct nulling. What’s more was the broad nature and shifting defenses they installed. For each phantasmic Avo removed, unseen mem-cons activated behind him; deactivated functions manifested as wards within wards, trying to quarantine him into a specific quadrant.

There was no mistaking these techniques. The deception. The design made to narrow his choices until he inexorably found himself staring down the barrel of a final mistake, desperate for a tunnel to salvation.

He faced someone of Ori-Thaum tradition. With this understanding, the tension within him grew tenfold but likewise swelled the thrill.

It was good to sink his fangs into prime meat.

With his overwhelming superiority in speed and knowledge of the terrain he swam across, a plan formed in his head. He needed to cage the Incubi in with him before they fled back to the others. Claiming the memories from one would offer great insight into the players and board both.

To this end, they were connected to Essus’ mind the same way he operated through Chambers: Auto-Seance. There was a session running here. He just needed to decipher that which did not fit in Essus’ mind.

Thankfully, he already had samples to work with.

Most Necros had signatures to the way they sequenced. Habits and memories they favored using. Perception and worldview tinged memories and in turn, the builds constructed through Necrotheurgy. The Incubus was someone who favored nostalgia. Lost loves. Lost places. Lost possibilities.

Filtering the broad builds of each phantasmic trap he avoided without triggering, Avo began to narrow the operational area within Essus’ mind.

Ultimately, there were only a few sequences that could serve sufficient overcurrent to hide operations running within. One hundred and twenty memories would manage, with only four intersecting enough to provide sufficient sequences for a session.

Sinking deeper into a simulation, Avo found himself in a tent, bathed in a world of scents and symphony. From the eyes of the father, he gazed down, joyful at the sleeping form of the boy–then but a babe. The hunger within Avo roused as he adjusted, working to hide his desire. Infants were so plump and inviting. Could he truly be blamed for yearning to see if their flesh was sweeter than those ripened with age?

Adjusting his ghosts to prevent the leakage of his hunger, Avo continued down the path of the memory with Essus’ swinging gaze. There were others in the tent. Each wore long leathery cloaks lined with netting. They stood together, looking up at people playing music on the stage.

The melody came in twanging sounds that needled the mind. The discordance of the tune didn’t feel natural. It felt like it was made to peel focus from a mind, to part thoughts before they could form.

Something was wrong with this sequence something was–

It was then Avo realized it. The sounds. They had been altered from the original notes. His Metamind told him these were urlla, seven-stringed guitars favored by the Embers that migrated between the borders of Sanctus, Sangshan, and Omnitech. Urlla didn’t make the noise he was hearing right now. Those were guitar sounds distorted by altered frequencies like… like radio wavelengths.

Ah. A brilliant technique to hide one’s Auto-Seance. No need to keep things so encrypted or scrambled. Hide the discord by infusing chaos into a single aspect of a memory rarely plucked by the waking mind.

The mem-data around the instruments was so subtly infiltrated. No longer did he consider his foe unskilled. His foe was his better in matters of subterfuge, their creativity in deception far broader.

Just a shame they were mortal.

Human.

All too human.

Scanning the structure of the sequence again, Avo activated his Ghostjack and prepared Lucille’s Regret. He wanted the Incubus broken, but not destroyed. Much of their mind needed to remain for him to draw necessary information.

And so, in the depths of Essus’ mind, the first shot of a silent duel was fired.

The lancing trauma burst forth and struck the lead musician’s urlla, the three others behind him also certain to be infested. The guitar shivered as Lucille’s wailing face rippled into existence, manifesting as a misted visage.

All of a sudden, a forest of memories across Essus’ mind came alive with coursing agony. Avo had struck, and he struck root. The circuitry connecting the Incubus’ mind across the Nether cracked, their wards ringing but congealing. Skin peeled, the memories beneath revealed themselves as wards.

Ah. Quicksand pattern wards. A phantasmic worth resequencing if Avo could claim them without too much damage. It had a mimicry functionality–allowed for the ghosts to siphon some patterns of the impacting trauma to better muster asymmetry and lessen the impact of the next collision.

Took damage above the weight of ghosts it took to run.

It also meant Avo couldn’t use the same trauma twice. Or hit the same area with the same trauma.

He shifted, carving his blade of regret against his foe’s wailing mind. Startlement leaked out with screaming memories. They were unprepared for this; his arrival must’ve felt like a bolt of lightning. One moment he was just entering, the next he was nested deep. The euphoria of power his Heaven provided only grew as Avo struck again and again, the speed which he could form his ghosts faster that the impacts themselves.

The first riposte finally came from a parallel sequence. They were firing blind through another instance of the boy as an infant, Chambering an ego-killing trauma to fragment the entire sequence. It was desperate. It was destructive. It was wise.

They weren’t nearly fast or astute enough to react to him, so the best option was to cut his path off by the root.

Unfortunately, their Ghostjack cast out its injection of deleterious memories far too slowly. Avo cycled his memories and brought Secondhand Fatality to bear. As a miasmic bolt of distorted mem-data came at him, so too did he release a ghost carrying the Secondhand Fatality. Thus far, he had only used his trauma as line-of-sight instruments, lashing and striking with them like melee weapons.

But with the danger presented by his rival's reprimand, it was wisest to keep the matter at arm's length.

Two traumas impacted in a collision of breaking fragments. The shrapnel of the harm cleaved and shredded multiple instances of the boy in his infancy. The unshaped mind of Essus shuddered as the man cried out in abject agony. More of his son was lost, and he knew this truth, if only subconsciously.

His foe hadn’t even begun spinning up another salvo when Avo tore into them. The attack had given away their true position. They were hiding within one of the notes in particular. Avo reversed his path back up the sequence, to where the note would strike.

There, he fired in an alternating pattern.

Regret. Torment. Secondhand Fatality.

Each strike painted a new color to his enemy's wards, cracking the diamond-shaped defenses just in time for the following blow to chip and the last one to shatter.

It was a testament to his enemy’s fortitude and skill that they were able to build phantasmal armor capable of taking an impact so extreme. It was their misfortune that, though they were able to survive Secondhand Fatality, their wards were also functionally broken. Their thoughtstuff spilled free like entrails unspooling into the pull of an ocean.

And like a shark tasting the blood of a nu-whale, Avo yearned to dig into a meal of organ and liver.

Tearing through the open wound, Avo jumped a third time as he ripped through the savaged thresholds of the Incubus’ mind. He was now using both Chambers and Essus as a ladder to his new prey, and the Nether lag grew ever more immense.

Without his current speed, time would likely feel like it was skipping.

Lashing his quarrying from the inside with Lucille’s Regret over and over, he felt their mind tear and collapse from the inside. Distantly, he caught glimpses of the world beyond, their body striking ground from seizures and vomiting, coming undone before his assault.

Good. He needed them broken but not unraveled. He struck ten more times until the mind itself stopped responding and slowly ground away toward a slow collapse.

Then, with the Ori-Thaum mind agent broken, Avo’s objective changed. No longer was this to be a hunt. Now, he was to raid.

COPYING PHANTASMICS

[QUICKSAND SYNC TRAUMA]

[INCOG]

Of all the phantasmics, those two were of the greatest importance. Those two, and the treasure trove of encrypted memories the Incubus had. Agents of Ori-Thaum locked their personal lives when they were fielded on assignment. This one was not different, but their operational memories were consumed in labyrinths of confusion.

If Avo had longer to stare at the design of their palace, he might have copied a few things more. But from the inside, he already noted the mem-data shifting, with several new variables entering–and one acting at speeds far faster than the other.

This operative had friends and Avo’s looting time was short.

Siphoning away all he considered useful, he collapsed out from the Incubus’ palace and tethered on the brink.

He waited, just as the other few manifested through the Auto-Seance to fire his Second Fatality thrice more.

The palace quivered, and sequence by sequence it turned vaporous, dissolving as two other minds went into nulled freefall within it.

Avo, on the other hand, slipped back through into Essus’ confines, and then out again into Chambers.

Noticing that the father was clutching his head and frowning, Essus was still standing. The damage wasn’t too severe. The battle was fast. Quiet. And victory was absolute.

As time flattened and Avo returned to his senses fully, he found himself laughing hoarsely, his triumph a glorious thing.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 5%

Never before had he imagined himself indulging in such a thrill–he had raided the mind of one of the Ori’s elites. He had broken a foe that was his greater in several aspects of Necrotheurgic artistry, and done it easily.

Draus gasped, the fullness of his encounter loading into her mind long after all the work was finished. +Shit. Did you just null a fuckin’ Incubus?+ She sighed. +Course those shits are here too. Can’t get away from them no way no how. You know why they’re here.+

Holding onto a few encrypted memories, Avo’s grin turned from feral to methodical. +Not yet. Going to need some time to crack it. Likely has self-nulling if access is wrong.+

+You think Mirrorhead knows?+

+No,+ Avo said, reaching across the link he planted. +Still too wounded. Still beneath his notice. Lived without knowing there was an infestation. His “throne” was rotten to begin with.+

Turning his attention back to the memories, Avo frowned.

What was Ori-Thaum doing here? And if they knew Mirrorhead was planning to kill their ambassador, a greater question emerged.

Why hadn’t they stopped him yet?