Godclads

But if all that is counts as a pattern, then what about all that isn’t? Is that not a greater, more encompassing anti-pattern? Or perhaps, with the flame you conjure from the lowliest canon, with the greatest miracle, should there not be a counter-dichotomy—an un-symmetry in the tapestry—something where other expressions can reside?

This, I feel, is a field of thaumaturgy that so few have looked into, that so few have explored. What happens in the spaces that your miracles do not inhabit? Does the tapestry reshape itself to accommodate the impossibilities we demand?

We know of Rend and the nature of Hells, but what of the tapestry itself? What of everything we do not see?

-Agnos Kae Kusanade, Theory Paper: “The Patterns That Aren’t”

34-3

The Spires of Wasn’t

GRAFTING ONTOLOGY DESIGNATION [FORGOTTEN] TO [WOUNDMOTHER]

>UPDATING HEAVEN OF BLOOD TO [SPHERE VIII]

The process of integrating a war mind with an act of heaven proved easier than Avo expected. Sections of the warmind slotted over the existential patterns of Woundmother as two separated Domains merged into a singular structure. With each passing moment, just as Avo’s ghosts filled with Soulfire, what was necrothergic became more aligned with the metaphysical.

A dark, shimmering ball manifested above the Woundmother, its proud peaks formed from glistening blood and shape-shifting matter rising high. The jaws of its wolf-like apex clenched a burning series of patterns that represented the alchemical formulae for every bit of matter it could wield. Now, a second sun erupted over the patterns—a sun of purest darkness that overlapped with these existing symbols. As the darkness swelled, its power over shattered memories flowed down through the Woundmother, spreading like blackened veins and ethereal arteries along its shell.

“I feel different.” The Woundmother bellowed. “Greater. Master, I’m spreading. Spreading further.” And their words were true. Ghosts coursed through the blood, gliding along a shared path, and from their union came tendrils—dripping limbs of ethereal ichor. It wasn’t simply a one-way conversion, no. At its heart of hearts, the Woundmother was a Heaven of Blood—a Heaven that accepted the crimson flow of bodies to forge matter. Now, it could reach into the realm of minds as well, its power flooding a new section of the tapestry like a wound.

WOUNDMOTHER (DOMAINS: BLOOD/MATTER/LIGHTNING…FORGETFULNESS)

->CANON - STRUCTURES OF UNKNOWING (MATTER/BLOOD/MEMORY): ALLOWS THE OVERHEAVEN TO CREATE MEM-MATTER STRUCTURES FROM LOST OR DESTROYED MEMORIES. THESE STRUCTURES EXIST IN BETWEEN THE REALMS OF MIND AND MATTER AND THUS CAN INTERACT WITH BOTH PATTERNS. WARNING: THIS HEAVEN’S VULGARITY IS (EXTREME).

HUBRIS: [N/A]

HELL

->CANON - SHATTERING OF THOUGHTLESSNESS (ENTROPY/MATTER/BIOLOGY/MEMORY): OBJECTS OF BIOLOGY AND TANGIBLE MATTER THAT HAVE MEMORIES CAN NOW BE CHARGED WITH REND AND MADE TO DETONATE WITH MATTER-DISSOLVING ENERGIES. THE YIELD OF THE BLAST IS DETERMINED BY HOW MUCH THE INDIVIDUAL HAS FORGOTTEN.

The Woundmother let out a thunderous laugh, and Avo joined her. Bolt of crimson lightning now bore a faint shiver of transluence, scarring the sky with threads of dancing ghosts. Below the Heaven of Blood’s dominion, in a golden realm forged from time, the Sang shivered, turning their perceptions skyward. A new force rushed over their consciousnesses. It was like a raging current slamming through their minds, transferred by the Sanguinity of the Woundmother, and once more, a greater power used them, harvested their blood and lost memories to knit new edifices into form.

“Glorious! New materials for construction! There will be no height beyond us! No height!” the Woundmother’s glee rattled out from within every mind it touched. A few hundred thousand No-Dragon citizens went insane immediately, wards shattering from within as the full weight of an awakened god’s unfettered joy exploded inside them. Strings of Conflagration pierced the fragments of their mind and reforged what was broken immediately.

Their nullings proved temporary. Their traumas lasted a few moments longer. The beginnings of an agonized symphony began and died on their throats and tongues. But suddenly, Avo tore those memories from them — stole their pain. And as they forgot, Avo discovered something truly sublime. From within their bodies swelled a new weight, a metaphysical substance that was dense but formless like gas, outlined by near-transparent contours analogous to lost sequences from component memories.

And he wasn’t the only one. The Woundmother saw these strands as well, and they drained them, drew them into her red and ghostly brightness as the orb at her apex grew laden with new weight.

The dimension of time was a ruin in three parts: Its center was cleaved by a dismembered dragon of Noloth. It was its primary catalyst, but two of its sides were the bone-towers of the No-Dragon district, of the ligament-latticed bridges and blood vessels that formed the space between its blocks and streets. But what held everything together were the Sang—the chronomorphs molded by chronomorphs.

Once upon another age, Avo guessed that a lingering polity of Neo-Creationists made the dragons to rebuild what was lost. How amusing that the dragons now turned to use the descendants of their former creators as seeds.

Each Sang was like a beacon—a source of light. Bound to the broken body of the fallen dragon, directed by the dancing form of Akusande swimming through their very beings, they became the pillars that held this nascent realm together—a little place beyond places; a new plane of time and space, parallel to what was. What’s more, though, they were the source of its composition, for it was from their minds and ontologies that a snapshot of baseline reality.

And that wasn’t all. Where baseline reality progressed like a straight line on a page when it came to its chronology, the temporal dimension flowered by Avo was rather more malleable. So far, it seemed it only had two hard rules. The first was that it had to move in a certain direction. Progress was necessary. The second was a need to be anchored. It was bound to the Stormsparrow at present. Without her, the entire thing might just collapse back into the real through Avo — an experience for a more controlled setting, at another time. But beyond this, he had free rein to experiment. And experiment he did.

He coiled the path of his dimension’s present, twisting and winding until a second in the real world was nearly an hour in his parallel reality. But upon reaching this threshold, he discovered another, softer limitation. With each bit of time he twisted or altered, the beings of his Sang were strained. At an hour, most of them were actively groaning in pain, and the curse flaring and dying inside them intermittently.

[Fascinating,] Elegant-Moon said. [I feel.. The curse in me is at once charged and drawn from.]

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

[More experimentation will be required,] Kae muttered, positively giddy at the implications.

Lessening the strain on his people, he continued working on his ontologics, and felt his triumph rise. The establishment of his temporal dimension was a greater success than the integration of the warminds or even the procurement of four Deep Ones. Here, he could construct a nigh-unassailable fortress—crossing to and fro from reality while building up his own forces, creating his own golems, testing his own theories.

For so long, he lacked one thing in the face of the Guilds, against Noloth, against the great dangers that sought to snuff him out before his flame could truly blaze.

Time.

Time to ready himself. Time to prepare. Time to think about what he wanted beyond just a few weeks or months, to operate strategically.

Now, he had time—he could manufacture time. All it took was some more Sang. Preferably, all of them.

That thought made Green River flinch with horror. [Oh, dead gods have mercy.]

“Perfect,”

Avo paused momentarily at that. He thought he had that suppressed, and the hunger was a distant memory. Not so, it seemed, for the imprint of his nature ran deep—deeper than he ever could have guessed. In some respects, he, the Woundmother, and the Forgotten were not so different. Their initial design still held great sway, no matter how much they changed. But wasn’t this a good thing? Didn’t it remind him how far he had come, and how much further there was to go?

The Heaven of Blood guided branching fingers wrought from lightning and blood through the Sang, and once the gathering was done, the building truly began. A new structure manifested. It didn’t rise in stacks or assemble from nano-foglets. Instead, it was shed into existence, a shapeless outline that untangled from the shimmering orb of darkness that once constituted a warmind of the Forgotten.

From there, a knitting began, and a strange network collapsed into shape, crashing down in a symmetrical collapse to form a towering edifice that loomed taller than even the Woundmother’s highest spires. Ghostly shapes rose from nothing, looming and superimposing over existing edifices. Yet none who lived in this time-forged realm could see them. None could lay eyes upon what was, for these structures were not constructed of the mind or of active consciousness, but of its loss—the things that bled away from awareness. In a sense, they were there, but they could not be perceived, for to know them one must constantly forget, and to forget was an act of unknowing.

Ephemeral minds weren’t shaped to function against info-death. Neither were EGIs for that matter. Despite all the capabilities that one of Voidwatch’s governing intellects possessed, this feat belonged to Ignorance alone. Not even the Hidden Flame himself knew, until the Definement that lurked in his subconsciousness whispered strange epiphanies to him.

What wonders we make…

And before Ignorance rose a thing of divine creation. It was too mental to be something of matter, but too structured and stable to be a formless thing of the mind. Words failed to grasp the fullness of its substance, but memories flowed and danced along its structure, a conjunction of lost moments that served as well as plascrete or even alloy in holding itself up. The spires were grand things—beyond the measurable dimensions used in the real world, and in the vastness within they could ferry the tangible through halls of memory.

And it would be through these means that Avo would begin the next step of his great deception.

The Majority sought a Deep One to investigate and claim. They were a people terrified about what they lacked, worried about being unarmed against a superior foe. And he was the only arms merchant they could see.

A more rational actor would consider all the dangers this posed, of interfacing with a technology or creation they lacked complete understanding of and trusting a most treacherous enemy. But democracies were fickle little things, and the Inner Council was the true adversary at play here.

[Fucking hilarious,] Peace snorted. [They call themselves a great republic, yet somehow, the fucking City Eternals’ more balanced than they are.]

At that, bitter mocking laughter sounded along the reaching length of the dragon. Oh, how the children of old Noloth fell. But now they realized they weren’t the only ones to crash down from a place of highest grace.

+Prepare yourselves,+ Avo said, speaking to everyone at once. His mind resonated through his templates, across every Sang he touched, to his cadre in the real as well. At once, they all flinched, stopping whatever they were doing to heed his words. +Beginning transitional attempt. Don’t mind the ruptures. Will keep them from slicing through the ring.+

Across his many links, he felt surprise, confusion, but most of all, resignation.

+Avo,+ Naeko sighed, turning away from the “Ori Inner Council,” +What kind of godsdamned bullshit are you up to now.+

+You’ll see.+

+The fuck you mean I’ll see!+

Back down on the surface of Idheim, within the tattered epicenter of the Tiers, a divine flame flared within four ruined gods choked by unceasing entropy. The Conflagration exploded from the many wounds that lined their Heavens, reopening the marred forms of their ontologies, but rather than blasting out as if a true detonation, the flames curled inward, grasping a specific Deep One for a special purpose.

The undying Heaven—The Great Silence—was selected for the task, chosen because it was specifically designed to fray and fracture the patterns of Information. It tickled Avo for what he was about to deliver. It amused him more to test this poisoned offering against the nature of the Majority.

As his Conflagration turned to a grand and fiery claw, the Woundmother began building over it. A new tower was rising within the Substance—a thing of thought and understanding. Its shape was strange and aberrant, designed so to avoid the many Ruptures that left existence in unstable tatters, but slowly, surely, the process of creation continued.

CONSTRUCTING: [SPIRES OF WASN’T] - [12.5115%]

The Rend within him spiked, and spiked hard. Avo almost hissed as his entropy climbed by 63%. At once, he began to transfer all the excess Rend he sustained over into the other Deep Ones. That barely widened the wounds lining the tapestry within the Substance. It was a testament to just how much existential sickness lingered within these fallen gods.

“HURRRRTTTS!” the broken consciousness housed within the Weaver cried. “Die… want to… end…”

The others resonated with similar frequencies of pain and despair. Avo regarded them with mute pity.

“Wait,” Avo said. “Just a little longer. Will fix you. Will find a way. But need you right now. Need your minds. Not long at all. Not centuries. Suffering almost at an end.”

If his words offered any comfort, if they could hear anything, they didn’t respond. The pain remained constant. Unceasing.

With every passing second, more blood spilled through the flames, and with it came the shine of ghostly essence, came a translucent archway beneath the fallen mass of shadow that was The Great Silence. The Deep One sank, slipping from one structure to another as Avo carefully untangled its limbs and kept them from splitting his new spire.

For all the benefits that his new Canon provided, it wasn’t immune to existential decay. If a Rupture struck, it would come apart as easy as any ontologic. This required a delicate hand, and so he merged Zein and Kae’s minds, and assumed the role of artist. He arranged the Deep One with care, attaching its limbs to the rest of its squad, and kept it from ever intersecting that which he built.

At the same time, his consciousness forked. The great work was in progress, but he almost wanted a means to communicate with his cadre. Something that didn’t put so much work on Chambers—left him vulnerable. His new canon offered a solution. He wasn’t just limited to building grand constructs but meticulous implants as well.

Implants that he could grow and graft to his cadres’ exo-cortexes.

And best of all? No one would know how they communicated. Not even him. Not even them. Ignorance would ensure a “perfect amnesic correspondence” could take place, and everything his templates experienced? They would learn. But more than that, whatever templates they needed, he would offer.

The Burning Dream was never meant for one ego alone. A Hidden Flame yearned to spread.