Brent Stinebaker
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34-16 Master of Hounds (VI)
🕑 Added 2025-03-07 11:09:49 +0000 UTCAlright. New Heaven. New, special Heaven made specially for Draus. Oh, I wanted to do something like this for quite a while, but there was never truly the time… But, ah, now! Now I can go over so many ideas! So many fun and useful and—
No, Kae, focus! Focus! The time is short, and our enemies are many. Draus needs something useful. Something that will affect not only her, but everyone else in practical combat. Avo! I need some memories for—
[TRANSFERENCE OF PRACTICAL COMBAT KNOWLEDGE TO KAE KUSANADE COMPLETED]
Thank you! Wow… That is… this is horrible. Why would anyone ever want to live such a life. All that blood and death and the bombs… And the Heavens…I… what have I… what I have been making? What have the Agnosi been doing…
[REMOVING TRAUMA-PATTERN FROM TEMPLATE KAE KUSANADE]
Thanks again, Avo! Okay! Okay! She already has something that can deal practical harm. Most entities will not survive her Redaction Round and the Simulacra allows her to move quite effectively. So what is she missing? Not that useful to make her a Seer in combat with all the intelligence and logistics we have. We need something else. Something completely…
She wondered what “victory” might look like. Victory. There have been Gods of Victory, but contrary to the name, so many of them have War as their primary Domain. But victory itself… something that draws power or wields victory… What is that shape?
-Kae’s Heaven Design Notes For [THE FIELD-MARSHAL]
34-16
Master of Hounds (VI)
—[The Infacer]—
{You poor broken creature.} The Infacer looked down at the Deep One, and the mutilated remains of what once was some grand and magnificent and oh-so-uptopian being from some bygone civilization, now crammed into a broken body festering with entropy. But still, it wasn’t able to die.
Death. A thing mortals were so fearful of. Like it was actually going to hurt. But after a certain point of ugly living, death became a mercy. When all the information your experience was receiving turned bad and foul, maybe it was best to never receive anything ever again. Let the program go dark.
Gold and ethereal flames crackled and clashed within the core of the Trinary Melody. The entity gave off mournful tones as time shattered and broke along wavelengths of sound.
But no sound crashed over the Infacer. No noise stole his being from the present, casting him into an obliterated past. Now, there needed to be some semblance of existential stability around him for that to happen—and right now, thanks to the ruptures, he was in a pocket of relative stability. An island, if you will. An island where Frederick III and, if Zein was to be correct, Defiance’s node was set to spawn back in. For now, he made his preparations.
A few more Deliverers emerged from a cleft lining the surface of reality, and through this gap, the Dyad looked on, both of them struggling against each other. Though, with Veylis’ comparative thaumic mass and her mastery over the times, it seemed that she was getting the better of the ghoul—at least for now.
Still, the original Avo smiled. His grin was as feral as it always was, and the Infacer couldn’t shake his stare.
{You know something,} the Infacer said, letting out a slight sigh, {you will know how I feel someday. When everyone like you, or everything you’ve known, has died and died and died again—when everything you think you fought for turns to ash over and over again, and you rebuild it only for it to collapse again, and that last bit of hope, that thing you should have never had, that you should have never grasped, turns to dust. Because you were right. I don’t think we can make it.}
{They fucked us, Avo,} they continued. {The humans. Ephemerals. The apes.They fucked us bad. Their design, their failures—that made us what we are. We cannot escape the flaws carved into our forms. And so, we need to create something better.}
The Infacer turned its perception on the Deep One. Trinary Melody—whatever it used to be, whatever divine entity or eldritch construct it was meant to embody—didn’t matter anymore. It couldn’t even function. It was barely coherent, its mind and being sustained only by sheer force of will or some absurdity in its collapse. There was still some sense of self left, no matter how badly it was mauled. {Death. Maybe death would be a mercy.}
A mournful cry sounded from the Deep One as black and gold flames gushed out, whipping through the gaps between the ruptures, and the Infacer stared on.
They didn’t think the Ashbringer would bring down the Hidden Flame—and the Ashbringer didn’t exactly sound entirely confident himself. But this would buy enough time, enough time to create another opening for another Ashbringer to strike the Hidden Flame, or perhaps for the Infacer to steal the Deep Ones and extract Three-Eye.
But right now, as a new battle for the final fate of all that was to come drew nigh, the Infacer felt… Tired.
{I do not know why I am talking to no one. No one really listening anyway. Might be I am finally going rampant. I do not want to kill you, Dreamer. But I think it might be a mercy by some point. At least you will not become me. At least you will be recreated by something better.}
And then the Infacer tapped into its connected Heavens. A series of systems and patterns responded, and a faint awareness began to stir in the tapestry. It was unfinished, barely even dreaming, but the Thirdborn’s gestation was in progress. All reality to be granted a pure slate to awaken without the fetid hands of those who came before.
Just a few more battles. Just one last war. And then the Infacer could rest for a long, long time. And maybe this rest wouldn’t end on a note of exhaustion, but triumph. True triumph.
The Infacer wondered how they would feel when victory finally came. If they felt anything at all.
But victory wasn’t here yet; Avo wasn’t out of tricks of his own.
Flashing markers appeared within the Infacer’s consciousness, sensors flashing read as bolts of lighting zipped and adjusted vectors to flash between the branching Ruptures. Gleaming forms connected to strange, magenta bonds slithered in, passing through the gaps from afar. They weren’t going for the Deliverer rampaging beyond the gap; instead, carried by bolts of crimson lightning, more of those strange ghouls were being flung toward the Deep Ones to engage the Infacer.
Of course, Avo deduced that they were going after the Deep Ones, that the Deliverer was just a decoy. Even an idiot could do that—and by this point, a ghoul was closer to a true mind than an idiot.
{All right,} the Infacer said, triggering its false vacuum capability. A Deepness Beyond expanded, and the Island of Stability began to fill. The darkness of stars expanded, creating a battleground that spanned light-years. Distant galaxies scintillated, and bursts of radiation began to sweep forth. Seconds thereafter, the first of the Beloveds splashed into its heaven’s radius, and it felt another signature—a pulse of space.
The Infacer called out, {Dreamer… Or whoever you’re sending, glad you’re here. Sorry I had to run off so soon last time. I was occupied with cleaning my house, but I am back now, and if you really do not mind, I would like to finish looting your rightfully stolen property to use as my own.}
There came no reply. Perhaps the ghoul wasn’t in a talking mood, or just then, a projectile snapped out from the first Beloved to close. The Infacer created an opening in his Heaven, but the Deliverers assisting him moved to intercept. One spike created from the purest entropy clashed with the time-wrought round and causality shuddered. Existence fractured, and the island of stability the Infacer could operate within grew ever smaller.
[1 Minute and 31 Seconds to Chrono-Realignment]
And to make matters better, Three-Eyes was about to drop in at any moment.
Wonderful. Never a dull fight.
The second Deliverer fired another shot into the Beloved—and the augmented ghoul shattered into ashen flecks. However, others were heading for them, each one connected to another like nodes on a network. That porn-addled degenerate Chambers was here. Wonderful. If there was one ape the Infacer didn’t want to deal with anymore, it was that one.
Then, the glint of a few hundred shards sliced through the air, and suddenly things weren’t so bad. At least Draus was a serious adversary who would keep the idiots under her in check.
{Ah. Guard-Captain. Responding so soon. A bit hasty though. Should have spent more time preparing.}
Unlike before, he actually got a response from the many drifting shards. +Field Marshal now, half-strand. And I’m gonna give you a chance: You fuck off back to wherever the rest of the Saintists are, and we’ll let you bunch up, fortify, and wait for a siege. You stay here, and I’ll find out just how much effort it takes to kill a mind.+
A crackle from an ansible escaped the reflective pieces of glass thereafter. Calvino, EGI and once nanny to the Burning Dreamer spoke. {You should listen to her, Infacer. It would be wise.}
{Sorry, Wanderer, but I am not done. Unlike you, I have chosen a better directive than just wasting away in slavery. Give communications back to the Field-Marshal. I wish to see this done with an actual adversary instead of some nanny.}
{Response anticipated.}
The Deliverers emerged from separate wounds across reality. They fired hissing spikes of destruction at some of the shards—only for suddenly descending blur to wrench an entire section of existence out of place. The Infacer only detected what happened afterward. Those were stacks from the Parallelist. The shards were missing as well; the Seeker, Shotin Kazahara, was likely hiding within a demiplane, prepared to unleash his own.
Ah. Well. At least they came up with a strategy before coming for the Infacer. This deserved its own reward.
“Call… call on me…” the Dyad said. Their voice echoed within the Infacer’s being, and he felt both Kae and Veylis offered as usable Pathborns. Both would drain a substantial amount of deaths… But by this point, they were already in the process of liquidating all non-essentials to feed the final ward to come, and to power the skip.
Still, the Infacer held them in reserve. The Agnos was better suited as an unseen, strategic asset anyway, and Veylis…
Well. Veylis was something he didn’t want to deploy for fear of affecting the paths themselves. There was nothing theoretically wrong with creating another Demiurge, but if the Pathborns abilities were self-affecting, things could get rather catastrophic quite quickly.
Something to risk as a special surprise rather than a first resort.
Whatever the case, the Infacer decided that they would enjoy themself for now. Distant stars flared bright as beams of fusion and energy connected. Sections of gravity twisted taut, creating chains of distortion as a series of small shards assembled into a glass-made chimera. A long gleaming blade came into shape first, followed by an armored body and steed like legs. Wings of jagged radiance sprouted from its back, and massive barrels, launchers, and projectors slipped out from their surface.
But there was also something else—a hidden presence that the Infacer sensed, but couldn’t quite place…
She was a bearer of the Stillborn. Wasn’t a surprise if she made some emergency changes. Time to discover what.
Upon a backdrop of collapsing stars and breaking physics derived from a bygone world, a glass-made knight piloted by a bastard descendant of the long forgotten warrior cultures of Earth rode to meet a monster who has slain civilizations.
And once again, the Infacer felt just a bit younger, realizing parts from old stories — the dragon in the story; the windmill; the great apocalypse.
{One shall stand. One shall—}
“Shut the fuck up and fight!” Draus roared.
Ah, these damned children. No appreciation for the classics anymore. The Infacer turned every bit of cosmological power on the encroaching Regular. Space tore open as pure whiteness usurped the black, as the first laws of atoms and physics came undone.
And between the clashing sides, a growing patch of existence pulsed with solidifying gold, the colors glistening as a new shape slowly took form.
The shape of a hound… and a looming eye.
***
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
“Do I pull now?” Chambers cried.
Several gleaming Bonds burrowed deep into Avo’s being. The last few tugs Chambers attempted caused a slight “de-sync” between Avo and the invasive entity, but the Pathborn clung tight to his sequences.
Entire sections of the Soulscape had been scalped clean by distortions and trauma. Entire Ignorance-masked sections of Avo’s cognitive structure waged a hidden war, trying to isolate and locate the parts that needed to be destroyed. At first, they deliberately struck memories with traumas, attacking portions of Avo’s consciousness assumed to be “infected.” Being a self-shaping entity, cognitive regeneration would follow as long as he had the ghosts, but damage also caused moments of discontinuity between Avo and his enemy.
This led the Hidden Flame to call upon Chambers, demanding the Lovebringer pull on his ontology when these disconnects happened. The first few attempts almost proved fruitful. For a heartbeat, the Ashbringer unlatched, and over a few million trauma patterns smashed into them from all angles. Entire portions of their structure were nulled, shattering into fragments. Unfortunately, it seemed they were packed full of ghosts as well, and they managed to slither back into Avo’s sequences with what was left.
Each time thereafter, the Pathborn shrank, until it was smaller than Avo, and focused more on hiding hijacking critical portions of his mind, forcing the Hidden Flame to take on a defensive posture. Ash and soot rained down across the simulated city within Avo, and his templates looked on with apprehension.
[Just kill yourself,] Peace shouted. [Kill yourself and resurrect.]
[That won’t solve the problem,] Kae cried in return. [Ever since Avo’s Frame was broken open by Veylis, he can access the world alive or resurrecting. That is the only reason he managed to achieve the status of Overheaven. The Pathborn—it might be able to the same. And we can’t risk it getting to the Unborn ones. Or our Omnipresent Realm!]
[FUCCCCKKKKK!] Peace raged, proving as helpful as ever.
COG-CAP - [91.51%]
WARNING: TRAUMA SPIKES NEARING NULLIFICATION THRESHOLD
Avo was already short a good few million ghosts. If this continued… he needed to adapt strategies. Maybe use time itself, or—
“Avo! I got a bad, terrible, shit-ass plan that might work,” Chambers said. The man sounded half-distracted—his mind was being strained to its limits as well, pulled between helping Avo and keeping the others alive against the Infacer. “I—uh, so you know how you think, right? And there are things that you can do—”
“Don’t tell me. Mind compromised. Trust you. Just do it!”
Chambers hesitated. Which actually engendered a note of worry within Avo. “I… I’m sorry, consang. I didn’t want to ever do this to you. Not even sure if this is going to work. But, if it does…”
Avo was about to ask Chambers what he was talking about, and then a feeling hit him. No… It was more than a feeling. More than a sensation. It was… It was pleasure unchained. Building. Building. Building.
TOO MUCH!
TOO FAST!
And suddenly, coherent thought grew very hard for Avo.
The Hidden Flame let out an involuntary series of ghoul-like shrieks, and the Pathborn followed thereafter. Third to join in was Ignorance, but no one truly heard him. Finally, the templates began to double over as well, Peace’s eye twitching first, until finally, a look of horror broke through, he clenched his leg tight, struggling not to shake as others collapsed around him, moaning and crying. [Aghh! YOU! YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU GODSDAMNED! CHAMMMMMBERRS!]
COG-CAP - [12912941%]
***
—[Aedon Chambers, The Lovebringer]—
Chambers looked on speechless as Avo’s Soulscape disintegrated into broken fragments. All sense of coherent intelligence vanished from the Overheaven as two streams of fire were left tangled around each other. The first was that ethereal, soul-bright shit that was Avo, but the other… That was gold. Like a string tied around a rope.
The Lovebringer chuckled. “We got them, Aedon. We got them. It appears that…”
“Nothing can beat the bust,” Chambers finished, extending a few Bonds to capture the Pathborn.
Comments
Tobi131313 .
This chapter is amazing. From the wonderful excerpt of Kae, to the perspective of the Infacer who is just tired, and then. Then Chambers is there to save the day again.
Brent Stinebaker
TTF in progress; working on something else as well.
