Brent Stinebaker
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33-14 Bound in Blood
🕑 Added 2025-01-29 19:50:47 +0000 UTCSupplicants! Hear me now! Let my words strike you like lightning and forge the foundations for your resolve!
We are banished! Severed and lost in a world consumed by madness! Yet we remain! I remain! I! Once Saathwu! Once the God of Huntresses! God of Blood! Now resurrected by the esteemed hand of the Dreamer, I return! Greater! Grander! Into an unworthy world ruled by the unworthy!
But fret not! Glory has returned! Glory and deliverance! Come to me, supplicants! Come to the Woundmother! Turn from your false idols and miserable rulers. Heed the pull upon your blood and seek out the Loved Ones.
The Guilds cannot forge your dreams. But I have already tasted higher wonders. I know the way. So come to me. Come, and I will show you what it means to rise.
-Directives from the Woundmother to her new “supplicants”
33-14
Bound in Blood
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
EGI TEMPLATE INTEGRATION ONGOING - [1.88%]
{T-this is interesting,} the EGI installed within the Deep Ones surveyed the scene through Naeko’s perception. {One of your former Heavens… entirely intact and autonomous. Operat-operating of their own v-volition.}
[Indeed,] Zein’s template said. [This is an indication of a symmetrical rupturing within you at my daughter’s hand, Plague. Your “death” wasn’t a randomized shattering. But you weren’t a singular entity anymore—more alloy than individual. How neatly you broke.]
And true to their word, Avo did break neatly. How else would a complete God of Blood emerge from his Exo-Paracosmos to claim dominion over a destabilized district — in his name not less.
The Woundmother—Avo’s first and oldest Heaven—was far larger than he remembered them to be. Though they started as a small tower, they now spanned hundreds of kilometers, constantly mutating, building, growing like something between a hyper-intelligent cancer or a living city. More fascinating was where they chose to plant themselves. They were fused into a section of the Hungers while also connecting a broken continent of Old Noloth to a bifurcated No-Dragon Sovereignty.
Arteries became as if pathways for traffic, while haemokinetic constructs and odd bioforms lingered in the air. They operated as patrolling swarms and also logistical units, circulating between shifting states of matter and biology as towers of gleaming blood lashed new orders into them via crimson lightning.
One spire rose higher than all the others. One that sprouted wolf-like jaws at the apex, jaws that clenched around twisting patterns, each meant to resemble a certain state of matter. Pleading limbs rose in circulating bolts, and the Woundmother’s touch brushed the bottom of a cloud-formed palm with a burning eye at its core.
“Oh, great one! Oh, master of masters!” the Woundmother cried, her voice as loud as thunder. Her branching tendrils crashed against the Sage of the Sundered Mind’s form, and Avo felt a pulsing resonance oscillate between him and his Heaven of Blood. “I knew… I knew a divine as great as the one who restored me could not be taken by the fell clutch of death so easily. To be undone by such a material death is a thing for mortals.”
Laughter followed. Booming, jubilant laughter that resonated deep and true in Naeko’s mind.
[This one seems to have a pretty high opinion of you,] Naeko murmured.
“Not surprising,” Avo replied. “We have history. Very long history.” He turned his mind to the Woundmother now and cast his thoughts free. +Woundmother. Glad you survived. Truly. Like what you’ve done with the city.”
“Ah,” the Woundmother chuckled with mirth. “I am honored. I merely sought to make the most of my continuation. Why, when I felt you shatter, I was aghast. But even at the moment of your destruction, you were perfect. Truly perfect. You cast us out.”
“Us?” Avo asked.
“Yes. Me. And all the other gods you gathered and woke. You distributed on the waves of your desolation, and so we fell like seeds in a thunderstorm, crashing into down to rise once more in your shadow, in your corpse.”
If he did, Avo couldn’t remember anything about this at all. Perhaps it was entirely reactive. Or he could just ask another who was there at the scene. The one that caused him to suffer Veylis’ embracement in the first place. +Zein?+
[What? Did I see you cast your Heavens out? Alas, my attention was more drawn to my daughter than you, Plague.]
She spoke the truth, but Avo still felt the urge to punish in some fashion. Turning his gaze inward, he saw her and Naeko dueling in his Soulscape. Currently, both her arms were missing—and lodged through her chest—but Naeko was blind and had the broken tip of her glaive lodged in his eye. This wound seemed to have given the Chief Paladin the equivalent of a partial lobotomy. Currently, he was wandering around making cow-like noises while Zein choked from a case of limb-in-lungs.
It seemed the most penalizing thing he could do was to spawn her someplace afar from her disciple. But that would end up being more harmful for Avo himself. Letting them fight against each other was training for him as well, allowing him to obtain exponential levels of experience. Ultimately, Avo decided to be pragmatic over petty.
It’s what Draus would have recommended.
+This is good,+ Avo said, resuming the conversation between him and the Woundmother. +The others… I can gather them once more. Not as alone as I assumed. Have you seen any of the others?+
“Lamentably, no. The chaos was great, even for one as astute as I. We fell in a great spread across the land, and I was a grain among the many. However, though I did not fall among my kindred, I also did not fall alone. There are things you might be interested in. Things I would like to show you.”
With the close of their words, the Woundmother unfurled enormous strips of blood to reveal what was hidden beneath. Wide thoroughfares, colorful markets, grand parapets, and looming ziggurats came together as the streets of Old Noloth greeted Avo. However, the streets he beheld were more active than that which he recalled. Far more active. Hundreds of thousands of accretions filled the inside of every structure, and to Avo’s surprise, he felt a connection to them — an ontological kinship.
And the connection went both ways as well. As soon as the Woundmother revealed what was hidden within their body, these beings turned their perceptions upward, forming a coalescing beam that splashed against the Sage.
[The hells…] Naeko muttered. [Are those…]
[Ghouls?] Zein finished.
+Once, perhaps,+ Avo chuffed. +Like me. But not anymore. Not after their recreation.+
Their bodies gleamed like polished mother-of-pearl and their postures were fully upright, perfect in stance and anatomy. As they stood, they were still as mannequins, and their eyes were bright gems of light, filled with a singular emotion.
Love.
Love infused into them by the creation of another—an act of thaumaturgy created by Vator through the unseen touch of Ignorance.
The ghouls, once imperfect monsters of war, had been remade at the hands of a true artist. And such an act resonated with the pattern, uplifted what were once miserable creatures made to feed and die.
Rather than leaving their translucent skin bare, they were dressed. Some wore stolen exo-rigs while a few others were clad in combat-skins. Most handled weapons of all kinds, while all had Ghost-Links running to some form of drone or another. Layers of fungal-ceramine and pitch-black silicon lined parts of their exposed flesh as well—augmentations further provided at the hands of the Woundmother.
And then there was their faces. They all held a strong resemblance to someone Avo knew: Draus.
[Well, that’s some weird shit right there,] Naeko muttered.
Vator needed something to reference, Avo supposed.
“Icon…” one of the Beloved whispered.
“Image…”
“Avo.”
They lifted their hands in a unified gesture, trying to express something ineffable: an emotion tied to the glory of being alive, of being real and liberated from the decay of their former existence, remolded into something of worth and aesethetic.
“They are not all that awaits you,” the Woundmother whispered. One of the larger ziggurats within her came alight as cascading waves of blood crashed down over the building, leaving it aglow. “Come. Let me show you. Come.”
***
Avo entered the ziggurat using the guise of Osjane Thousand. Though her mind was still screaming somewhere deep inside him, howling for him to release her deep in his Soulscape, her body served as vessel for many egos. Naeko was the primary driver for her motor functions, but parts of his ego needed to be layered with Zein’s template. He wasn’t used to be so small, or missing certain organs.
Humans were amusing. So fixed to concrete forms and the annoyances of dysmorphia. Even formidable ones such as the Chief Paladin.
[Hey. Rotlick. Not all of us are mind-shifting horrors, alright? And not all of us want to be.] Naeko’s complaints were noted, and his weakness was judged. [Man, fuck you.]
[I fear I must side with the Plague here, my son,] Zein sighed. [A true glaive would let nothing interfere with their performance.]
[Zein… We both know you’re doing this to piss me off.]
[The fact that I can is weakness, Naeko.]
[Avo… Fuck you for burning her. And fuck orginal-me for letting you do this.]
Creeping vines of blood led them further through the labyrinthine halls of the ziggurat, and with step they took, the Beloved saluted them, reached out for them, looked at them. Old Nolothic decorates were coated in a layer of blood as well, with each drip infused with the Woundmother’s ontology. There was no part of this place that the Heaven of Blood hadn’t infected, hadn’t rebuilt, hadn’t left an imprint of their consciousness on.
As such, the walls here weren’t truly walls, and the doors and pathways only existed because the Heaven of Blood willed it. This was why Avo found himself questioning why the Heaven of Blood was making him proceed down such a chaotic path when they could have just as easily plucked him from where he stood and placed him where he needed to be. Ultimately, he decided to wait. To see what his former Heaven was doing.
After a bit more walking, he found himself surprised again.
As he came to a doorway carved from bone and held together by veins of twitching blood.
“A moment please. I must inform them of your presence.”
Them? Now Avo was truly curious. There was a layer of distortion trembling through the blood. It made perceiving accretions and thoughtstuff near impossible. But as Avo had Ignorance with him, the unknown was hidden more behind a transparent sheet than an opaque wall.
Hm. Interesting. Very interesting. An unexpected. Sang. No-Dragons. Dowagers. And… and…
The doors made a resounding crash as they swung open. Fingers of blood pressed the bone inward and at once, a bridge extended before Avo, revealing a large pillar of bright red vivannite across from him. More paths were fused to the massive corpse-crystal, and hundreds of swarming insectoid-like creatures carried things to and fro. More interestingly was the massive construct of biomatter the enormous locus was burrowing into.
At once, Avo recognized its biological pattern. This was an exo-math. An organic mind that the Sang used for complex processes. He had seen one months ago in the Second Fortune’s underground. Here, though, it was being maintained by a small army of bioforms and—
“Install another nutrition tube there.” A tall Sang in wearing a skeletal bio-rig gestured at the swarming creatures around her. She stood just beside the vivianite, her body partially shrouded by the ethereal light, but next to her were several other unexpected figures. The first one noticed Avo before all the others.
He would have been nude if it weren’t for the scab-armor growing over his body. As soon as he noticed Avo approaching in the guise of Osjane, he sneered. “Fuck. Of course you’re still alive. Cunt like you. Death has to come in parts.”
+Peace,+ Avo said. +Didn’t expect to see you here. Or her either.+
Another Sang leaned next to Peace and wrapped a long arm around him. The Low Master growled, but the Stormsparrow ground one of her three heads against him. “Avo! My favorite ghoul! Wildcard of wildcards! So good to see this stray note of yours assuming a full role in this great play.”
+Stormsparrow,+ Avo, Naeko, and Zein grunted all at once.
“What’s this I hear? More passengers? Thousandhand? Chief? You are in there as well. Why, what a merry gathering.”
“A merry gathering indeed,” the Woundmother laughed. “As said. I did not fall with my kindred, but others connected to you, others bound for this place arrived as well. Others you know. Or do not.”
The skeletal-rig Sang turned, and she took Avo in with wide eyes. Her hair was cropped short, and on her shoulder chattered a strange worm-like creature. Every one of her movements were calculated, but there was something about her posture that screamed prey animal—something that could have set off Avo’s predatory instincts back when he was still just a ghoul.
“I—you are he? The Strix. The Burning Dreamer.” She took two steps forward and looked him up and down. “Are you? You don’t—” Avo willed his halo to come aflame with the Conflagration and the Sang took two steps back. “I see. It is… good to finally meet you. The Woundmother spoke highly of you. He said that you could help protect this place and aid my people.”
Avo cocked his head at that. “Aid you? A No-Dragon willing seeks my assistance.”
“Not just a No-Dragon. A Dowager. Dowager Glorious Song, of Line Qin. She was in charge of this Sovereignty—part of their branch of Exalted Warfare. And before my arrival, she was on the verge of collapsing before the Massist onslaught.” the Woundmother’s words clarified a few things, but much was still shrouded in mystery.
“The displacement hit us hard,” Glorious Song continued. “We were separated. But the Massists weren’t so affected. Not by the Substance. And not by Noloth’s fall. We would have collapsed in the initial moments if it weren’t for the Woundmother or the Sparrow’s arrival. But though we have fended off the initial forces, we believe they are opening more ruptures to continue their offensive.”
“Ruptures,” Avo said flatly. “Recent ruptures?”
“Indeed. Greater and more entropic than any I’ve seen.”
Avo gave a grunt of awkwardness. “Might not be them. Not their doing. Might be mine. Got into a bit of disagreement with Highflame. Spiraled from there.”
Glorious Song blinked. “Truly. That… that is welcome news.”
Wait. Let me free. I wish to speak with her… with the Curse-Bearers…
Another pulsing sensation came from within Avo, crawling out from his Soulflame. What slowly emerged from him wasn’t a Heaven or even a miracle. What leaked was a golden, sinuous form, and from it came the chiming bells of chronology.
Glorious Song stumbled back. The Stormsparrow contrarily came rushing forward, her eyes aglow with expectation. “Oh, will the wonders never cease…”
For the first time in centuries, the Sang were in the presence of a functional dragon.
Comments
Deathly_God
Oooh, are we going to finally find out more about the Curse? Also, what's the bet that Avo can figure out how to eat and/or mimic the Sang bio-mind as well, and use it to help integrate the EGI core into his soulscape faster?
