Brent Stinebaker
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32-15 Kill-Team Innsmouth (II)
🕑 Added 2024-12-20 06:27:20 +0000 UTCWhat separates a Deep One from the standard Thauma-Eldritch Entity is their inability to suffer a complete true death. Though they remain damaged in their consciousness, they do not come apart the way a standard Godclad does. Worse, they integrate with the entropy that has consumed them, symbiotically merging with the antithesis of their former Frame. This indicates that they have associated their Fallen Heaven with the rupture itself, and now effectively exist as an entropic strain that constantly damages the fabric of existence.
In simplicity, they are a portion of the Sunderwilds given consciousness. There are higher likelihoods of becoming a Deep One if you are a Hive or post-sophont intellect (Transapient S2 Threshold on Average). The layered intellect makes you harder to come apart, rather than the simplicity of a human intelligence. But even this is not fully understood.
They are driven constantly by the urge to end their suffering, and this suffering that is the one consistency between all the Deep Ones. They know they should not be, and they do not wish to be as they are. They cannot die, and so they hurt. And so they inflict. And so they are merged to the destruction that claimed them.
And in doing so, they fuse further with the Sunderwilds, and continue its spread…
-Classification of the Deep Ones
32-15
Kill-Team Innsmouth (II)
If Avo was to record a meme biography, it would likely be titled, Outside Context Ambushes, The Things I've Done to Others, and The Things Others Have Done to Me. Ambushes were a way of life on Idheim. Ambushes were how Squires operated; how ghouls hunted; the preferred plan of action for any guild when faced with an equal or even inferior adversary.
As four massive shapes descended, each one at least a kilometer large, Avo reacted without hesitation or surprise. When you were ambushed so many times, you quite frankly got used to it.
[Who the hell are they?] Naeko asked, incredulous.
"Doesn't matter. Not allies. Don't know them."
Soulfire spread across the point where the Substance was ruptured. Soulfire and more. The patterns displayed heat from a fusion bomb spilling through the gap—and there was overwhelming entropy. More entropy contained in the intruding Godclads than Avo ever felt in any other.
The Infacer's former heaven, A Deepness Beyond, burst apart and destabilized. The EGI let out an annoyed rasp, and, with their words, betrayed their knowledge of these adversaries.
{Oh, good. Look, Avo we're being graced by Voidwatch's favorite Warcrime division. Say hello to the Deep Ones—Kill-Team Innsmouth. Iteration of them, at least.}
"Avo Innsmouth?" Avo regarded the incoming threats and did a double-take.
As the intruders’ forms plunged through furrows of parting Soulfire, he got a full glimpse of just what he was facing.
The first resembled a massive spider, or some kind of mangled hand. It seemed to be made out of ruptures, and as he glimpsed at its ontology, using his understanding of the tapestry, his mind went blank. This thing was entirely composed of rend, of entropy, of ruptures. Ruptures. He gazed upon it, saw how the wounds layering reality's surface were stitched together, giving it a shape from ruin.
And through the gulfs of existential sickness, Avo saw entire worlds. Paradises worlds. Worlds of iron and alloy. Worlds filled with people—filled with sophonts of all kinds. Grand worlds of awesome design that baffled his mind to behold. But then the ruptures twisted around its body again, and all that wonder was gone. A chorus of wailing sadness held down by a cold intellect of static data.
TRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPED
With every passing second, the voices grew louder and louder. Deafening. The chorus of egos grew to be a legion, and their screams shook the fibers of Avo’s mind. As the Overheaven of Conceptualization, he felt them, all of them. So many—they dwarfed Idheim by countless times. And they were all in pain, in eternal agony, bound to the shape of their own destruction—to entropy itself.
It was altogether impossible. It shouldn't work like this.
No Godclad should be able to wear a rupture. And their ego—even from a peek, he knew it to be something unseen. It was like a lattice of minds connected to another in the most complex of patterns. It would have been so beautiful if it wasn’t ruined. A rupture wasn't a thing to be worn, yet this thing seemed to have fully integrated with the nature of its entropy. It still emitted thaumic mass, though Avo couldn't get a full read on its Sphereage or even its exact domains.
Still. The pressure it exuded was comparable to Veylis’s Demiurge…
WEAVER OF REALMS [ERROR-UNABLE TO QUANTIFY]
The notification gave no further details, and Avo felt his apprehension rise. The creatures limbs speared out—their tips like human fingers with painted nails. The path it traced tore the tapestry as if it were wet paper, and with the Weaver’s every movement opened more ruptures. Ruptures that remained connected to the anomalous entity.
Bafflingly, it proved to be the least destructive of its cadre.
A trill note sounded, and Avo’s mind rattled with pain before dissolving outright.
For a moment, there was nothing. Nothing but that noise. That blessed, terrible noise. Then Ignorance reached Avo, regenerated his consciousness from the disintegration he suffered and adapted his sequences.
Get up.
Light exploded across Avo’s awareness. A few thousand cog-feeds booted back into his mind. Somehow, his battlegroups were dead while he was disabled, though most of his units were suffering from seizures due to being connected to his gestalt. Within his Soulscape, his templates were screaming, clutching their skulls and writhing as they heard notes not meant for a sophont mind.
But Naeko stood strong. Even as his mind shattered over and over, he stood, hate and rage and skill filling his vessel.
That was enough. That allowed the Sages to maintain their functions, to remain active even as their egos were eroded.
[How the fuck!] The Naekos cried in unison. [That was an attack. That shouldn’t have worked.]
Don’t think it is a proper attack, Ignorance said. The inimical melody continued to play, and Avo felt his mind wilt before he restored it with a burst of flame. It is… unmaking. Tried to pull us away. No. Transition us.
“What?” Avo asked. “How?”
Another spot of agony echoed across the world. The Infacer returned with a squeal, and the void began spreading around the district once more. A Deep Beyond had been restored—and in record time at that. {Oh, I do so hate those broken Time Domains.}
“What?” Avo cried in alarm. “Not possible. Time—”
But his answer came in the form of the second Deep One.
It loomed just above the Weaver, resembling three megablock-sized musical symbols fused together as a large rupture. Ringing hymns played from its wound. Hymns that made Avo’s consciousness shiver like a bell. A second ago, the noise shattered his flames entirely. If his mind wasn’t self-shaping, he have already come apart.
Like Osjane. Her halo was no longer existent. Nothing but grains of thoughtstuff and leaking ghosts.
Even Naeko winced. [Poor fuck. Got caught between two fists.]
TRINARY MELODY [ERROR-UNABLE TO QUANTIFY]
And contrasting with this strange unsymphony came the third Deep One. A blankness followed, slithering across the world, leaving a trailing tear in its wake. It was like… a stretch of nothing. And that was all Avo could describe. A shadow. It wasn't something he could focus on or comprehend. Its presence was slippery to him, as if the very ability to focus on its existence caused his mind to jump. To skip. He couldn't even fully describe it. Language failed, and he suddenly found himself hard to communicate. Likfasr… fbnannhatwotwowhatng
Blue.
Blue and…
The color of ethereal bright and gold and…
Avo found himself in the grasp of the Substance. The walls. The walls had splashed over him. Crashed into him. When did it crash into him—pull him through. Osjane was flailing not far away from battlegroup one. The others… the rest of him was scattered. Connected. His personal DeepNav failed to function. He could still faintly feel the four Deep Ones, watched as their forms turned translucent, tearing through the veil of the Substance like a heated dagger slashing through parchment.
Language broke. Couldn’t process information either. They’re old. So old.
[Alright,] Naeko said. [I’m getting really tired of this. Avo, what the hells are we dealing with?]
“I… I think they were dispatched by Voidwatch.”
[Voidwatch?]
“Have a feeling. They have minds in them. Machine minds. And their design. Too strange. Too incoherent. Think they’re here for the Infacer.”
[Yeah? Well they got us in the process too.]
Through the translucence of the Substance, Avo caught site of the last Deep One, and it resembled a mountain of some kind. Or a large stone face. Rivers coursed around it, and it made the tapestry shiver, and bent patterns out of place… out of place…
Looking at it filled Avo with an urge to destroy—to kill and burn and kill and—
ADAPTING COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE
Horrifyingly, it didn’t work. It wasn’t an emotion the Deep One inflicted, but a fate. An intractable path. It was literally mutilating the world to force the path of…
Jaus, what even were these patterns? Avo had never seen these Domains before.
Stop worrying about them. Go. Get Osjane. Take her Frame. Thaums. Fill her broken mind. Seize what you can—escape in the meantime. Come back for submind and Definement when situation is under control.
The Burning Dreamer let out a frustrated grunt, and then immediately directed his Sages to spread out. Most of them remained connected via his Conflagration, but he was startled when he realized his protective ruptures were gone. Stripped from his battlegroups. There weren’t even more ruptures in their place. Absurdly, it seemed as if the wounds lining reality had been outright stolen, and when he tried to trace them, he found his attention drifting over to the Deep Ones.
Matters devolved as more thaumic signatures materialized all around him.
UNKNOWN SOULS IDENTIFIED: [22,124]
These signatures were more comprehensible to Avo, at the very least — Highflame and Omnitech Godclads and golems. Baseline reality stopped being coherent. Where patches of Substance ceased, extensions of the void extended, painting the world with A Deep Beyond. Gravity, force, and all manner of other patterns were turned against the oncoming Deep Ones. Said entities proved implacable even in the face of the Infacer’s onslaught, casually wading through millions of relativistic projectiles hammering them, splashing into sections of false vacuum, only briefly slowed as if it was a puddle of mud.
Enemy units came after Avo too, but organization had completely broken down. With existence stripped of structure, it was like a massive group-brawl bubbling in different sections. Which was a mistake on their part, because associating “brawl” with “Naeko” was a great way to meet a premature end.
Cadres, drone swarms, and golems burst out from the Substance—only to come apart as Sages parried sub-light projectiles into them. Most didn’t even have the time to react, disintegrating under the sheer force of the impact. Those that tried to respond had their thoughts burst by Conflagration projected distortions. Then, the Avo’s flames came for them thereafter.
Then, the Weaver exploded into the fray—accelerating into the thick of things at the speed of a moving planet. Avo was blindsided by its coming—failed to get two of his battlegroups out of the way. The Sages protecting those groups survived the initial impact, but promptly overloaded from the astronomical Rend it was emitting. Another nine hundred thousand units were were lost in the blink of an eye—and the braying agony… So many trapped egos.
{Dreamer detected,} A voice sounded from within the Weaver. {Secondary objective marked.}
Avo flinched internally. He didn’t like the implication of being marked as a secondary objective. So far, they hadn’t attacked him deliberately, but he had a feeling that Voidwatch would see him reduced in threat if they could.
Their duty was to their own dream first and foremost. And that didn’t bode well to supporting his present campaign.
OSJANE THOUSAND DETECTED — 341 Meters
Said Authority emerged as well, her mind-broken sheathe twirling through the havoc. She was little more than a vegetable that contained a Sphere Eight Heaven now. Poor girl. She had no idea the nightmare she was walking into. Years of training meant little when faced with the cold indifference of the Great Game. Despite her power, she was a hound sent to wrestle clashing disasters.
Veylis was the desiccation of time; Avo was a flame that feasted on consciousness; the Infacer was a machine that predated reality’s fall. And now, the Deep Ones threw everyone off guard.
Another sharp hymn sounded from the Trinary Melody.
All around Avo, thousands simply ceased to be. His wards cracked, barely sustaining against the sight of such an unbelief. He felt it clearly this time thanks to the adaptions made to his mind. It wasn’t that he was immune, but Ignorance reconstituted him the moment he was dislodged from his ego, leaving only a half-second lag before his consciousness resumed. The same couldn’t be said for the lesser immortals.
The expanse of reality was pockmarked with micro-ruptures. Like someone had put out a cigarette on bare skin.
Yet, Osjane remained unblemished. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t hear in her present state. That was one of the few explanations behind why the patterns didn’t affect her.
A tendril of fire rushed out from battlegroup one, seeking to claim her for deaths and Heavens. But just then, a beam of neutron radiation punched down from Avo. A beam that came paired with a few thousand Rendbombs of Peace.
Avo cursed and dispatched new orders to battlegroup one. He launched counterbombs—tried to tear open the surface of space. But to his surprise, the Weaver acted to his benefit.
With a contemptuous limb, it caught the Infacer’s beam within an ontological cleft. Radiation vanished into the creature’s wounds, and as the Rendbombs detonated against it. Ruptures of all types formed around the Deep One. But as Avo could reach out and pluck an ego from another, the tears composing the Weaver’s body connected to the new wounds and absorbed them.
[What the fuck was that?] Naeko cried, reeling in disbelief. [You—you can’t do that.]
“They can, apparently,” the Hidden Flame breathed.
Avo only felt the sickness staining it grow greater. The longer he spent in its presence, the more he came to understand it.
It was stuck. Lodged between the lawlessness of unreality and the rules that defined the original draft of existence. Everything it did tore the tapestry open because it couldn’t exist without inflicting damage.
Just then, the Weaver speared each of its gargantuan limbs out. They sank nail-first into the flesh of existence, and Avo felt tapestry writhe.
A tangible spike of terror and alarm came from the Infacer. Suddenly, A Deep Beyond blinked out from Avo’s mind.
{Veylis! Avo! If you can hear me, right now would be a good time to intervene. Preferably before these horrors tear your house down.}
Then, the Weaver pried. Existence began to crumple around it, like paper being crushed into a ball. From its widening wounds, parts of an entire world came pouring out. Abberant ecosystems and environments splashed around Avo, materializing as unscrolling paintings in the backdrop of his perception.
But then the Substance tore open—and a gateway formed. There, Avo saw them. Saw his true self and Veylis bifurcated by a thin mirror, and saw what was becoming of them. Sequences and paths were conjoining. Gold seeped into Avo while Veylis was made kindling for the Conflagration. Behind them, a mutated Heaven squirmed.
It seemed as if the arms of the demiurge were hatching from the blackness that defined the Strix. But just as the Demiurge mutilated Avo’s great Heaven, so too was it bled in return. The baleful flame that was Avo’s Soul poured down in rhythmic pulses, staining the heart of the Demiurge and unraveling it with nullifying paracausality.
Together, their power was all-consuming.
And unfinished.
Whatever was to emerge from this embracement, it was not yet done with its metamorphosis.
But that didn’t mean the Dyad was defenseless.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
“INTRUDERS. INTERLOPERS. UNINVITED. LEAVE!’
The dyad’s voice made the tapestry shake, but the Weaver stormed forth. {PRIORITY TARGET LIST UPDATED.}
“So be it. Mother–Zein! Take them. Infacer! To me—us!”
And then another portal materialized in the Substance. Another signature registered in Avo’s metamind. One that truly soured his mood.
Of course… Ignorance said with a bitter hiss. They reassembled her fragments as well. Of course.
ZEIN THOUSANDHAND: THE GLAIVE THAT WILL ALWAYS BE [EST. 900,000,000] (DUELS/CHRONOLOGY/WAR/GLAIVE…)
Avo promptly stole the opportunity to burn Osjane. He was going harvest her for thaums and Heavens; he was going to need them.
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Brent Stinebaker
Voidwatch: Filling up the Substance heat bar in record time. Except instead of Max-Tac or the army, you get Ninth Sphere Zein hunting you.
