Godclads

+I have a proposition for you.+

+Oh, good. Another one of these conversations. What do you want with me, priest? You got professional problems or complaints? Talk to Zein—+

+I want to talk about you. And the Stillborn. I wish to make you an offer.+

+Listen, I don’t—+ [TRANSFERRING AUTO-SEANCE SEQUENCE] +What the fuck is this?+

+A connection. To your grandfather’s mind. He is waiting for you.+

+...+

+This is no trap. I will have him delivered to a place of your choosing, if that is your wish. This will be given freely, but the location and the mending of your mother’s mind—+

+What do you want?+

+For you to help me. There is something I need you to carry. And something else I need you to do…+

34-15

Master of Hounds (V)

—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—

WARNING: HOSTILE–SY-YSSY

Embers sputtered from Avo’s Soulscape. Flames that once constituted the fires of his soul flickered and spasmed, as if uncertain which way to dance. There was something wrong here. There was someone else here. For the first time in many months, Avo faced an enemy that struck not through matter or force or any other domain of thaumaturgy. Instead, they engaged him directly where he was strongest—within his own mind.

His surprise was only surpassed by his growing anxiety as he felt a strange influence creep deeper into him. A tinge of his Metamind glitched; it tried to boot several times but failed to load completely.

S-SHOSTL-SYMMETRY - 99.999999%

There was something else inside him. It felt as if something with his bones was growing within his structure. It wasn’t trying to hatch inside him. It wasn’t trying to usurp him. No, it was trying to match him perfectly, sequence to sequence, and so far, it was doing an impossibly good job.

Avo, The Hidden Flame, the Burning Dreamer, was getting Necrojacked, and by this point, there was only one other entity in existence that could manage that.

Himself.

“Avo!,” Draus cried, but he ejected her—just as he had ejected every other member of his cadre. He couldn’t risk them getting infected now, either. He sent them back to his temporal dimension, the Omnipresent Operating Base christened by Draus. They’d be fine there, and frankly, now was as good a time as any to test his amnesia tech. The implant should let them run localized sessions of his Soulscape, and he left nodes of himself and other essential templates for them to use.

They would be fine.

He hoped.

But there was still another he couldn’t remove. A Bond still tethered him to Chambers—a Bond he couldn’t make the Lovebringer relinquish.

“Chambers let go.”

“Fuck no,” Chambers replied, his voice conveying a strength that wasn’t there before, and somehow, through that declaration alone, the bond between them grew even stronger. For once, Avo was at an absolute loss as to what to do with Chambers. He couldn’t force him. He didn’t want to reach into the man’s mind to twist their consciousness for fear of infecting them. And Avo couldn’t devote that much energy to worrying about his comrades anymore.

Something was trying to infect him. Something was already infiltrating the Trinary Melody’s governance module. Faintly, the EGI—still dissolving within him—responded, {They have been planning this. For every entity, there is an anathema. For every action and reaction, even something as ever-changing as you—one who is alike—can often predict or change into your worst enem-w-yeye…}

“Infacer!” Avo called out. He scrambled his templates and used every bit of his cognitive capacity to isolate the parts of him that were compromised. Right now, he was guessing, but his considerable consciousness was being fully utilized to identify which points were intruded upon and which remained his own.

“Infacer?” he repeated, crawling and tying his scattered memories together. More of his recollections began to distort. Ash started raining down, spilling through the mem-data and leaking from his ghosts. He wasn’t sure what kind of mem-com he was infected with, but even as he altered his own structure—cycling through his many templates and re-sequencing his mind—he realized one thing: whoever was inside him could mimic him perfectly.

Veylis’ pathborn must have matched him to a fine detail. And that was the thing with the High Seraph — For every single person she treated like Chambers, making him less than who he was, there was another she rewarded as worthy—and when she did, she pursued their recreation in the finest detail.

Avo didn’t face a lesser replica; he faced something so close to himself that, in every functional capacity, beyond different choices and different experiences, they might as well have been the same person.

“He sends his regards,” a voice echoed in the back of his mind. “But he isn’t here. Tell me… what becomes of the original… if a spawn consumes them?” And from a place within himself, symmetrical but foreign, Avo felt a hunger he scattered using his mind—an ancient urge leftover from the time he was merely a ghoul.

A second later, it was gone—and then a massive blast erupted through Avo’s sequences. An entire portion of the being was wiped clean. It was like the necro equivalent of a warhead detonating inside a mundane structure. Avo cried out a note of genuine pain and loss as a good portion of himself dissolved into nothingness. He hadn’t been hit by trauma that hard in ages—even though he had delivered blows like this before, capable of nullifying entire districts. The Definement of Hysteria… His enemy had it. His enemy was using it against him.

WARNING: CRITICAL TRAUMA DAMAGE INFLICTED

COG CAP - [78%]

The governance module connected to the Trinary Melody began to malfunction as well, and a message from an unknown ansible followed.

{Sorry, Avo,} the Infacer said, {but I cannot risk you getting in the way of things, and I cannot have you staying in possession of these toys—I’m sure you understand.}

Avo tried to command his Trinary Melody to strike his enemy down using the fallen titan, but it spasmed. Rival commands issued from within his consciousness flooded into the governance module, and like all things that suffer a paradox, it malfunctioned. Its ruptures flayed out everywhere, expanding in all directions. Whipping tendrils traced wounds along the surface of reality. The tapestry flayed and broke. Patterns ceased to be.

Across the vaulted expanse, new wounds were left—kilometer-length gouges carving through countless sovereignties and the tiers’ domains. Avo didn’t know how many perished at that moment, but the casualties must have been immense. The Beak One’s disorder and chaotic movements lashed the crown of the city, and it was all Avo could do to keep it calm and steady.

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He shifted his focus, returning swiftly to his internal environment. He began running a new simulation: What would it be like to jack against himself? How would he bring himself down? He applied that scenario to his own consciousness and, like a layered entity, started playing wars—predicting his enemy’s next movements. His foe might have possessed Hysteria, but he, Avo, possessed ignorance. And so they struck at each other—a hidden dagger against a falling hammer.

Instead of waiting for his enemy to strike again, Avo began flaying parts of himself away with distortions. “Will find you. Will remove you. Know this.”

A beat followed. More of his sequences shattered. Entire memories—and the cityscapes and districts connected to them collapsed into nothingness. Spreading ash and debris carried an echoed retort. “Maybe. Not fast enough. Not enough to let you keep the Deep Ones. Not enough for you to save father’s node. Or Three-Eye.”

***

—[Draus, Field Marshall of the Coming Flame]—

Draus was no longer within Avo’s Soulscape. The Conflagration were nowhere to be seen. Instead, she found herself surrounded by discrete, blood-created constructs. Rows of haemokinetic structurers stood tall, serried bulwarks overshadowing a distant Sang cityscape. Gasps sounded near Draus. She found herself standing within a bazaar of some kind. Old Noloth by the look of it. Here, she saw the locals—the former elites of the City Eternal—scatter around her, their eyes wide with shock and surprise. At the same time, the Woundmother extended a tendril, massive structures of crimson veins twisted and searching, as if it, too, had been cast out.

“Master?” the Woundmother cried, its voice trembling with confusion.

“Don’t think he’s here no more,” Draus muttered.

For a moment, god and Regular paused, but then, a flash of light sparked at the base of Draus’ neck, and she got an unexpected response.

“Still here,” Avo said. “Enough of me is. Can… still guide…”

“Avo?” Draus said. Suddenly, her cog-feed pulsed, and new options loaded into her Metamind.

“Not the original, not the one you were talking about—but I’ve been backed up.”

AMNESI-TECH ONLINE

INITIALIZE RESERVE SOULSCAPE

ACCESSING TEMPLATES

CREATING MIND FORTRESS

Her halo flashed as a pillar of flame expanded from its edges. The Conflagration splashed over, painting reality around her as Draus took a step back. Her startlement only grew as she found her mind auto-syncing with other members of the cadre. A pathway of fire extended out from her, and she felt herself sudden enter a deep dive as her body collapsed in the Omnipresent Operating Base.

As a new mind fortress formed, she felt her ego and ontology connect with another individual… one that was cast out from Avo’s Soulscape alongside her.

LINKING TO [SHOTIN KAZAHARA]

The Seeker loaded into place right next to her. He looked frazzled. His suit jacket was barely clinging to his bare torso. It looked like he fell over at some point. “The fuck?” Shotin looked at her, his expression resembling a Joyfiend sobering up in the middle of traffic. “The hells just happened.”

Draus shook her head. “Fucked if I know. I think Avo just got jacked—threw us out before we could be compromised, too.”

“Fuck. All right. So what do we do now?”

Draus considered the situation. “All right. Let’s see here..” she said. With a thought, she reflexively connected to the Chief Paladin, and suddenly he was brought into the meeting as well. Naeko blinked awkwardly at the both of them, his head shifting from one to another, before he stared down at his hands. Bits of flame flecked away from his mental avatar as he sighed.

“Let me guess, everything’s gone to shit somehow again?”

“Yeah. Welcome to our lives.” Draus grinned.

“Where’s Avo?”

“Got jacked,” Draus replied. “I think we got a hostile Pathborn specifically designed to bring him down. They’re going after the Deep Ones too.”

“Shit,” Naeko muttered. “We need to—”

“Not worried about Avo. The rotlick will be fine. But we need to get into Scale. Place where Scale used to be, anyway. That fucking Three-Eye guy’s coming back with a node of Defiance. We don’t need the Infacer taking that from us—and we especially don’t need the half-strand stealing one of our superweapons.”

“Alright, but how are we going to get over into reality without Avo?” Shotin asked.

An all-loud cough interrupted them. Then, a series of magenta chains grew brighter, threading through each and every member of the cadre. Chambers stitched himself into existence—the Lovebringer folding with each string and sinew created by love.

In seconds, the large entity with its folded skull, hollow heart, and knitted body materialized before everyone. “Still connected to Avo. I’m not letting go, but whatever he’s fighting, it’s in him deep. The good news is, your good buddy Chambers might be able to fling you across where you need to be. I’ve still got my tendrils latched on to the Beloveds. I’ve still got the tour here. What’s more, I think I can bring the Stormsparrow and Vator into this as well, fuck, pretty much everyone I’m touching. My only question is… uh what’s our strategy? Like, evil Draus is out there ripping shit up, we need to—”

“No, we ignore her.” Draus scoffed, “She’s just a distraction. A lure. She don’t give a shit if she dies. That’s why she’s being loud—she wants us to go for her. This kind of a balls out assault is for someone trying to leave a last and lasting impression. No. Chambers, find out if you can get a few of the Beloved into the place where the Scale used to be. I’ll use them as drop points. Spread of shards out. Set up.”

There were a lot of unknowns. Missing data. Going blindly into something like this might just see her dead. But dying wasn’t that much of an issue if she considered it. Maybe this continuation of her would be gone, but they all had templates of each other. They were replaceable. Reusable. She could afford to be a bit aggressive.

“Naeko. You and the Sparrow are on standby. I want to see their cards before we use you. Better if I get backlashed or paradoxed first.”

“Alright, that sounds—” Naeko frowned. “Actually, why the hells are you calling the shots?”

“Because you’re too passive,” Draus snapped. “And frankly, you just wanna hit stuff and step on people. You ain’t a soldier, Naeko. Maybe a warrior or an icon, but you’ve never been into this. And frankly, it’s a bad deal risking you first.”

The Chief Paladin thought for a moment and just sighed. “Shit. They have some kind of rhetoric school for you Regulars or something? That was pretty convincing.”

Avo laughed. No one but Draus knew why. The Regular snorted. “Cheeky fuck. Anyway. You and Sparrow both stay in reserve…. Shotin!” She cried. “You’re with me.” She pulled out a shard of glass, expanded it until it was the size of a doorway, and motioned for him to get in.

The Seeker just stared at her for a long moment.

Draus narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t in or out of this fight? I don’t need you to be my bitch, but I do want another means of changing the battlefield. The Deliverer might know how I operate, but she sure as shit isn’t ready for you.”

Shotin’s countenance hardened. “Yeah. Yeah, fine. I’ll play the second. But don’t fuck this up for us, Reg. It’s both our lives.”

“Yeah. Both our lives, but it’s no big deal. Avo can bring us back. Same as your niece.”

He was about to argue, but simply threw up his hands and crossed through the reflection.

Draus respected that. He wasn’t a Regular like her, but Shotin was ready to die for this without complaint. That was all a good weapon needed to do. “Chambers, stay connected to us, but be ready to let go. If I get compromised, you cut us and load up our templates. Work with Naeko and the others to finish the fight and secure the sector.

“But,” Chambers started.

“No. We are all expendable. And we can all be brought back by Avo now. We need to win this war, and that means being willing to give up when we need to. That means being willing to eat some bosses. Our enemies are clearly willing to do the same.

“Now, from what we got, the Infacer has a Heaven called the Deepness Beyond. It creates a false vacuum or some shit, so we don’t want to get caught up in that. It’s part of the reason why Shotin’s coming with me. We need to fight quick and evasive—Chambers, I need a steady supply of Beloveds going because I’m going to need you to shuffle us quickly. I don’t think we’re going to be able to use the Temporal Bridge without Avo. But your Bonds—they should still suffice.”

“Got it. I can try reaching out for the Infucker if I get the chance. See if I can make a mind bust.”

“Only if you got an opening. Don’t fuck yourself. You’re the most important person here after Avo.”

“Really?”

“I mean that functionally and logistically. Practically, you’re still a dumbshit rash-addict.”

“I love you too Draus.”

She gave a disgusted snort. “We’ll be adapting on the fly for the rest.” A thought occurred to her, and she spun up a template of herself. A spectral version of Jelene Draus hovered over her like a shadow, and she looked to the others. “I created a backup that will keep giving dispatches about what to do if I go down. Rest of you should do the same. Redundancies, consangs. Stay flexible too. Don’t know what’s gonna be coming our way.”

“Wait.” Avo’s voice interrupted all of them. “Something you should do before you go down, Draus. Something I wanted to do personally earlier. Didn’t have the time. Got interrupted.”

“Don’t think we have the time.”

“Don’t worry. A fork of Kae’s already been working on it for a while.”

Draus paused. “What are you talking about?”

“Think you’re going to need a new Heaven to go with your role.”