Godclads

Aegis, this is Sunrise. I confirm Rupture containment—the Heaven remains unfallen. Reality is stabilizing.

Negative. I do not see the Stillborn. Reflections are collapsing over each other. Space is getting shunted throughout the affected regions. I’m widening my drones; we might be able to—

[Distant explosions]

Never mind, I have him. He’s in Nu-Scarrowbur—oh.

Aegis, number expected collateral. Got a lot more people about to die for Thousandhand’s little “adjustments.”

--”Sunrise,” Aegis Operative, Voidwatch

10-22

The Pruning of the Path (I)

Jhred Greatling died with an implosion of Soulfire, but its collapse never reached the point of culmination.

Imploding radiance crashed down like a wave against Avo’s rippling Soul, the metaphysical mass fusing to his while he consumed. The Daemon shivered and twitched, still pinned by the Fulgerhund.

As glistening gore misted the air behind glinting implants flung free by the wind, his nucleus suckled the length of the uncoiled dragon and the Twice-Walker bound to its end like a mouth would slurp a noodle.

Caught in the wake of the ontological subsumption, the leaping electricity dancing along the length of the Fulgerhund was stretched from its physical anchor. A lightning-infused mastiff strained against the gravity of Avo’s Frame, its being fighting to stay connected to the golem itself.

In the throes of his meal, he barely noticed the force he was exerting on Draus’ vehicle. Nor Abrel above them, standing on the precipice of a torn hallway. The sprawl of the Spine’s districts spread out behind her like a panorama of devastation matching her face.

He didn’t even notice how each reflective gateway—once bound—was collapsing as tunnels of space snapped from binary to unitary boundaries per the laws of baseline reality. The stability of existence reassumed its control like a funnel of space smashing across vectored regions, injecting everything caught between their paths elsewhere.

A vast wall of cascading space rushed over them as burst glass fell around them. Before she could react, a separate tunnel swallowed Abrel, peeling another section of the block away along with her.

The world about Avo blurred into confusion. The Fulgerhund snapped free, now missing its tip, sailing into his wind-shaped grasp. Reality clenched and fired them along what felt like a magnetic accelerator, injecting them from one place to another.

Volumetric reality around them lurched, and suddenly the layout of their environment glitched as gravity drew droplets of blood and debris plucked from the ground.

They had been transposed out from threads of light glinting from a shard of glass, flung well past the stretch of Mazza’s Junction. Now, they were tumbling into a fall again, the expanse of the districts yawning wide beneath them.

Such a thing was only of secondary regard to Avo, for so besotted was he on the taste of premium flesh and divine nectar that the sensations of the fall were but shadows in the backdrop.

This was thrill. This was killing. This was all he had been meant to be and more. This was the actualization of what it meant to be a ghoul and a Godclad both—to climb the apex in concept of power and predation both.

[LIMINAL FRAME] OBTAINED - BROADSWORD PATTERN

->TWICE-WALKER HEAVEN TEMPLATE DOWNLOADED

->THAUMIC CYCLER x1

->SOUL x1

->ONTOLOGICS x2

THAUMIC OUTPUT - 4673 THAUM/c

The Soul within Avo expanded, its reach spreading vast as his ontology washed wide—running a just beyond the expanse of an entire district. Yet with it came a bone-hollowing emptiness—his Heavens remained too small, doomed much of his subreality to remain a lake of simulated light. Docked to the borders of his Frame was a diminutive cluster attached in a pocket.

The Frame he took from Jhred had enclosed a tight knot about the faint ember that remained of its thaumic core. It seemed a little more than pimple upon his immensity now, though Avo knew it possessed greater purpose than its present state of atrophy.

With an injection of Essence, it would unfurl and its center would unveil itself. There was a groove of absence at the apex of its Soul—a place for the Nous of a new master to mantle its ontology and serve as pilot.

That thought pulled Draus into Avo’s mind.

It was done. The killing was done. The high of his excitement had yet to fade, but the first needle of his rationality punctured through the ecstasy of the beast and his Woundshaper. They needed to egress and flee.

Faintly, he heard another voice scratching at the back of his mind, its sound a distorted neigh of confusion. A war steed emerging from a fog, greeted by lands unknown and faces unfamiliar.

Pulling the mangled pulp that remained of Jhred through a current of wind, Avo thought to keep a snack for himself later as a personal post-feast snack to relive the high. The pieces of the corpse were halfway through as he turned to reach for the Fulgerhund, planning to escape.

The deafening screech of a falcon drew his attention back to the present. Ashen feathers formed from the smoke crowning the collapsing megablock - a prelude to a theater of cleaving lights that partitioned the mushrooming fog building upon the wreckage.

Two more presences flashed upon the real, his Liminal Frame brushing them—sensing their presence before sight offered any revelations.

Swallowing the Fulgerhund into his Yondergales, Avo twisted in the air as he sought to make a quiet escape.

That desire died as beams of coruscating light pierced from the blocks in the surrounding districts by the thousands.

Through walls and from streets, the attack came unrelenting, each shot as if a needle of liquid fire striking across the distance of miles. Plascrete offered no impediment, and to his alarm, he found each shot intersecting at his exact position.

The nature of the Heaven he faced was unknown, and like he proceeded against the Bloodthane that smote him from the skies in Nu-Scarrowbur, his desire was one of evasion rather than engagement.

For all the bloodlust ignited within the beast in that instant, it was a creature of impulse—all too willing to hand its leash over to folly. Avo knew better—hunted better.

Ambush and awareness were how he ensured Jhred Greatling’s death. His Heavens were only the facilitators of the process.

Descending, wind spiraled around him as he accelerated, his eldritch form an invisible bullet tugging on a cloth composed of wind.

A sweeping blade of pure light slashed past him and through him. He felt discomfort lurch as his currents were momentarily disrupted before he carried out. The light carved through distant blocks and opened buildings the same way a knife would open an aluminum can.

It was only then that he noticed which buildings the slash had carved through. Parts of distant domes collapsed in on themselves and dust spilled like oozing blood from Nu-Scarrowbur, now no longer contained.

As the assault continued, cracks formed in the air as building force joined a rising chorus of notes.

Avo knew what was coming. He knew better than the Highflame cadre.

His hour was up, and his presently active problem had just spilled over into his potentially delayed problem.

Over the skies above Layer One in the Yuulden-Yang Sovereignty, two groups of Godclads went to war without fully realizing who their opposition was.

If he was still flesh-made, he would have hissed a laugh.

Slipping into the pulsing numbers gushing through the rings of an aerolane, Avo aligned his path with the gutters. If he could get down there before—

His being pulsed—Zein twisted free into their air with her glaive a blinding whirl.

She struck passing strokes of light and severed sound before it could transmute into force. Another flicker and the beams stopped coming. As she dipped into a fall and sank back into nonexistence, she shouted through the rushing winds and the rising thunder of combat. “Twelve now. Keep going: The path narrows.”

Suspicion ignited within Avo, but he was too busy angling away from another tidal wave of symphonically manifested explosions. He needed to—

REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER]: 100%

WARNING: BACKLASH

CLASHING CANON

[SPACE]: UNKNOWN

VENT! VENT! VENT!

Reality lurched as a pocket of mass inverted itself with Avo, and he found himself tumbling free after the falling Fulgerhund as his Yondergales flattened out.

Something had just happened to the space he was in. He found himself falling through an open chunk missing at the center of a tower. Familiarity sparked as he realized where he was. A layered roundabout splayed out just below him, and at its center, a vast tree branching out into portals and sculpted from storms rushed toward him.

Snarling, Avo ejected the spores from his Mime-Fog to mask his current position, cast out a thread of blood from his veins, and punched his way through the Fulgerhund’s armor before pouring himself through the link.

As he remanifested within the confines of the cockpit, his Echoheads speared out and held him in place, wrestling against the g-forces.

“Draus,” Avo shouted. “Jump. Need to leave. Got pocketed by something.”

The Regular lurched in shock then settled realizing it was him. “Tryin’. Systems are fucked, everythin’ in this piece of shit’s fucked! The Heaven’s not responding right. Locus is showing it got unlatched or somethin’.”

Avo paused even as gravity wrung his insides like a towel. That might have been his fault.

Essus was muttering prayers while Chambers served as his second, offering a litany of curses.

A sudden impact made Avo’s tentacles screech as they carved against the internal architecture of the golem, straining to stop him from sliding.

Zein hadn’t appeared yet. More and more, he was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t focused on protecting him and the others. Or at least that wasn’t her sole objective.

At any moment, she could have killed all the Godclads again. He didn’t see anything stopping her from repeating the same feat. However, from the words she last spoke, he found a single word lingering in his mind.

Path.

Was she arranging for them to follow a specific future she predetermined, and had used her canon to ensure they did not deviate from design?

A sudden force was upon them. The plating of the golem began to groan as more fragile components began to burst and crack on the inside.

Avo pulsed again and an echo of Zein filtered out from Chambers before vanishing. This repeated three more times before Zein leaned next to him and spoke. “Six. The Bloodthanes and that Greatling are very good. Thankfully, I have also made them very confused as to who they are fighting. You should subsume the Fulgerhund—it will go well with your blood, I think. Oh, and vent after you crash. You will need a clean—“

The crash she portended came before she could finish. Something struck the golem hard and it went into a spiral. Strapped into protective gimbals, Essus, Chambers, and Draus were spared the worst of the inertia as protective mechanisms compensated on their behalf.

Avo himself was not so fortunate. The sheer force of the impact sent his Echohead slicing clean along the armor, unable to find a foundation of stability. He slipped free. His back struck the rear of the crew module as his plates and threaded fibers stopped the impact.

Again, he found himself more than grateful he had the Bone Demon body sheathe grafted. A regular ghoul would have smeared, and with his Rend so high across both cyclers, real death would not be such a theoretical concept for him.

Winded from the impact, he felt the air catch in his chest several more times as he tumbled across the ceiling and walls, his foot catching Chambers across the forehead. With each bounce, he acclimated more, Celerostylus infusing the chaos with languor as he caught himself via his Echoheads.

They came to a final grinding halt as a pole of plasteel punctured through the cockpit toward the pilot’s gimbal.

Draus caught it and wrenched it out of shape with a single hand.

With a final lurch, the last of their momentum died.

Then the shooting began.

Outside the golem, flechettes rained down. Inside, it sounded as if they were seeking refuge from a hailstorm within a tin can. The metal around them deformed in dips and dents. Holographic displays spewed nothing but errors, depriving them of any functional understanding of how long they could hold.

Chambers’ head was swiveling around in terror, his mouth still open in a constant scream. Essus had simply leaned back, face showing the sheer immensity of his exhaustion from all that happened.

Shrugging himself free from the impression he left in the panels leading to the storage section, Avo reached out with a haemokinetic tendril and peeked at the situation using his Whisper.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 82%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

Irregular salvos of fire from gauss-flung weapons and other projectiles were bearing down on them from all directions. They were currently crashed, leaning against the interior of what looked to be a quick-fabbed tenement building crusted at the foot of an abandoned factory.

At least he had a direction of which way he had to vent now.

Tearing herself free from the gimbal, Draus shook her head and gestured for a link, unfazed by the constant hammering of falling gunfire.

Avo whipped out a tendril and fed her his sensory feed to the outside.

+Well. As far as the run’s concern, the milk’s gone pretty sour.+

+Not really,+ Avo disagreed. +Got Mirrorhead. Got his Frame. Killed thousands. Good day.+

She snorted. Chambers and Essus were detaching themselves with haste. +Well, you’re ‘bout to be a happy rotlick, ‘cause the day ain’t over. Counting at least sixty impact trajectories. Give us twelve more seconds before one gets through.+

+Going to vent out the side. Move through the slum and get into the factory. Find another way out after that. Or…+

+Or?+

+Got Mirrorhead’s Frame. Shouldn’t take long to graft.+

Her mind lurched to a halt. Apprehension and indecision formed over her like a stormcloud. She tilted her head at Essus and Chambers. +Let’s exfil first. Bounty comes after.+

He didn’t bother arguing. Part of him considered just imbuing her with the Frame and fueling her with the thuams, but he remembered how he felt after Walton’s node had forced his choice in the Deep Bazaar.

He also remembered who decided to pull him along on a little trip afterward.

Draus deserved better. Draus deserved to choose. Zein and her path would just have to adapt.

Which, unfortunately, was what it did.

After his Soulfire rippled out and drew the dislocated Heaven of the Fulgerhund into his Frame, Avo used his entropic gale to dissolve a pathway out the back of the ruined golem and make for the factory.

As soon as the exit was made, he paused and let Draus through before following, casting the matter-eating fog over them. Shots dipped into the darkness he channeled and never emerged out the other side. Missiles, flechettes, slugs, and more. All fed into his Hell’s expulsion and his Rend trickled down percentage by percentage.

The Regular barreled through the cheaply made structures around her with a helpful burst from her scythe-like wings. An underground parking entrance for aeros stood out before them as shrapnel skipped overhead.

More and more, however, the shots were being replaced. The fluid beams of fire returned, slicing clean through the golem’s remains, ignoring the entropic fog entirely. Not wanting to find out what distracted the other they hurried.

The answer came anyway as a massive orb infused with roaring force rose above the block they were rushing toward. Loose harp-like cords formed a body most uncannily chimeric, human in torso, the four legs goat from the legs down.

As Avo’s Frame brushed that of the Bloodthane’s, he grimaced.

LUMENLYRIST, MELODIST OF THE CLEAVING DAWN

THAUMIC OUTPUT: 978 THAUM/c