Brent Stinebaker
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32-19Clad in Calamity (I)
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 18:51:28 +0000 UTCThe nature of dragons remains a topic often discussed by modern intelligentsia. Their control over the ancient Sang lines and cultures is well documented, but many theories and arguments remain regarding why they penetrated that clade of humanity so deeply, and why their in-roads into other cultures were substantially blunted.
The Fertile Crescent was no stranger to different cultures by means of trade. Kosgans, Ori, Scaarthians, the tech-cults, and more passed through its low-land channels as merchant, conqueror, or slave countless times.
Yet, the dragons remained contained within this stretch of land, affecting only a specific pantheon of gods, shaping a single group of people to their whims.
Presently, the most popular theory as to why they chose to do this was because of malleability. This pertains to arguments about the altered biology of the Sang themselves, their ability to recover from near fatal wounds and remain resistant to infection, diseases, and more aside from their fated it. The “Pre-Dragon” theory suggests that the Sang were made hyper-morphological even before the advent of their pseudo-enslavement. That they were engineered by the dragons—or an even older civilization—toward a specific purpose: to serve as biological anchors of beings of metachronology…
-Excerpt from Dragons: Tyrants of Time and Culture
32-19
Clad in Calamity (I)
–[Avo, The Hidden Flame]–
“...Rig me the fuck up.”
As soon as Naeko finished the thought, Zein struck again. She struck from all sides. She struck from across time, swimming into the future to slash at the Sage and the Conflagration it guarded across every microsecond she could occupy. Every inch of space within The Great Silence that wasn’t a rupture became claimed by Zein.
Akusanade twirled and swam, phasing through the ruptures as if they were barely there before re-mainfesting.
The Sage spread his mists out to parry the blows he could, while Avo did all he could to supplement the Chief Paladin. Ruptures bundled around the Sage in threads. Where blades of Peace were primed to force a backlash, the blow rang off the Sage’s new armor.
{ACCESSING EGO…
DENIED – ERROR: EGO-SCREAMER DETECTED
ALERT—EGO-SCREAMER VARIANT UNKNOWWWWWWITSOKAYIAMYOUIAMYOU
ACCESS GRANTED
LOGGING WARNING AS RESULT FROM EARLIER DAMAGE
WELCOME, ADMIN-MIND AVO
SEVERE SYSTEM DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO CURRENT GOVERNANCE MIND.
REQUEST EMERGENCY REPAIRS
That was exactly what Avo intended to do. But he turned his focus toward the practical: Layering every inch of the Sage with the Deep One. Tendrils of Rend fused around the fingers of the Sage. Shadows leaked into its clouds, while the eye at the Heaven’s center gained a sickly quality to its divine flame.
Slowly, the Deep One itself began to morph as well, its shape shifting to align with the Heaven now controlling it.
A darkness that could strip all meaning from existence itself branched across reality and tore into the Substance.
Now, the tides turned yet again. The Sage, armored by the Deep One, loomed close as if a whale facing a sea serpent. Zein slithered through the waters of time, but the advantage belonged to Avo and Naeko now. She needed to come to them. And with the anomalous nature of the Deep One, her overt attacks weren’t going to work either. Pair that with the sheer amount of Rendsinks they had left, Avo couldn’t see how Zein—
She burst back into being directly above him. Even within Akusanade, he could see that vicious grin pulling at her face.
Stupid, drug-addled child! All this was a game to her. For her pleasure. For her enjoyment. Nothing anyone else wanted mattered.
“I descend, Naeko!” She said, her voice cascading across time as a chorus unto herself. “Prepare to receive.”
The Sage of the Sundered Mind scoffed in response. The shadowy hand’s fingers widened, large enough to consume an entire Sovereignty, spanning over a hundred kilometers of space. “Let’s see it, master.”
And Zein cut. And she cut everywhere, slicing through all. Wounds opened all around the Sage. Wounds that expanded into ruptures as a few hundred Frames overloaded around the Sage, their Heavens falling, creating a new set of Sunderwilds.
WARNING: UNKNOWN SOULS DETECTED - [108]
WARNING: FALLEN HEAVENS DETECTED - [241]
ATTENTION: FALLEN HEAVEN COMMON DOMAIN DETECTED (INFORMATION)
Branching patches of informational decay slammed into the Deep One from all sides. Avo had no idea how Zein produced so many other Heavens, or where they came from. The blows struck the Sage like a rain of arrows against plate armor. None pierced through, doing little more than feeding the Deep One’s entropy and making the hand stumble.
Or so it seemed.
WARNING: HEAVEN OF CHRONOLOGY DETECTED
One presence exploited the momentary unbalancing of the Sage for her own gain. Her approach was masked by the network of ruptures she created, and when she struck, it was a thousand blows all the same place, at almost the same time.
A series of stabs punched between the layers of ruptures Avo bundled entropic channels over the Sage. Zein parried the new ruptures she made into the Deep One exoskeleton over and over, exposing gaps and vulnerabilities.
The nature of her attack was instant. Naeko still managed to respond. While she struck, he exerted his miracles.
Matter and mind obeyed Naeko. Zein was torn out of Akusanade—her mistake for even lingering at all.
Then, a wail of alarm sounded through Naeko’s mind.
No! Ignorance cried. Not her. Clone. Trap—
It was too late. Mists closed around the Zein. She came apart into bloodied paste, and Avo tasted her demise. But before she faded into bloody mist, he caught another smile on her face, and noted how she was emotionless—lacked an accretion at all.
The actual Zein blinked back into Akusanade in that instant, and a golden wound flashed where Naeko’s mists were. Avo sent layers of entropy wrapping over the Heaven of Peace’s reaching miracles, preparing to intercept the blow on Naeko’s behalf.
And ultimately, that was his mistake.
A few hundred more cuts followed. All of them slashed at information, at language, forcing a larger gap at a specific point in the Deep One’s armor. And finally, a cut so small, so delicate, slipped in. This one, though, was a dagger of trauma, meant not for Naeko, but Avo himself.
It slipped between the rupture-armor of the Deep One just barely—just enough.
A blast of mind-rending trauma unlike anything Avo had ever felt surged through him.
He screamed. The Naekos screamed. His templates screamed. Ignorance, pushing through the agony, did the only thing it could.
It severed all the ghosts that Zein pierced, and at once, Avo felt his cog-cap plummet by a magnitude.
—[Naeko,Sage of Battlegroup 1]—
[This is complete bullshit,] declared the Sage of Battlegroup 1. They were among the two surviving Sages leftover from the earlier onslaught. Aside from “Special Naeko” who was currently getting to pilot the giant death god from outer space, that was.
[Yeah. It’s just rusted.] The other surviving Sage agreed.
Both were drifting through an expanse drowned in all-consuming light and destruction, avoiding ruptures thanks to Avo’s ontological perception alone. Between the Infacer’s constant relativistic antimatter bombardments, the neutron bursts, Ego-Screamer deployments, dyson beams, and Rendsink drones deployed to lap out the horrific amounts of entropy flooding out from the Deep Ones, every inch of reality they traveled was fraught with death and peril.
They parried all that constituted violence or force, but the sheer scale of metaphysical decay afflicting reality was even starting to overwhelm them. Worse yet was how Avo was actively starting the channel some of this decay. At times, the Naekos became even sub-sapient entities, as the Hidden Flame failed to ward trickles of “Informational Rot.”
Nothing could be known when the Great Silence spilled over. Nothing could be understood or even referenced. They simply drifted on, operating on instinct and in conjunction to Avo’s will. But still they pressed on, because to linger was to be obliterated, and if they got to one of the other Deep Ones… well, they might get to pilot a giant entropic supergod too.
If they even made it to one of the Deep Ones.
REND CAPACITY [SAGE OF THE SUNDERED SKY] — 89%
VENT! VENT! VENT!
It was going to be near thing. The world was drowning in Rend even if the Sages were dodging major patches of entropy. Drawing closer to a Deep One was like diving into a nuclear reactor. Metaphorically, what the Sages had were thick slabs of lead shielding them from harm, but even that was being decayed by the sheer amount of entropy they faced.
Pair this with how they left the bulk of their Rendsinks with Naeko, and this was going to be a dire operation indeed. Likely a one way trip. Not that it mattered to them. They’ll be back; they were part of the Burning Dream now.
WARNING: EXTREME HEAT DETECTED! WARNING: EXTREME—
WARNING: CHRONOLOGICAL ANOMALIES DETECTED
The blinding whiteness that characterized the environment vanished as the two Sages passed an unseen threshold. They were pressing against the Trinary Melody now, and a ringing resonance sounded from its very core. Time frayed and warped as far its thrilling hymn could be heard. Space was peeling like rotting paper. Beyond the thinnest veil of transparent gold, the Sages saw a swarming fleet of firing channeled of pure fusion together. Swirling panels of smart-matter allowed them to focus their energies, and more patches of existence burst into false vacuum. From there, further impossibilities took place.
Nanoscopic machines reformed in swirls of fog as Rendsinks—rapidly deployed to deal with the encroachment of the Deep Ones. The thousands of Dyson Carriers were creating their own wounds on the face of reality to combat that which the Deep Ones inflicted. All manner of strange technologies were being spawned. The breaking of physical laws allowed by the false vacuum was fully exploited. The Infacer’s Heaven was wailing with Rend now as well, stretched to the limit to keep its enemies contained.
The Deep Ones comparatively, operated on a far more cataclysmic but simple level. They pushed forward. They advanced relentlessly, withering the very patterns that held existence together. With every moment, more fissures expanded. Some pierced through the Substance with ease, slashing through its chrono-ethereal walls like bullets punching through paper. The rest were briefly delayed by the Infacer’s legions.
With how many Rendsinks were being rolled into combat, even Omnitech’s logistical capabilities were likely being strained.
Good thing that this was all taking place in the Substance. Good thing that Idheim was never a natural world. If this happened on a mundane planetary body, the destabilization of its habitability would occur rather instantaneously.
The laws of existence were being broken in two directions, and between were the Sages, barely noticed in a brawl of cosmic proportions. That allowed them to operate without drawing too much attention. There were only a few hundred meters between them and the Weaver, which actively screaming, slashing and clawing at the tapestry rather than pushing the Infacer alongside its comrades. Through Avo, the Sages sensed the severity of the Deep One’s ego damage. Memories and cognitive functions were all crashed together. It was as if the body compressed by an impossible strong grip, bones shattering, slipping into organs and burrowing through flesh. Yet, the ego remained structurally intact despite the madness, unable to die.
A human’s thoughtstuff would have disintegrated a trillion times over by now.
Little wonder Avo wanted a taste.
{Zein! Do come at your own leisure. We are only risking the single competent entity left among the Saintists. That being myself. The Chivalrics most certainly will not default to self-destruction and autophagy when Osjon decides to have another moment of ape-retardation. Avo definitely will not consume the rest of our forces in a ravenous blaze without me to counter him. No. Not at all. Not a fucking chance!}
Rend-draining drones layered over the Trinary Melody’s temporal screen like a swarm of locusts. More than a few overloaded, blowing patches among the masses, but it was testament to the Infacer’s processing capabilities that they managed to avoid an entropic cascade, with the other drones dissolving or zipping back at twice the acceleration of c. Still, he loud and near-frantic tone of the Infacer set the tone quite well.
The Neo-Creationist was not winning. This was a delaying action and nothing more.
{If we do not stop them here, they are going to tear through everything we built! Zein! Zein! You bitch! I cannot hold them alone! Stop playing with your food and—}
A single pattern pulsed over all others. The Trinary Melody recoiled, impacted more than any other Deep One.
What shook as if a string pulled to the point of breaking was chronology. Time. Something snaked upon its surface, displacing its stability. Something wore it as a vessel, an armor against calamity, to strike across the surface of time as if a child skipping pebbles along a lake.
From The Great Silence, a sinuous entity burst free, with channels of Rend twirling out of the Deep One on all sides. She could be seen through the overwhelming chaos, through the ruptures, through even the renewed bombardment delivered by the Infacer.
A serpent of blinding gold slithered over into reality. Its scales gleamed bright, each piece a fragment of time, a portal into another point of history. At its core burned Zein, her very person searing with ghostly essence and Soulfire. A thousand hand circulated from her right arm, fusing through the dragon, forming countless more glaives, each bound to a component domain.
Akusanade manifested a final weapon between its jaws. A grand blade that severed the flow of time itself extended from between its fangs, and the dragon let out a bellow that echoed forth into the future.
[Shit,] the Sage of Battlegroup 1 declared. Things didn’t seem to be—
WARNINIG–ERRR/1q2
SPATIAL-TEMPORAL INTEGRITY BREACH—
SPATIAL-TEMPORAL INTEGRITY DAMAGE SUSTAINED
The Sage of Battlegroup 1 reeled, letting out a cry of pain as something… Something had been carved out of it.
A slit of radiance flicked through the Conflagration tethering the Sage of Battlegroup…. Not 1. The memory of what they were, of their designation, and all their collective experiences were lost.
Now, only Battlegroup 1 remained, and penultimate Sage in Avo’s forces writhed, misted fingers curling like the limbs of a dying spider amidst this localized apocalypse.
Something had been carved out of Avo. Not far from what remained of Battlegroup 1, a hundred kilometer scar of brilliant gold trailed through a space where something used to be, and ended through the Trinary Melody. The Deep One was impaled at the end of this golden mark. Musical notes twitched and writhed like the limbs of a dying bug, but the entity itself remained alive.
Somehow, that blow forked out of the severed Sage. Zein had managed to break another foe while wounding her main adversary.
The same couldn’t be said for its mind.
Zein’s strike was beyond perfect, slipping between all the ruptures to pierce something critical and innermost.
She just struck the EGI core from the present, Ignorance groaned. The Definement was in pain. Ontological agony the likes of which it never felt. And she hit us too. Managed to protect you… but there was another. Can only remember because I am Ignorance. But there was another Sage. Another Battlegroup. You are the only one that remains beside the Sage of the Sundered Mind. Go. Get them. Mantle the other one. Need every advantage we can get. Go for the Infacer after.
{Thank you,} the Infacer snarled, though their tone indicated anything resembling appreciation. {I would say better late than never, but you were cutting it close. Too close. This area of the Substance is verging on full destabilization. You need to help me get these abominations out of here before they—And where the fuck are you going now… Oh, good.}
And another presence was felt. This one tied to Naeko, tied to the Definement, leading aback to Avo himself. For though the Hidden Flame was wounded—struck at a point beyond their memory, that hadn’t been enough to slay them.
The Definement subsided thereafter, and the Sage pushed on, Naeko burning his Heaven hot and reckless into the ruptures, toward the Deep Ones without fear.
Certain death awaited ahead and behind, but when it came to facing an ascended Zein or a new nightmare, this Naeko was wise enough to choose the devils he didn’t know.
