Brent Stinebaker
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32-11 The Layered Cage
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 11:13:13 +0000 UTCWhile factors of thaumaturgy material lie upon equal grounds, the determining factor between the success and defeat of a military force is usually rooted in two things: command and coordination.
Command, where the executive agent dispatches a clear and calculated set of orders to be executed along strategic, operational, or tactical levels.
Coordination, as to the efficiency with which these orders are executed successfully.
Beneath this is also the institution and individual skills of your jacks, infantry, pilots, and Godclads. With each success, the entire force surges forward, with each failure, a crack spreads across your front.
So very often, victory and defeat come with a single routing; a devastating cascade.
Ultimately, the superior force is not always the one that possess the higher thaumic mass, but is better at bringing and focusing the mass they do possess against the supple underbelly of their enemies. It is the understanding of what Domains the opposition holds, and how to rupture, paradox, and exploit each of their weaknesses while safeguarding your own failings.
Like all matters, it is simple on the surface, but complexity comes with interplay, for it is the greatest expression of human artistry, demanding an impossible synchronization when it is already so very troubling to become a master of oneself…
-Excerpt from Total Domain Warfare
32-11
The Layered Cage
—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—
Something about Osjane’s Sword of Swords reminded Avo of the Stormsparrow. It was the way she created a zone of change without altering the concepts of space — an externalization of a miracle upon the material world.
The gleam of her blade projected a triangular symbol made from interlocking geometries across a full kilometer of stable reality. Its lines were infused with letters from a long dead civilization, once legible, now only part of a thaumaturgic ritual.
Devoting a full 10% of his cognitive capacity to processing power and exploiting his Ensouled’s reflex-boosting miracles, Avo observed the patterns of the tapestry to study Osjane’s Heaven in detail and learn of its threats and weaknesses.
The Sword of Swords was, effectively, implanting a decree on everything that existed within the expanse of her symbol. A gleaming slash became the fate of all those who entered this territory and trespassed against her person. And cut everything she did, regardless if they were friend or foe. Clean lines of glittering silver passed through tens of thousands. Drones were perfectly split down the middle. The bodies and machinery poured from the Skyfort, bifurcated and burning, as it began to fall into the jaws of unchecked entropy.
Even Avo’s Conflagration suffered a cleaving. Though it didn’t hurt for him, the sensation of having a branching limb of ghosts severed was disorienting. It also reminded him that with the Nether collapsed, Heavens of Mind and Consciousness were now possible, now a direct part of the tapestry again.
But though her rule was absolute, it didn’t mean he was without options. Moreover, the girl’s mind was cracking with each of her own she was forced to cull. Only by her devotion to Veylis and years of tempered resolve did her morale remain — dangling on a fraying thread at that.
He consumed a full thirty percent of her existing forces. Hundreds of Godclads. Thousands of drones. Those that didn’t fall under the protection of his Heavens of Peace were now lost to him, split down the middle, as Osjane’s divine edict went into full effect. Her Heaven was, in simplicity, extremely frustrating to deal with.
But Avo still had other options.
Ordering the Sages of Swordbreaker, Avo had them expand their mists and herd Osjane into a rupture of Peace. They released more Rendbombs as they did so, shredding what remained of stable space. And though she possessed the power of a Sphere Eight, she was clearly unrefined in its proper use.
“You will pay for this!” Osjane cried, her voice bordering on hysteria, her mind held together by madness and faith.
She cut again and again, her Sword of Swords imbued with the power of kings, lashing at all those within her sovereign territory. But by now most of Avo’s forces were back under the protective palms of Peace, spared of death by the mists even when cut.
[Swordbreaker Sage One. Rend Cap at 83%]
[Sage Two: 91%]
[Sage Three: Hit a backlash earlier. 96%. Think I’m going for an overload. Anyone got room? Need to transfer my units.]
[Sage Four. 66%. I’ll take your fodder.]
[The fuck? How are you at 66%.]
[Maybe because I’m the best Naeko.]
[Bullshit. You were hiding in the back, being a glassjaw while the rest of us ate the worst of it. Zein taught us better.]
[Fuck Zein. And thank you half-strands for taking the punches. What makes me the best Naeko is because I’m probably going to be the only living Sage-Naeko when this is done.]
A series of curses and rants exploded between the Sages, and Avo grunted a laugh. The casualness the Chief Paladin took to war was a bit surreal—almost akin to Regulars, but where they were perfect suited for combat, he was molded by it, comforted by bloodshed on a level that would leave most little more than husks.
This was the calling of Samir Naeko: Breaker of men and gods.
[Alright, chatter down. Sage Three: I’m going to pop myself on the little sow. The rest of you squeeze. Avo. Do the think where you bring out more of her soldiers. Make them scream. She doesn’t sound too mentally stable.]
“Of course,” the Burning Dreamer hissed. “Just what I was thinking as well.”
Another miracle burst out from Osjane, this one represented by the symbol of a throne. A radiant crown formed around her blade, and Avo sensed the patterns. It was a zone of absolute repulsion. Nothing could cross over the outline of her crown without suffering obliteration.
“Sage Three. Wait. See opportunity for paradox. Better end.”
[No shit? Let’s see it then.]
Sages Three and Four merged then, their two misted palms overlapping with each other as a transference of surviving forces was completed. After that, Sage Four peeled away while Three blasted forward toward Osjane—toward the edge imprinted on reality via her throne.
To split Osjane’s focus, Avo shrouded the overloading Sage with his flames and summoned every last Instrument and Highflame soldier he just burned. A pillar of roaring fire greeted the unworthy Authority, and along its flickering surface writhed hundreds of thousands of lives now trapped in Avo’s gestalt.
+Authority Thousand! Save us! Save us!+
+YOU WORTHLESS BITCH! YOU FUCKING KILLED US ALL!+
+MOMMA! I NEED—I NEED—+
+BLESSEDBETHEWORTHYBLESSEDBETHEWORTHY!+
He summoned those he devoured—all the Instruments, soldiers, pilots, and technicians under her command. They rose amidst the fires, each with their faces accusing, their pain magnified. Wailing at her. Accusing her of failing them. Accusing her of being nothing more than an unworthy effigy for a dying empire.
With his psychological offensive followed attacks of firepower and metaphysics. Hundreds of warheads crashed against her Sword of Swords. Rendbombs continued opening more tears across reality, leaving the area only traversable by his forces thanks to his conception.
Soon, Osjane wasn’t even truly counterattacking, forced to defend in order to preserve herself.
And through it all, Osjane could only preserve herself. What remained of her local forces were almost entirely collapsed, with most survivors retreating toward death—into the ruptures, driven away by the nightmarish conflagration that hungered for them so.
Avo could feel her mind breaking, could hear her screams take on a desperate quality. “Enough! You—you honorless monster! You inhuman… thing!”
+You failed them,+ Avo taunted. +You let them burn. Led them into my jaws. Hope Highflame has more like you. Because I’m hungry. Very hungry…+
“Bastard! Anvil!” She cried out. “Anvil respond. I need—”
His flames surged close. Her blade came down. Avo felt another jolt of thoughtlessness pass through him as he felt that section of his mind dissipate. Unfortunately for Osjane, what she struck was a Sage on the verge of detonation.
A fissure expanded right before her. The laws of peace came undone, and her blade turned against itself. Absolute authority rebounded against absolute authority, and the Swords of Swords snapped along its middle, bending and breaking to cut the very hand that held it. A blast of Soulfire followed the paradox as the concept of judgment came unraveled as well. Suddenly,
Avo felt a dissonant uncertainty pass through him. Like he couldn’t decide.
+Battlegroups. Withdraw and contain.+ Osjane’s ephemeral body twisted through the air before jolting to a halt. The collapse of peace stole all the force from her body, the collapse of decisions made her unable to react in any tangible ways. Judgment. A Domain impossible to create just days ago due to its closeness to the mind. But Highflame seemed to have this one on standby for a long time. Nothing about her Heaven indicated anything slapdash. +She’s cut off. Let the Rend drain a bit. Take her after. Want to study her ontological architecture.+
As he spoke, he felt despair, terror, and self-loathing radiate out from Osjane. He never stopped projecting those she failed via his flames, making her face the consequences of her actions. Consequences. As if she wasn’t a consequence herself. All Osjon did led her here. Here into the jaws of subsumption. Truly, Highflame was a ruined household without a chief tyrant like Veylis at the helm.
Frankly, he was surprised that the Infacer hadn’t taken charge of all things themselves by now. Not that he was complaining. The Neo-Creationist mind was a true threat—a major reason behind why Avo needed to become an Ark. Osjane? Osjon? They were humans. Humans given too much when they were fundamental so little.
[Hey, Avo,] a Naeko said. [You gonna keep running those messed up phantoms? I think she’s broken and done. Don’t think there’s a point to the nightmare broadcast anymore.]
“No. Not making that mistake again.” Even without a Draus template, he could hear her in the back of his mind, chewing him out for mocking and taunting someone before the battle was concluded. It took turning into a thoughtform to resolve those bad habits. Now, his cruelty was deployed to purpose. “Go for her as soon as enough Rend is drained. I will continue running the phantoms. Want to see what breaks first. Her Ontology. Or her mind.”
***
As the remaining Swordbreakers circled Sword of Swords like wolves hounding a lion, awaiting its death exhaustion, the rest of Avo’s Godclads ran a lightning campaign of infectious flame and unchecked slaughter against the remaining Highflame forces.
Battlegroups 5 to 15 called themselves the Marauders, for that was what they were: Marauders. They burst out through ruptures without warning like Scaarthian bone-ships of old, raiding stable shores, butchering those capable of battle and offering the rest to their divine—the Burning Dreamer.
Small Sages formed the centerpiece of every breakthrough, but before them came tendrils of fire. Fire that effectively functioned as pre-cognition for all his forces. Fire that connected them to each other, making them individual units and limbs of a single organism that the same time. When they came, they attacked with perfect symphony. No issues of coordination. No hesitation. No confusion or errors in communication.
Highflame was professional. Their Godclads were skilled and capable warriors—moreso on average than most of their Massist counterparts.
But what they weren’t was perfect.
Sadly, humanity wasn’t enough.
Their moats were bypassed. Their Breakers were stymied—then targeted by the Conflagration. Their Porters were annihilated through started paradoxes. Sacrificing a golem for a Godclad was a premium arrangement, and this became the foundation which the culling continued. When Porters fell, the bulk of the Golds were exposed and subsumed.
Avo barely used his drones as attack units. They become more like infection vectors for him. Points to spread from.
This was what it meant to be part of the Symmetry. Yourself and more at once. Free to transform, be reborn, to learn and try again forever.
Thaums grew by the thousands, then hundreds of thousand. His total count of active combat platforms shot past twenty million within eight minutes of raiding. And when the soft meat was flayed, he turned his battlegroups against the elites, pinning them, choking them with Rend, using the ruptures as cover against their superior Heavens and Hells,
The same strategies that prevailed against Osjane left each of her allies at Avo’s tender mercies as well.
Inside his Soulscape, Naeko’s killing frenzy reached new heights, and the faintest of a smirk remained on the Chief Paladin’s face. Ancar’s spine was holding up surprisingly well as a bludgeon, too.
The stable plates remaining of Tallsprings fractured evermore, and they were filled with a growing flame. As the Burning Dream spread, the dread from the survivors grew palpable. Ultimately, there was but a single section of the district that remained entirely under Highflame control, and that was the outskirts—just before the valley.
More Golds came pouring out in an endless tide of metal and Heavens, but Avo could see them bunching up. Congesting.
Seeing a unique opportunity before him, the ghoul let out a sibilant note of amusement and swapped a few high-Rend Sages over from the Marauders to the Extractors. The latter division consisted of the remaining battlegroups he could spare, and they were given only unto one task: to descend into the valley and retrieve Avo’s submind and Definement.
[Extractor Sage One, closing the palm.] The first of the Sage’s turned to their Hells. Open fingers curled. Mists hardened in a boiling steam.
[Sage Two: See which of us goes through the most half-strands.]
[Sage Three. You’re on.]
[Sage Four accelerating through entropy. Scar channels suffered a deviation. Another rupture opened up. Slight delay. I’ll take the rear. Overload myself at the jaws of the valley to seal it up.
[Sage Five: I’m going for the Skyforts.]
Seconds passed. Tension built. Avo watched Highflame’s broken Warhost through his flames, and they gazed right back, their perceptions laced with fear.
They are fighting with each other, Ignorance chuckled. Authorities battling to determine who leads now. Chivalrics. Little wonder why Draus left. Embarrassments. Veylis should have culled them.
“Her mistake,” Avo replied. “Her weakness.”
Yes. But also human weakness. Human flaw. This needs to be circumvented. Master. Something for us to learn from.
“Will do that soon when they burn.”
Intermittent pockets of thoughtwave detonations swept out from various points. Each of them had enough cognitive capacity to disrupt an entire district—comparable to the blast Zein triggered when the Hungers hunted her. However, these emanations were wasted as they splashed into the gouges of the ruptures, with only a paltry amount bleed into the stable channels.
Highflame’s weakness was on full display. Strong individuals. Incoherent collectives. Designed for idolatry and egotistic tyranny. If not for Veylis’s dominance and their impossibly strong industrial and institutional backbones, they would have come apart long ago. Comparing them to Stormtree’s greater cohesion but lack of logistical capacity and material, and it was easy to see how wars could become so stalemated.
[Sages to Dreamer, fists are balled. We’re in position.]
“Good. Break their jaws.”
And without any warning at all, the Sages came erupting out of the ruptures again, their Hells screaming with supercharged violence, their fists resembling five flaming missiles. Avo timed his approach to perfection—launched more Rendbombs out from his Heavens of Peace to contain any forthcoming disruptions and devastate the patterns of space.
The Extractors punched through the bunched up Golds like flechettes through armor, skin, bone, then flesh. Fires of Soul and mind comingled. More Heavens fell. More fissures expanded across reality, with the entirety of Tallstrings becoming akin to a small patch of Sunderwilds. Drones were pulverized out of existence. Breakers were shattered themselves. Oracles were useless. Shapers were hopeless. Porters were already burning.
Viscera and debris peeled off the side of the Sages as four battlegroups tunneled into the surging Highflame reinforcements, traveling deeper into the valley. Sage Four did as he promised, overloading himself to seal the way close. Behind, as open wounds crisscrossed the surface of existence and the Conflagration spread unchecked, Highflame turned on itself as the Burning Dream spread.
Aboard Skyforts, infected personnel slaughtered each other. To Avo’s surprise, he was stymied as the Regulars aboard responded—creating cones of disruption. Some of them managing to reach the flying fortresses’ cores and overload them, denying the flames their due.
Good soldiers. Good weapons.
He quickly set about prioritizing them over the drones. Metal could be caught easily enough. Real warriors were hard to come by.
[Sage One, I’m through.]
[Sage Two, ripping and tearing.]
[Sage Three, eight kilometers to estimated target destination.]
[Sage Five, offloading units: Going to make a fight of this. Draw aggro.]
[Draw aggro. Fuck me, I’ve been playing Stormjumpers too long.]
[Eat shit and die, Sage One.]
As the last of their Rend ran dry, the Sages’ clenched fists returned to being palms and their mists halted hastily fired munitions, parried nuclear blasts, dodged Rendbombs. The other Godclads, golems, drones, and forces they carried poured out, splashing into the Highflame convoys as the situation devolved into a vicious series of close-combat encounters.
Close combat encounters that usually ensured infection by Conflagration.
Yet, Avo felt something off. A pulse of symmetry jabbed at his mind. The submind was approaching him, coming closer at extreme speeds. Far ahead, valley was growing dark. Not like night, but the purest black of the void. He thought he could see a distant glitter… Were those stars.
{Well, Dreamer, I must admit: You are early. Even by my estimations. Great job, Golds. Truly. You guys… you are the real heroes, dropping the fucking soap so hard.}
Soon, a new dichotomy was formed. The flames of the Conflagration met by an metaphysical expression of space and—-
UNKNOWN SOUL DETECTED
>A DEEPNESS BEYOND [EST. ERROR] (TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE/CHRONOLOGY/INTELLIGENCE/GRAVITY/WEAK INTERACTION/STRONG INTERACTION/ELECTROMAGNETISM)
Of course they were waiting for him. It had been all too easy so far. +Infacer. Thought you had other arrangements.+
{You believed me? Well, I do. But truth be told… the Bleaks have other concerns as well. Your liberation of the Chief Ape has them worried in other ways as well.}
[Fuck you very much too, strings.]
{Ah. Naeko. Good to see you. Or at least a portion of you. I must be honest, I missed you. Somewhat. You were… well, I would not call you particularly smart for an ape, but there is still much amusement to be gained from watching a gorilla brutalize a chimp. Especially if the chimps are functionally retarded.}
Avo and his battlegroups burned and killed as they spoke, the dialogue not interrupting combat in any way. +So. Come to have a proper war with me.+
{Something like that. I have to thank you first, though. You really did me a big favor.}
The templates within Avo responded with confusion, the Dreamer himself had a guess. “This was political? You wanted Highflame exposed? Weakened?”
{In a sense. Mainly, I just wanted the stupid inbreeders humiliated and Osjon shamed to the point he loses his status as speaker. Losing his daughter—or worse, having his daughter be saved by me—should about do it. After that, the rest of the mouthbreathing monkeys should fall in line.}
The Burning Dreamer couldn’t help but let out a snarling laugh. “You truly are the most devious bastard in New Vultun.”
{I am the most devious bastard in known existence, motherfucker.}
“Remains to be seen. I’m not dead yet. Also. I don’t have political issues. Don’t need to scheme like this. Makes me the better thoughtform. Better mind.”
{You know, there are times I wonder what might be if you, me, Veylis, and Zein were a single force. Then, I realize that our collective egos might just rupture reality by weight alone. You’re worse than Veylis.}
“Better. She’s still broken. I’m here. Can call you a half-strand in person.”
{Eh. She is more like you than you think. Anyhow.} From the valley, a spreading emptiness crawled across reality, over the ruptures as well. Avo detected even more thaumic signatures coming from far, far beyond. Strange thaumic signatures. And then his submind and Definement… they didn’t feel so close anymore either.
To make matters worse, another chasm opened across the district, and new forces came pouring through. Forces that came so quickly it was hard for Avo to track.
PHYS-SIM: ESTIMATED SPEED .69c
[Relativistic weapons,] Naeko grunted.
{How about a wager before we get this started. For old times sake.}
[Shit,] Naeko chuckled. [This is Stormjumpers.]
{What do you have in mind?} Avo asked.
{If you manage to take your submind and Definement back from me—just that. I will withdraw. I will let you have the rest of the warhost and Osjane. But if I manage to snuff you out… Well. Snuffing you will be reward enough for me.}
“You? Snuff me?” Avo grunted. “And they call me the Dreamer.”
[Avo, are you two about to start mind-fucking? Because this is starting to sound a little like how Veylis and I used to talk before we sparred, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s making my ass very uncomfortable.]
Avo ignored the Chief Paladin. Ultimate warrior or not, he was human, and his ego was too small to understand what was on the line here. He was being challenged by an EGI—an intellect above intellects. More than that, an ancient EGI that has eluded execution or capture for billions of years. The Conflagration salivated at the thought of consuming the Infacer.
“Your arrangement is acceptable. But I intend to do more than take my submind. Should have stayed away, Infacer.”
{Oh. The little baby infomorph thinks he’s going to eat me. How cute. Fine, grasshopper. Let’s do this. Let me show you how war is actually meant to be waged.}
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
TTF chapters being edited. Multiple releases soon.
Gaz
He’s got a heaven of based on 2 of the 4 fundamental forces of reality? That’s ungood
Kittenz 2020
The Heaven of strong interaction is wild, can’t wait to see what sort of bullshit he spring one Avo, who despite everything still probably has a 3rd grade understanding of science
Brent Stinebaker
THUS BEGINS THE UNCHAINED SHIT TALKING CHAPTERS
