Godclads

What do you mean his Frame is missing? That’s impossible. We’re the only ones who can secure and remove it. None of his canons are running either–no Rend–this place is stable. No Rupture.

Euthanize three more. We’ll see what’s wrong once his Heaven manifests.

-Agnosi Thanatech Regarding Jhred Greatling’s Liminal Frame

11-2

A Break Between Storms

A beat passed. They all studied the silver as a general mood merged into a gestalt between their minds. Unwilling to bear the discomfort in silence, Chambers offered words to a common desire they all shared.

+Shit? The Column? The one the crazy old head-exploded gerent’s a part of? Consangs, what say we just get the fuck outta here. I mean… Paladin-guy’s gone. Sky looks clear. Why don’t we just… you know? Do a runner.+

Avo would agree, other than that he had suffered enough surprises for a day. The past moments had solidified an understanding for him: Ignorance was death as a Godclad. So was waiting for another to decide their initiative upon you.

Within this, he set about jacking into her mind.

He expanded the darkness into a demiplane using his Abyssal Cove canon. From there, he shifted back over to the Woundshaper, his Sanguinity flooding out from the darkness like a soft emanation of red mist.

Flecks from the expansion of his Heaven traced her attire and skin, and Denton betrayed her annoyance with but a slight frown.

+Avo,+ Draus asked. +What are you doing?+ Through their connected minds, she felt him shunt his Whisper behind Denton.

Tuning the position of his perception with the Glaive’s, he began to synchronize surface thoughts. His Ghostjack surged as sequences were pulled to its thundering call. Simulated objects and emotions blended to create the spoofed construct.

Yet, just as he was about to slip his ghosts against the borders cast by her wards, her thoughtstuff came into shape.

Avo froze.

The outer architecture of her mind was a pond of dancing numbers and symbols. Between weaving instances of binary integers, he caught flickers and flashes of comprehensible memories, but the fullness only came in fleeting moments. Moreover, there was nothing denoting the presence of a Metamind mantled upon her consciousness, with neither wards nor palace established in place.

In a sense, she was closer to a conscious machine and bare of all phantasmal defenses atop it.

+What the hells is up with her mind?+ Draus muttered. +Looks more like one of them Voidwatch uploads than a person.+

Denton tilted her head at the shadows, her pale-metallic lips parting as she thought about her next words. Just as she spoke, a distant column of fire bellowed into existence over her, rising like a tumbling tower into the darkness of midnight as the blasts built themselves upward floor by floor.

Like a fiery scar upon the flesh of existence, the rising inferno opened like a chasm over a distant district far beyond the reach of their eyes. A single spec of light slipped out from the burning wound. Denton turned, the infrastructure of her mind shifting like mechanisms or gears sliding and slotting into place.

Again, there was thought there, but she was far enough divorced from humanity that he struggled to find a point of entry. Tentatively, he tried attaching the perception spoof, only to slide off her exterior. Instead, what caught his attention next was the thinness of a needle tunneling upward into the void, its path narrowing toward a specific vector, as it was casting a traveling signal or drawing something from a faraway source.

“Perfect,” Denton muttered. “Listen. I’m going to keep this short: I understand if you don’t trust me. Or the Column. Of if you just want to run. I don’t fault any of you if that’s your choice. Thousandhand has that effect. But right now, we need to leave, and you all need to go Zero-Burn as soon as possible. I managed to bribe off the Paladin, but Uthred Greatling isn’t an equation I know how to solve.”

A low groan sounded from Essus. +Another one? Is there no end to their cursed line?+

+Uthred’s the father,+ Draus said. +He’s probably to blame for this line. Him and that… sow.+ She sighed.

Denton continued. “I’m not going to force you to do anything. I can’t. But I can offer you the shadows of my aero so you can get out of the district quicker. Or a seat if you’re willing to have a conversation with the Column proper. I know our… boss… didn’t leave the best impression. But we’re still your best shot at staying alive.”

She offered the darkness a weak shrug. “You got hours to days till the Agnosi give up on trying to find Jhred Greatling’s Frame. That, and all the missing thaums will draw very specific eyes to you. You won’t be able to move anywhere without being hunted.”

A distant crack sounded through the air. The wavelengths of light twitched like fabric in their near vicinity. Brightness pulsed as if connected to distant waves. Her eyes snapped to the side as if glancing at something from her periphery. With a pre-emptive wince, she pulled off one of her ivory-inlaid cloves and revealed claws of gleaming titanium.

Carefully, she brought them up to her right eye.

+What is she–+ Chambers began to ask.

With surgical precision, she snatched the organ free from her socket. With the swipe of a digit, she severed it clean and loose.

A lull of thought went through the ghost-links. The silence was quickly interrupted by a single declaration.

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATED

+Jaus’ fuckin’ corpse, Chambers,+ Draus muttered.

+What? Those are some shiny eyes.+

+Juicy,+ Avo said, adding a descriptor. Like a delectable orb hanging from a stalk of pristine tissue, he felt himself salivating like a nu-dog even with his physical self stored in whatever subreality his Frame used to store his mortal form.

“Flesh for time,” Denton said. “Five minutes. That’s all I want. Give me five minutes so you at least know what’s going on before you decide what comes next.”

+You know,+ Draus said, her attention drifting over to the silvery aero, +there’s quite a few reflections I can bind usin’ that. Could just link a window as a fast exit. And since there’re doors, Essus might-could make us another way out if we need it.+

Avo barely managed to pull his attention away from the blood-glazed eye dangling from Denton’s grip. +Think we should go with her?+ Avo asked.

+I think we should get whatever intel we need from her and just leave. But it ain’t gonna be wise stickin’ around.+

He considered his next course of action. He could continue trying to flee the district using his Galeslither. Swimming through the dark wouldn’t be hard, but they would need to leave the Sovereignty at least before he gained any sense of direction. That, and there was the threat presented by other Paladins or Godclads of a high enough sphere.

What they needed to do right now was remain unnoticed. Something he couldn’t manage with his Heaven fully manifested against the sheer area that potent enough canon could cover.

But that didn’t mean he was entirely out of choices, however. The Glaive was going to be too much trouble to subvert --- her mind was byzantine and foreign to his touch; an enigma to research and overcome soon.

Her aero, however, was comparatively a far softer target.

Cracking into the Mercurian Moonthief, Avo cracked its wards and tainted its locus with his ghosts while his haemokinesis infected its machinery. He downloaded the vehicle's design into his Woundshaper’s memory. The interface and critical functions of the vehicle booted in the back of his mind as slipped himself into the cleft of its structure, usurping control.

+You have it?+ Draus asked.

+Yeah,+ Avo said. +Aero’s ours. Link the windows anyway. Have Essus do his thing too.+

Chambers let out a low whistle using a ghost. +Right. Gleam. Good job, team.+

Avo ignored him. He cast his first line of communication to Denton instead.

+Five minutes,+ Avo said. +Land the aero. Go Zero-Burn. Make this as quiet as possible.+

The Glaive let out a breath he didn’t know she was holding. With a twitch of her finger, the aero began its descent as Avo reinjected himself–and the others–back into the real. Rushing up from the false waters of the darkness, the Galeslither broke out like a swimmer afflicted by surface tension. Sound and scent bore down on him in full as his perception of metaphysical existence narrowed into his mortal vessel. His Sagnuinity ebbed forth momentarily from his being before he compressed it further until it only cupped the aero, Denton, him, and his cadre.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] - 91%

REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER] - 4%

With how frantic the situation was, he was left without an opportunity to examine the others as they fought and fled. Standing beside him now, Draus looked much the same as she did, returning with all blemishes of damage gone from her bio-rig.

For Essus and Chambers, however, things were different.

Chambers looked healthier than he was by a magnitude or more. His skin seemed smoother, and a few concentrations of scar tissue were missing from his body. As shown by Draus and Avo time and time again, resurrections did not preclude clothing, but Chambers continued to be pantless for whatever reason. Or a very deliberate reason. When Avo finished using him to fix Kae, the next experiment would be to see if he could suppress whatever motivated Chamber’s degeneracy.

It was Essus that stood most apart from his prior form. His body had reverted to almost baseline again–mostly unblemished by implants and naught but rubbery flesh. All except his arms. The chrome Mirrorhead grafted to him remained there, and Avo couldn't quite understand why.

As the former father looked down at his hands, he touched the bare skin on his chest, and felt for the burdensome implants that once projected primary effigies of his trauma. “He’s gone,” he whispered. He looked to Avo, to Draus.

A single tear rolled down his eye. He reached up and felt the hotness of the tear trickling down his index finger. He laughed. He sobbed. “Oh. I… I thought I would never–” His legs gave out from under him, but as reflexes surged in Avo and Draus, it was ultimately Denton who caught him before he could collapse.

“Alright,” Denton said, holding the man steady, but distant with casual ease. She was more than a few inches shorter than Draus, but still, she stood taller than Essus had been before his forced augmentations. “Come on.” She guided him toward the aero. “Let’s get out of here. Leave your Frames on Zero-Burn. There’s water and food aboard.”

"Fuck yeah," Chambers said. 'You got one of them Slick n' Sours?'

Wordless, she chucked the eyeball at Avo. One of his Echoheads instinctively whipped out to grab it. Draus got there first. The Regular clamped a vice-grip on his neck just as he dove forward with fangs wide, seeking to savor Tier-quality flesh.

“Mine,” Avo hissed, clawing at her to give him his prize.

“Hang in there, rotlick,” Draus said, holding the organ from a bundle of optical nerves, “gotta see if it’s got any augs in it first. You owe me an eye, remember.”

“Didn’t revert yours?” Avo asked.

Draus collapsed her helmet and shot him a grin. Her eyes flashed with the brightness of augmented circuity and scope-like optics. “They did. That don’t clear the debt none–two eyes are still two eyes. Gonna make my comparison - give it back to you if it ain’t what I want.”

He hissed at her. She cracked her neck and drew out her knotted ponytail. Seemed the Frame had adjusted her hairstyle as well.

He had to wrap his Echoheads around himself to inch inside the car. At least the interior was luxurious–of a similar make to Mirrorhead’s limo than most of the secondhand vehicles he, Draus, and Kae slummed in during their time at the Second Fortune.

Clean carpets and plush hive-like sofas dotted with mechanical buds studding gaps between the softness. A thin beam of soft light painted the interior in hues of white while telemetries and visual data lined the walls. He felt gravity press down on him momentarily before flattening.

Sifting through the aero’s locus, he found the functions of the internal grav controls. Intrusive curiosity took hold of him. He wondered how much force it could apply.

It was a colossal feat of will not to amp its functions to the max and test it on Chambers.

“So. Nice aero.” Chambers wiggled his eyebrows at Denton as she placed Essus in a seat. “This thing’s locus got any interesting vicarities?”

The Glaive opened her mouth to respond, but did a double take. “Where… are your pants?”

Chambers looked down. He snorted a quick apology and wrapped his coat tighter around himself. “Never got any.”

Denton frowned. She was likely thinking about how everyone else reverted to a “prime” state while Chambers continued to be… deprived.

“The answer’s simple, Silver,” Draus said, shrugging her head at Chambers. “He’s a half-strand. A real sick bastard.”

Chambers nodded, thinking that he was being praised. “I am the half-strand.”

The Glaive blinked. “Right.” She flicked her wrist. Avo narrowed in on the gesture as specific commands filtered through the locus. She had coded visual-haptic orders into the aero. Useful. He scanned through the mem-data for anything worth noting.

As they rose and took off, the internal gravity controls spared the need for any gimbals as they were submerged in a blanket of balance force. The surrounding walls depolarized from the inside as they rose up beside the silicon-shelled megablock towering over them. Cresting its height, countless other blocks of similar build broke into an asymmetric pattern a few miles into the district while coilgun-flung railways passed across the top of every edifice, the environment looking close to something like a circuit board.

“Here,” Draus said, flinging the eye at Avo without looking. He opened his jaw as it hit the roof of his mouth, and with a sudden close, he felt his orb pop upon his tongue, staining him with the flavor of sweetness while his fangs inched through the gristle of connected tissue.

Denon had grown another eye by this point. It was as if she had never blinded herself at all.

Settling across from them, the ground turned transparent as well, and the aero picked up speed. Avo checked their destination for any subterfuge and found only one pre-sequenced location built into its system.

The Easy Armistice. From the mem-data, it looked like a club or some manner of joy parlor. From experience, he guessed it to be some kind of thinkeasy for smuggling phantasmics and memories or a potential front for The Deep Bazaar.

It was also the place Walton had asked him to seek just after claiming his Sangiest.

He had long delayed this moment. Firstly, for the sake of killing Mirrorhead, and secondly for all the distrust bore–and continued to bear–for the Column.

Fittingly, that was when Denton started speaking. “Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way. But I think you all know how best-laid runs go.”

“Yeah,” Draus said, nodding sardonically, “they get derailed by a time-jumpin’ fuckin’ lunatic whose head explodes for no reason and ends with us stuck right under the nose of the Guilds. Just a usual job goin’ right, am I right?”

A ghost of a smirk passed over the Glaive’s face. “I’m probably not the best person to say that too, but I get your point.”

Right. She worked with Zein. Avo suddenly felt an immense spike of pity for the poor woman.

“Regardless, things didn’t go quite as planned.” Snapping her fingers, a holographic shape pulsed at the center of the aero and it showed the burning tower they saw earlier. She pointed at Draus. “You were supposed to end up inside the Fire’s Height via one of the stormtree’s portals. You with the incriminating memories, Abrel Greatling’s body, and the Bloodthanes following you.” Her gaze turned over to Avo. “And the other three were supposed to pull a false-flag attack by switching between Heavens. She had a kill-list of specific Guilders and personnel you were supposed to hit during your mad sprint. Everything she did was engineering.”

"For what?" Avo asked.

"The future," Denton replied flatly. "There's a war you can't see yet."

“Well,” Draus said, “that sure as shit didn’t happen. Zein still dead?”

“No. Not truly. She lost a temporal echo of herself, but the paths are…” Denton paused and considered her next words carefully. “Aren’t something I understand, but she can’t use them for now.”

A loud, deafening roar of frustration rattled the air and shook the aero. It sounded like a bomb going off, searing the air, cooking the atmosphere. Denton blinked twice and gave a slight smirk. “Uthred Greatling just arrived late. Lucky us.”

“Yeah,” Avo said. “Lucky. Talk. Time’s running.”

“Alright,” Denton said. “Let’s start with the fact that I could have just let Naeko take you. He was within his rights, and I burned valuable intel keeping you away from the Unwhere.”

Chambers squinted his eyes and nodded. “Unwhere. Right. What-what is that?”

“Mostly a Domain of Death and Light turned to the use of keeping Godclads contained in perpetuity.” She looked up. “Out and up in the void. A lonely and empty place.”

The Regular scoffed. “Yeah, but before that, they need to charge and sentence you proper, so I doubt you did that much. Why now? Why are you making contact with us now? Zein’s too dead and you're the piss-holder? Is that it?”

Denton frowned. “Never been called that before. The truth is, we weren’t sure about it. Him. Sorry.”

Avo glared.

“You have to understand, the Frame was never meant for you–your… father helped us steal it, but we all had a candidate in mind already. Plans. Ran into complications instead. Had to burn a few cells. And then, about a month later, Zein ended up finding you while tracking the Hungers. Before that, she wanted to test you more from afar, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Avo said. It made sense about the Frame. But more importantly, it offered a truth.

Zein wasn’t omniscient. She hadn’t known until his encounter with the Hungers. She hadn’t known where he was before that. Pairing that with her sudden death, a newfound vigor swelled inside him. She could be killed. And the future could be severed. So many reasons to hope.

He just needed to map out more of her blind spots.

“I’m going to keep being honest with you: we need your Frame. We need it for the Ladder. We need them to absorb the Great Arks possessed by the Guilds. We need it to stop the end from happening.” She leaned in closer, almost unconsciously. “And we need to drain the Heaven of Love before it ruptures even more. It's instability is only growing.”

The words were cast from her lips like a hammer. And suddenly, she had the fullness of his attention. A flash of Walton withering away as stillborn clumps of flesh came free from his sores. He said something to Avo then. Or someone.

Avo wasn’t sure anymore. The memories that made up who he was didn’t come from him.

But his father, Walton remained.

As the rain fell harder and a tide of neon and music filled the horizon, Avo broke the silence. “How long do we have?”

“Six months,” Denton said. “Maybe less. The Agnosi who… They’re dead now. No one knows the canons needed. Your Frame is our last chance before the anomalies expand. And then…” She shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll find out if there’s anything left of us to save.”

The aero’s locus pinged. They stuttered momentarily as they began their descent.

APPROACHING THE EASY ARMISTICE: 10.3 KILOMETERS