Godclads

Chapter 9-20 The Labyrinth

The timetable has changed. I am out of time. Out of time.

Abrel hates you. I… think I should too. There is… no. I apologize, mother.

She’s hurt. You cannot blame her for this. We live surrounded by jackals calling themselves lions. They have painted your very memory. They have quarantined you with lies.

But I will make this right. I will bring shame and dishonor to them.

Please do not blame Abrel. She’s… she tries for us. But she is weak. They all are. I will not allow her to stop me. She has given me days. For that, I will make her the fool. I merely need to accelerate.

Father is a coward–a traitor. He betrays you still. He’s going to see your murderer. He has forgotten what you have done for us. He has broken his vows.

Forgive me, I do not remember either. I remember nothing of you. But I know there was something… I feel it. The vacancy. The pit inside me, it just keeps going down…

It's utterly gone now. Gone and dead. I could have it replaced with something but I… have decided to keep the hurt.

I’m a terrible son. I know this is… not what you would have wanted for me. But I have to be selfish. I need to be selfish. I don’t want to be any other way.

There is no way to make this right. So. I’m going to make this wrong for everyone.

-Jhred Greatling’s mem-log, directed to his mother

9-20

The Labyrinth

The absence was a wound. That much he could not deny.

Once again, Avo stood at the heart of what was cleaved from him. Simulating himself in his palace, his old block curving around… What Walton’s node must’ve destroyed to render him invisible to the Low Masters.

At the center of his palace stood a static emptiness. Ghosts knew not what to simulate in the area, so instead of sequencing the structure or even the emptiness of air, a scab of raw mem-data spilled through, marring the facade of this mental world.

Something inside him panged, like a hunger that would never be fulfilled.

He lost something. True memory or not, it was gone from him for good. Never to return.

Beyond, roads ran and the other phantasmics rose. A mock-semblance to the Undercroft filled the atmosphere, and rather than nostalgia, soreness filled Avo.

As far as he knew, none of this belonged to him. Not truly. Had he walked these streets? Really plucked ghouling memories from his past to use as junctions and interconnections for his Metamind? Or was that something carefully provided by Walton? A donation from a specific mind offering tithe to what would be the only self-controlling ghoul in the city.

No matter. This did not need to be. None of this needed to be. All could be reshaped; put to a new purpose, and a new design.

His Metamind rippled as the simulation grew translucent around him. Drawing up his new phantasmics, he studied the recent procurements reaped from defeated foes, yet avoided installing. He had neglected his art in fear of what would be revealed to him, of the damage it would cause.

Finally facing the wound that was his core, Avo found the hurt wanting. Especially after the nulling. Only static fragments and missing structure occupied the space.

Perhaps what Walton inflicted on him was a necessary break after all. To release him from final chains.

Just as well. The look of a mundane district of the Undercroft pleased him no longer. False nostalgia held little appeal to a Godclad of ascending power. He was to make prey of Incubi soon and had glimpsed at the complexity with which they armored their neural organs.

Should he not imbue himself with the same protection? Twist intruders down false paths? Adorn himself in the fashion of a proper devourer of minds?

With a command, mem-data sank into him, infusing his cog-feed with a singularity of information. New interfaces bloomed and splashed through his mind’s eye.

It was time to see what he could make of himself.

[QUICKSAND SYNC TRAUMA] COG-CAP: 55 SEQUENCES (VARIABLE)

->STRUCTURE: “A LIMPID POOL FILLED WITH BODIES DRIFTING BENEATH THE WAVES; WHATEVER TRAUMA STRIKES THE SURFACE WILL IN CAUSE IT TO IGNITE AND SIMULATE A RESEQUENCING OF SAID TRAUMA”

->FUNCTION: GUARDS THE MIND USING A LAYER OF TRAUMATIC MEMORIES: CAPABLE OF ADAPTING TO TRAUMAS AFTER SUSTAINING AGAINST THE FIRST IMPACT

[THOUGHTWAVE DISRUPTOR] COG-CAP: [ERROR] SEQUENCES

->STRUCTURE: [NULL]

->FUNCTION: TAPS INTO THE ENTIRETY OF THE USER’S COGNITIVE CAPACITY AND EXPELS UNSTABLE MEM-DATA OUTWARD, DISRUPTING AN AREA OF (CONTINGENT OF GHOST CAPACITY) SPACE

[BINARIST] COG-CAP: 22 SEQUENCE–

MEM-CON DETECTED - UNSEQUENCING PHANTASMIC

[INCOG] COG-CAP: [x] SEQUENCES (VARIABLE; MUST MATCH ALL OTHER INTERNAL MEMORIES BEYOND THE WARDS)

->STRUCTURE: “AN OPALESCENT SUN RAINS DOWN OVER THE LANDSCAPE; LIGHT SPILLS FROM IT MORE LIKE MERCURY DOLLOPS THAN RAYS, BASKING EVERYTHING IN A REFLECTIVE SHEEN WHILE DRINKING UP MEM-DATA INTO ITS CORE”

->FUNCTION: ALLOWS THE USER TO CAMOUFLAGE THEMSELVES FROM NOTICE VIA THE OBFUSCATION OF THEIR MEMORIES AND THOUGHTSTUFF. NO ACCRETION WILL LEAK DURING THIS PERIOD AND ALL OUTWARD REACTING PHANTASMICS WILL BE PLACED INTO A DORMANT STATE UNTIL DELIBERATE ACTIVATION.

With his new phantasmics compiled and reviewed, Avo considered his options. The Binartist was a paltry thing to lose–though it would have been useful having a mental-emulator model to predict possible emotional outbursts or responses from those he interacted with.

Of the remaining three, the Incog would likely prove to be the most useful. Beyond his personal benefit, learning how to sequence such a construct would increase Draus’ lethality by far. Having her presence slathered with an attention-averting slickness would allow her entry into places beyond his imagining.

It also offered certain insurance against the Exorcists. Of course, the more concentrated fields of perception focused on the user of the Incog, the more it strained to cog capacity. With fewer worries about overclocking, it again suited Draus more than he, seeing that it would diminish the effectiveness of his wards and effectively double the number of sequences in use while it was active.

He would keep his deactivated, but from it, he could offer a Draus a copy. If she would let him. He had averted his touch from her mind per her request. This, however, might just be tempting enough to change her official policy.

Regulars were of binary natures. They were fighting or dead; functional or nulled. Some Necrojacks described them as ones who were “perfectly broken beyond repair,” where the concept of personhood in them was beyond adaptable, succumbing to demands of will. Choice over ego, if the propaganda was to be believed.

Considering how Draus was, his guess was that they reacted to trauma in a very specific–and adaptive–fashion.

Taking his prize Incog, he sewed the fluid gem of a false sun into shape over the phantasmal skies of his palace. Once violet beneath the glare of the darkstar, they now brightened before the mercury gleam of his new trophy.

Silhouettes of other phantasmics elongated, gliding out in a junction of slithering darkness, each crossing over the scar beneath which Avo’s simulated self stood.

Unwilling to suffer the blemish any longer, he had the space scrubbed while reconsidering the layout of his Metamind. This was too open–his phantasmics too exposed to direct attack. These streets and sequences operating as seams and circuits to his inner world flowed too direct, and predictable to strike.

A redesign was required. Along with a new central anchor to serve as a junction to each of his other constructs, a heart of the woven labyrinth he intended to make of this palace.

Draining threads of reminiscence from those he slew, Avo fused a new chitinous structure into existence and bade it to burrow deep. Like an inverted tower, a claustrophobic nest spiraled down, tunnels leading to tunnels filled with false turns and trap loops packaged with traumas.

No more did the heart of his Metamind resemble something of the Undercroft. This, instead, was festering chaos as he tended to the uncontrollable growth of spilling tunnels of teratomas that festered chaotically, gnawing a penumbral network leading to each of his other phantasmics.

He drew upon his reflexes and Heaven then, imbuing himself with a surfeit of time. No additional intrusions sounded in Chambers’ mind. Mirrorhead continued to sulk and rage. Long returned to his sterile glass sanctum, he had spent his time drinking and fuming over what the benefactor had told him, trying to calm his suspicion and rage with ambrosia.

Rooting tendrils fused into a new understructure for Avo's changing Meta. With another thought, the borders of the simulation curved upward like a bowl collapsing in on itself. Above, the light of the darkstar, already choked and dimmed by the shine of the Incog, was swallowed.

Avo removed the setting of night entirely. The sky above thereafter was the color of a broken vicarity, the sequences missing.

The new layout of the Metamind took shape before Avo, and in beholding it, he found himself pleased.

An inverted cylinder fused around him. Only a single, narrowing chasm offered entry to his mind now, and buildings at the edge pressed against each other like clenched fangs. No longer was this a palace; an oubliette was in the process of being manifested. The streets within his borders tangled together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

To deepen the confusion, he sunk his phantasmics even lower into the gums of his foundations, with only the mental arteries from his tumorous heart offering access.

The Incog’s glistening translucence was a strange sun, basking all the simulation with sheets of misted rain, the only major source of illumination in this twisted abyss made from crumpled city streets. He gave orders to his ghosts, blending the sequences of his inner mind here and there, lining more hidden traumas within falsified vulnerabilities. The phantasmal matter of megablocks oozed together, with splices blending the simulacra of people.

There was a feverish quality to his inner confines as he carved deeper designs of madness into shape. He would not be able to entirely finish his alterations, but today would be a start, and they would be sufficient for his oncoming task.

Forward and upward bled together down some streets. His Ghostjack, once planted at the very top of his mind, now hid within a pocket of misshapen memories, its pointed spire like a piece of steel lodged in flesh.

Once all the paths leading to critical structures were secured, Avo turned his attention to the new phantasmic he was to add on. The wards.

He had told Draus that using the Quicksand was a statement and a challenge.

Well. Now was the time.

He wanted the Incubi to know that he was hunting them.

The Osari Memguard served him decently. The improvements he made to it allowed for higher performance, and in return, it guarded him adequately.

Shame that “adequate” was insufficient against Ori-Thaum.

He needed something that could adapt and endure. Something capable of adapting to different traumas reliably.

He shuffled the sequences needed for the Quicksand and wove it into form. A bubble of water fused over the chasm leading out from his mind labyrinth, drifting bodies hovering just beyond the lip of his inner thoughts. This ward was far more silent than the roaring storm that was the Memguard, but there was something about its depths that reminded him of his Woundshaper.

Roused by his thoughts, his Heaven spat out a whisper. “Alchemy and reactivity. The matter of the mind is analogy. In this, the false waters of your waking dream and my blood share commonalities. Yet… there perhaps there is a way that both can be joined, master. It begins with you memorizing a locus…”

That was all it took for Avo to understand. He had thought of this briefly. Caressed the outline of the idea. Using his canons of blood, he could create his own loci, and using them, store ghosts and phantasmics tailored to specific needs.

He didn’t unravel his Mem-guard then. Perhaps it would serve a better purpose yet. It, and the Thoughtwave Disruptor in particular.

Avo installed the Disruptor but did not activate it. He needed to overcome his aversion to the instrument. To his annoyance, the loathing he felt toward the construct was hard to overcome.

In his defense, it had been indirectly responsible for at least two of his deaths.

Before he made his physical assault on Conflux, he would need to experiment with infusing ghosts and phantasmics within a locus made from his blood.

There was potential here for him to create a one-Necro Nether-grid. Keep a variety of optimized wards, traumas, and other sequences in an interconnected network shaped to form by his Woundshaper.

With such a thought in mind, unloaded himself as a simulation and looked upon his mind.

Winding, twisting, and nonsensical, looking in from the outside just before the wards let his gaze down upon a district twisted into shape by forces eldritch and unseen. There were roads leading between the partially crumbled blocks that seemed the teeth of a sleeping leviathan, but all their paths led down spirals and into dead ends lined with traps.

This was the beginning of a long investment. One that would grow evermore complex with time.

The Metamind palace was a sunken city right now. Someday, he would build the analogy into becoming that of an ocean infested with beasts that swam the deep.

For now, though, it was enough.

Tarrying no longer, he cast out and reemerged in Mirrorhead’s mind. Rawness lined the thoughts flowing from the Greatling and a pit of cold formed in his gut.

Drinking alone in his little chamber of mirrors, the Syndicate boss simmered quietly, the direction of his thoughts veering toward his sister, toward how much Ori-Thaum knew of his true plans.

To Avo’s disgust, a similar reluctance gripped Mirrorhead as it had him. The same thing that halted the resequencing of his Metamind was the same thing leaving the Guilder choking on his own emotions as he brought up the laughing little girl failed to delete it over and over.

Regardless of who bore the memory, it was a humiliating thing. A festering thing. An unbecoming depression.

Avo had roused himself from his malaise. Now, it was time to bend Mirrorhead toward his use.

Quelling his speed, Avo released his Heaven and relaxed his Celerostylus. +Draus. In Mirrorhead. About to start my hunt. You know what to do if I get nulled.+

+Synced. I’m still diggin’ through the district’s layout. I got another idea about how we can avoid reflections when we start our run. Another option other than Chambers’ Blockcrawler approach.+

He grunted. Pulling a function he left lingering in the back of his mind, he sent out an order to all the Conflux Necros he contaminated and sent the traumas packaged within their mem-cons to overload in increments of five.

Soon, Mirrorhead would start receiving reports from his surviving Necros. He would likely ignore the first batch as he did the nulled enforcer–and two dead prisoners he just received.

He would not be able to ignore his entire Necrotheurgic base getting unraveled.

Then, Avo needed to provoke the Incubi to reappear. He had a plan for that as well. One that involved Chambers.

And so, as the first thoughtcasts bearing news regarding Conflux Necros collapsing from sudden onset mind damage struck Mirrorhead, Avo shifted over into Chambers again.

Mirrorhead was alert. That was step one.

The Incubi still needed their invitations.