Godclads

It’s…. Understandable why Voidwatch would veto the project, but I still reserve the right to be upset.

Imagine. A fully modern Heaven of Strong Nuclear Forces–can you even conceive of the things we could do with such a Heaven? The canons we could weave! All those lives would be spent toward world–no, galaxy–altering purpose. Or–or something like a Heaven of Electromagnetism–agh!

Disappointment! Disappointment!

I mean–I understand… But still! Disappointment!

The Terrestrial Guilds have no idea what they’re missing out on, and the other Agnosi they’re… I don’t know why they’re so incurious. The Voiders know so much–have so much history with the world that was. They made miracles without Heavens or Ruptures or anything! If they could do that, imagine a Godclad with the intelligence of one of their ship-mind-things!

Even the un-redacted information they let me review is… Uh… just awesome. They’re awesome. If only they could get over their fear of thaumaturgy. The gods are broken and we’re oathbound–I mean, things are stable–b-better. Better now. We can try and move toward a better future.

A better future…

I’ve decided. I’m going to take the commission. Project Godshaper.

Oh, wow, saying it makes me lightheaded–uh, I need to–I need to prepare. The oaths–there’s so much lore I need to request access to. Channels… channels. Always so many channels in the way of progress.

I have a good feeling about this one. A great feeling. If Voidwatch is attached as the rumors say, I’m going to–[Audible squeak of joy]

Focus, Kae. Focus. We haven’t changed Idheim.

But the moment sure feels close.

-Mem-log of Agnos Kae Kusanade

12-9

Restoration (I)

Twenty minutes and twelve engineered assassinations later, the cargo unit was drawn away by claw-shaped carrier drones and carried down through vast rusted gates framing the distant fire of a looming furnace.

An uncomfortable swelter simmered within the container as Avo scouted what was to come with his Whisper.

“Don’t mind the heat,” Cas said, rubbing vigorously at his hand with a piece of cloth. His metallic fingers were still stained red with Chambers’ viscera, and across the room, the ex-enforcer sat next to Essus who had wordlessly been examining the other man’s wounds. “We’re going to be dropped into the waste disposal once we get shuttled inside. It’s connected to golems. Two to be exact. One for industrial use, and another, symmetrical one hidden in the same domain.”

Avo felt the pull of space distorting around the distant flames. Judging from how Chambers’ suddenly straightened and stared past the bland plasteel walls comprising the interior of the container, he sensed it too.

“The fire,” Avo said. “Demiplane tied to it?”

“Close,” Denton said. “Thermal excitement. Intensity. It’s a stolen Omnitech golem with a modern Heaven and modified canons. All-in-all, it's easy to hide and pair to the currently active miracles.”

“You got more than one of these planted across the city, don’t you?” Draus asked.

Denton’s face softened as she closed her eyes, covered her ears, and pressed her lips together. “Need to know. Even for us. I request. I get a pull. I seek and receive.”

“Yeah,” Draus said. “And I see lots of points where you can just end up gettin’ cut off.”

“Lots of ways to end up dead in this city,” Cas replied. “Sometimes, it’s better to get snuffed than topple everything down with you.”

The interior shook as the air sizzled. Avo’s Echoheads mirrored his growing agitation, thrashing and slithering as he ran his claws over his fungal plates. The itch was psychological–a sensation of memory leaking over into his physical senses.

Before a fusion burner painted your shadow into the backdrop, vaporizing your body, the initial spike of heat stung the skin with a needling feeling all across one’s nerves. Things were not that hot yet, but it wasn’t far.

“Thinkin’ about gettin’ burned?” Draus asked.

“Already know,” he grumbled, trying to hide his annoyance.

“Ya know, I always did like the burners. Made it trigger-pull-easy to clear rooms and buildings. Except when facin’ you and yours. Never stopped comin’.”

“Didn’t have much to live for.” He growled. And wasn’t that the truth for every ghoul other than him? Consume. Be consumed. What was life but a brief carnival of cruelty and flavor when you were a monster made to serve the dubious needs of a false god.

“You are not alone in your distaste," Sunrise said. "The heat bodes ill for our consciousness as well.” Languor weighed the swarm's flight path as the various bees battled to recenter. Some circled the growing mass of their fellows twice before arriving at their final stop, and through the gaps of twitching wings and jolting limbs, Avo caught sight of a chrome-sheened insect nearing thrice the size of all the others.

Its carapace was the color of fluid gray, and from its filigreed edges dolloped thin strings of matter through the other bees as if each was part of a circuit. The Nether offered a parallel portrayal: all points in its lattice of static-stained consciousness met within what seemed to be the queen of the hive.

Judging from how they were all venting hot air out between the crenulations implanted upon their shells, Avo guessed they weren’t much better with the heat than he was.

He eyed the mass of insects and considered their words. “Have you been burned before?”

“No,” Sunrise answered. “How is it?”

“A lot of pain. Then none at all.”

Suddenly, the heat lifted as gravity pulled up, and the container sank down into what squished like soft soil.

Relieved, Avo directed his perception outward again and realized they were now in the corner of a featureless sodden field. The temperature dove back to that of a morose autumn. Above, Avo could still sense the presence of the flames–hear the crackling of hyper-heated air.

They were hidden somewhere in the fire, somehow unburned on their descent down into alloy-slagging temperatures. Sweeping his Whisper’s perception wide, he regarded his surroundings and found naught but a clearing of mud and muck enclosed by a ring of leafless trees.

Columns of smoke rose in the far distance, feeding into the clouds reshaped from a dancing conflagration, the atmosphere swaying in flashes of shifting orange and yellow.

Yet, the heat never sank down from the heights.

Not twenty steps away from where their container was dropped, a gravel staircase led down to a spatially distorted oubliette.

“Come on,” Denton said as the door opened and the soft incandescence of the plane beyond welcomed them. “Let’s go get you all set up.”

As they cleared out from the container, the Glaive cast out a thought and suddenly the cube-shaped cargo unit was swallowed by the sodden soil, drawn down beneath the earth.

Chambers trailed alongside her, pointing at various things and babbling while Cas kept his eyes–and distance–from the former Syndicate Enforcer.

It seemed that despite how badly Chambers had been beaten, he came out of the confrontation with a brighter disposition and a heightened certitude in himself. He walked, whistling with each stride as Essus staggered behind, a mess of exhaustion with little regard for his surroundings.

“Most of the environment hasn’t been designed,” Cas explained. He pointed at the dead trees around them. “It’s just supposed to be a safehouse, but it's got six levels split across six different thresholds of heat. We’re in the entry. The level below us is the bivouac with beds and other stuff you need for rest, and after that we have two containment layers and one armory above the exit point into the gutters.”

“The way out is at the very bottom,” Denton added. “One-way exit. Golem shuts down and shifts locations afterward.”

“Clean operation,” Draus said. “Never enough security in this city.”

Her words struck something tender as Denton’s lip twitched. “Yeah. Never enough.”

Cas took point at the head of the group as he began descending the steps. However, he paused mid-step down the stairs, spinning on his heel to point at Chambers. Automatically, one of Chambers’ fingers came afire, returning a rude gesture directly back at Cas.

“No…. smut-vicarities,” Cas hissed. His lip twitched in disgust as Chambers held his head high. “I’m serious. We catch Rash and I’ll beat you to death with whatever homunculi I push out of me.”

“Not if I beat you with yours first,” Chambers responded.

Cas opened his mouth before the thought of Chambers reaching into his womb-sores disquieted him enough to throw up his hands and resume the descent. “Just don’t do any weird shit, please. We might all be ‘Clads, but if you’re going to work on the Agnos here, it won’t be good to have us all squirting out stillborn versions of ourselves.”

Trailing downward, Avo felt the Nether stutter as it funneled through each threshold, the staircase drilling a diagonal structure of obsidian and rune-marked stone that went on and on.

As an empty wood-floored barracks became the environment around them down a single floor, Avo found the Nether to be even more strangled than before. He would still need to seal the leaking entrances with vivianite to prevent any disruptions.

“Bed!” Chambers cheered. With his nose broken, both eyes swollen, and a cauliflower ear developing, he staggered over and threw himself atop the soft blanket, smearing the white sheets with a faceful of red.

Auto-chefs and amusingly, water filtration stations lined the far end of the room next to two open toilets flanking the next flight of stairs down another level.

“Welp,” Cas said, running his fingers through messy tassels of hair, “if you guys need a break–”

“They can just kill themselves to….” Avo’s words weren’t answered as the other two were mutually incapacitated. Essus was already asleep while Chambers continued professing his love for the sheets and non-bug-infested fabric.

The ghoul let out a low note of annoyance.

They could all resurrect in optimum condition after death, so he saw little point in sleep and much pointlessness in needing to wake Chambers up later.

He could just activate the man’s Auto-Seance to interface it with Kae’s affliction, but something inside him twitched uncomfortably. Choice had already been deprived from Essus, from Draus, from even Chambers once this day. Besides, having Chambers participate of his own volition wouldn’t take much – the man was desperate to be held in another’s esteem. Any kind of esteem.

In the meantime, he cast his Whisper down through the lower levels and examined what was offered. A dozen twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cells lined the narrow pathways of the level below, while the one beneath that was a wide-open yard filled with nothing but sand and bones.

After that, he came upon an emptied armory, with rig stations and guns missing from lockers. The final layer then led steps into a shallow pond going to a well at its center, with the exit being a brief fall down its shaft out through exhaust vents pouring into the internal facilities of Layer Two.

So far, as a hideout it was inferior to the Washington in the scope of its capabilities, but in honest admission, the convenience of having retreats planted all across New Vultun could not be denied.

He wondered how they managed to get the exact golems needed in the proper place or have these demiplanes stocked without drawing much notice. The logistical demands of such an undertaking would be immense.

And then the thought of Zein shunting all their necessities forward into the future passed through his thoughts. That, or the use of another equally clandestine canon.

Considering how he and Draus were capable of arranging the circumspect deaths of multiple people in seconds across the reach of the city, nothing was truly beyond reach.

The question was merely one of difficulty and cost.

“Draus,” Avo said. “Need your help. Need to set inward-facing spatial rooms. Don’t want the Thoughtwaves Disruptor to spill over.”

“No factor,” Draus responded. “Watched your Whisper go down. Got eyes on our facilities?”

“They’ll do,” Avo responded. He regarded Denton thereafter. There was another pressing matter he needed to deal with. “Still have heavy Rend in one of my Heavens. Might also need matter. Mass. Or blood. Essential for the work. Want to use the materials in the fourth level.”

“That won’t be an issue,” Denton said. “It’s a blunting layer lined with empty Rend bombs anyway. You can empty yourself in those if you have a compatible domain. Try not to hit them. They might still matter if the location is compromised and we need to cut the chain.”

Avo and Draus shared a look.

“Glad I asked,” Avo said.

Cas snorted a laugh and shook his head. “Yeah. Real paranoid shit. But paranoid shit keeps us all alive. Come on. Let me go point some stuff out to you–help you set up.”

***

Time passed as Avo installed the necessary infrastructure for the initial trials.

He left loci of blood containing a few thousand ghosts in each cell on the third level for adaptive investigation. He remembered how the disruption peeled the inferno off Kae’s mind. It would be useful to repeat such an occurrence and examine the damage.

This would be abetted by Draus who was to carry his blood mass in the passage while also keeping any thoughtwave disruptions trapped within the cells' confines. To this end, she vitrified the walls, floors, and ceilings.

From how sudden the transition from plascrete and metal over to glass was, Avo could tell Mirrorhead had not been using his Heaven to the fullest in his last days. With how shattered he was psychologically, he let the full potential of his Heaven slip away.

Pitiful. Shameful.

The cruelest voice inside Avo wondered if it should invoice the Greatlings for the favor he did for them.

Once initial prep work was done, he set about dissolving much of the fourth layer to settle his Rend and then converting what remained into blood while leaving the Rendsinks untouched. Presently, they had a low yield of spatially distorting patterns–likely meant to paradox the local demiplane and see everything resolved in geometric ruin.

By the time that was done, he began digging through his Metamind and reviewing relevant mem-data from the Incubi he nulled for any relevant information to her condition. As time slowly approached the three-hour mark, he found only mutterings related to a memetic weapon referred to as the Conflagration–one matching all the traits of an advanced mem-con and Kae’s current condition.

Just a shame it offered no additional details.

“I see her,” Draus said. The Regulars words pulled him back into focus.

They were positioned inside one of the modified prison cells, and a table and two chairs were all that occupied the room. A layer of glass had formed over where the door was supposed to be, and Draus had modified its structure so Denton and Cas–or anyone outside–could peer in.

A single shard of blood-locus swayed from the ceiling like a lantern. When the time came, Avo would cast out his order and the Thoughtwave Disruptor would go off, and he would switch over to Sanguinity.

“She’s gettin’ on,” Draus muttered, focus cast far away elsewhere. The glass shard drifting close beside her projected a look into the interior of the aero. Through the shining reflection, Avo noticed Kae stepping aboard with a lost expression on her face as she first met the glass. Her skin was sheened with sweat and her red synthcoat gleamed bright as she approached. The translucent veil hiding her clan-mark flattened against her face as the winds washed over her.

Then, from far across the open expanse of the junction, she caught sight of Avo and grinned.

“Draus! Avo!” Kae said, brightening as she stepped through. She let out a slight yelp as a sense of weightlessness took her, but the Twice-Walker rose out from the nondescript reflectivity to shuttle her over. With a causal wave, Draus drew Kae out from the sheet she was expanding from the shard and grinned with satisfaction as the Agnos came through without issue.

“That’s a milk run,” Draus hissed.

Insults hurled only when the task was done. The Regular had her priorities in order.

Stumbling into Draus' grip, Kae stumbled as she blinked and shook her head. “I-I…” Her voice trailed off as she found herself in a prison cell. “Where… uh… where are we?”

“Demiplane,” Avo said. “Sectioned off from the city. Going to use it to disrupt Thoughtwaves.”

“Wh-why?”

He stared past the confusion writ upon her face and directly into the dancing flames crackling over her accretion. “To make you whole again. So you can remember. So you can think without needing an implant.”

It took her a moment to process what he was saying, but when her breath suddenly hitched, he knew she understood.

Her eyes glistened then as she pushed the veil covering her clan mark. Chewing on her lips, the weight of worry stretched out from her and pressed down upon Avo as well, its pressure there and then not, the anxiety an incremental thing between forgetfulness and sudden memory.

“But–but can you? Can you do it?”

Avo didn’t reply with an affirmative. To promise anything would be a lie and all false hope could do was traumatize her further. Instead, he needed to make this seem exactly as it was: a process.

The Sovereignty-class Thoughtwave Detonation that swept through Yuulden-Yang shed the burn from her mind for a brief instant. In that time he caught a glimpse of her halo and the sequences within, a glimpse of who she was before the fires whittled her down to mind-savaged effigy of her former self.

It would take him some time to fix her. He would need to be meticulous. Detailed in approach and extraction. As Ori-Thaum had been the ones to see her enfeebled, Avo was certain the Incubi would take special measures to ensure the damage they inflicted remained rooted in sequence and sinew.

Thankfully, with all the ghosts he wrenched from his foes, his Canon of Haemokinesis, and Chambers as another volunteer, he felt good about their chances.

“Avo,” Kae said as she let out a shuddering exhale. “What–what if I don’t—there’s something b-bad in my memories? What if–I mean–if they don’t…” She gasped for breath again. He could hear her heart screaming as it pulsed in her chest, feel the blood darting through her veins faster, cycling through the system, the fluid in her veins like friction accompanying a growing tension. “I’m scared.”

The way she said those words made him stop. He looked away from her mind and back to Kae in her entirety. She was shaking. This was sudden. Too sudden. He realized she was shooting Draus furtive glances that spilled over onto the glass.

There was so much she didn’t know now.

From one Godclad, they had emerged as cadre.

His first thought was to consider using his Ghostjack to soothe her, but then his sense caught back up to him and he remembered the point of this whole affair.

“You’ll be fine, Kae,” Draus said. She cracked the bottom of her fist against Avo’s arm and a shudder swam through his limb. “Why, Avo here’s practically got the whole thing figured out. ‘Sides, can’t be that many Jacks, better’n him. He nulled those Incubi straight on. He’ll fix you all the same.”

He speared one of his Echoheads out from behind her in ire. She tilted her body. The strike skipped off her rig and struck the ceiling. She aimed a rude gesture at him without looking. His Phys-Sim’s impact vector flashed from red to green.

+Making a lot of promises for me,+ Avo said.

Draus scratched her nose nonchalantly. +Reckon I am. Suppose all you gotta do now is deliver.+

He glowered at her. +Yeah. Just deliver. Just disable an Incubi level mem-con while infiltrating a subverted mind and clean it out entirely. Do it delicate so brain still genius after. No problem. Only risk is her turning into the vegetable. No pressure.+

+Well, shit, Avo, if I knew it was gonna be that hard for you I might’ve requested some help. Hell, there’s no shame asking for assistance. Maybe Denton. She’s a Glaive, ain’t she? Might know what to do. No shame in bein’ less skilled than someone else…+ She trailed off and shot the glass behind them a grin.

The meat was questioning his skill again. Ire flashed into genuine frustration, and Avo found himself fighting the beast, struggling to come up with a reason against pushing his thumbs through her eyes and bashing her head open on the ground.

+Reason’s you can’t,+ Draus replied, leering at him. +That’s gonna need you to get close to me. And we both know how you are up close.+

+Going to tear the blood out from your skull. Pop your insides. Drink your organs from your corpse like a carton.+

+Well, if we’re imaginin’ things, I guess I’m gonna turn your head into glass, smash the glass, and then shit down your throat before puttin’ the pieces back together to watch you choke on my shit.+

He just glared. +I’m going to fix her. Don’t need help. Know what to do. Then. Afterward. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to eat you. I’m going to kill and eat you until the beast inside begs me to stop. Till it gets tired of Reg-meat.+

Draus angled her head as she sneered up at him. +Sure you will. More likely, I’m gonna have a grand ol’ time reliving my war days on rotlick safari.+

A low hiss began to build in his throat. He clicked his fangs together as he envisioned biting into her skull, tearing flaps of flesh free from her augmented bones before moving onto her eyes.

For her part, she just ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek. Her fingers flexed, and with them, her wing scythes expanded. “Well. You gonna make somethin’ of this, or are you gonna start whistlin’ your apologies?”

Avo’s Echoheads reared back–

A banging came from the glass. “Hey… hey, hey! Watch out for the Agnos. Don’t need you two maniacs adding her to the statistics.” Cas sounded genuinely worried for Kae’s life. Curious.

Kae herself spoke thereafter. “Are… are you two doing it again? You… you can fight if you want. I’ll go sit behind the table so… so I can avoid any stray… uh… shrapnel. It’s fine.”

He halted in place.

“No,” Avo said. “That’s later. You’re priority.”

For some strange reason, that made Kae break into a bright smile.

Draus’ shard flashed as the reflection jumped into the windshield on the aero and then over upon a window at the second fortune. “For future access,” she explained. “Listen, Kae. Before we start this, there’re are a couple things we might-gotta talk about…”