Brent Stinebaker
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Cadre (III)
🕑 Added 2023-05-10 19:35:35 +0000 UTCWhat? The hypertube ruptured? [Stifled groan] Where… where are they… How the hells did they manage to jack a lightrail? The Nether’s down! Traffic grid’s infested with mem-cons! And what’s the point of rupturing it? The Sovereignty will notice immediately and pocket–agh!
You know what, no questioning anything anymore. Let’s just assume these–uh–consangs of ours here have a few sequences missing–
A Sphere-Four Liminal Frame–where did that Sphere Four come from? Okay. Okay. Naeko, stop asking questions, you’re just going to get mad–we’re trying to stay calm this year. Calm.
[Deep exhale]
WARNING: DAEMON DETECTED
->DOMAIN: [WATER]
[Pause]
Jaus… just… Jaus.
[Sigh] Have to dam this flood before this ends in a cascade of Fallen Heavens.
-Chief Paladin Naeko
Cadre (III)
10-31
ONTOLOGY REVERTED
RESURRECTION COMPLETED
DOMAIN RESPAWN ENGAGED
ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 3501 THAUM/c
LOADING PHANTASMICS…
Light is not meant to shatter into fissuring streams upon the chassis of existence, but when a lightrail is destroyed mid-transit and beams itself out from cracked lenses lining a hypertube, metaphysics gets a bit murky.
Flickering back into existence from a speckle of blood, Avo found himself standing on tubes he once traveled within as the world drowned under a cacophony of discordant noises. Flames roared. The wind squealed from all points graced by the fissuring luminosity. Distant sirens mingled with aero engines spinning hard at maximum thrust.
Something speared through the winds. Something was just about to–
He touched the falling debris before it smashed into him. Reflex took hold where thought lagged. His Celerostylus swelled and time slowed. His haemokinetic mist came aglow as electricity arced through the moisture and the Canon of Haemaefication was invoked.
The debris melted into a shower of red, and Avo snatched the blood out from the air with a thought. Near ten tons of alloy, plastics, silicon, and other substances new to his Woundshaper sparked through his ontology. Suddenly, the structural aesthetic of the wreck became known to him: He just unmade a destroyed assault drone.
His senses yawned wider as his mass grew, spreading across countless other material patterns beyond it thereafter. The world around him expanded into a shape beyond even the reach of his vision. He could feel things miles beyond as his Heaven washed over the real. Presently, he found himself suspended over a vast crevice leading down to Layer Three, the section of tubes he halted on miles between two different districts.
As his mind cleared and focus took hold, the presence of his Woundshaper furled outward as a nigh-transparent film of haemokinetic mist. The last drips of blood from the liquefied drone evaporated into the wavelength of his broadcast.
Impact trajectories pulsed red as flechettes cut out for him from afar. The projectiles came, and when they transgressed into his ontological borders, were unwoven in shape and structure both before they could arrive.
The Canon of Sangunity’s Reign was like having a shapeless hand that could clutch everything around you in its palm. Yet, what it grasped was metaphysical, and what he felt were things bearing symmetry to his Woundshaper’s portfolio of domains.
His tactile senses swelled from feet to miles while his Phys-Sim screamed as ghosts surged into it, his cog-feed adjusting to before the spiking number of sequences required to estimate all that was happening around him.
There were hundreds of drones cutting through the skies and below him, and from those hundreds of drones spilled scything beams and darting flechettes. Hundreds of drones, and then substantially less as a wing of light swept through them.
Shrapnel plunged down like descending hail. This time, Avo consciously interacted with them. His cog-feed counted eight hundred and ninety-four thousand pieces traveling through the expanse of his influence. With a thought, he dissolved all of them as well, drinking in their mass.
Matter, light, blood, biology, and lighting. Aspects of existence felt were alight within the purviews of his mind. The metaphor changed.
Sanguinity’s Reign was not hand–Sanguinity’s Reign was like resting something upon his tongue and–when his canons allowed it–deciding to chew.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 1%
Surpassing twenty tons of weight in a near instant, the stretch of his awareness doubled. Before he could locate his allies more drones flooded in, coming not as a swarm but as organized squadrons. With twenty-four drones per group, the diamond-shaped aerial assault platforms maintained equidistant spaces within their units and between the broader formations as a whole. As flecks of blood dug into them, Avo felt the shapes of strange squid-like mechs chambered within their cockpits–artificial pilots a necessity now that the Nether was down.
Mechs. That meant these were deployed by Voidwatch. Or Omnitech. More likely the latter considering his Phys-Sim had them moving at just over Mach Two. The former would probably have something entirely automated and far beyond the range of even his current awareness.
WARNING: SPATIAL ANOMALIES DETECTED
Volumetric reality shimmered, and distant geometries twisted. Hundreds of distant-seeming aerial platforms turned right in unison, and suddenly they were within a six-mile radius from him, descending into his grasp.
With their arrival came additional warning klaxons. Avo’s cog-feed grew cluttered with highlighted entries and issues of concern. A dozen new Heavens were detected and his Frame offered what details he could glean.
Disquietly, they moved like blots of absence upon the tapestry of his perception. Multiple space-related Heavens hid newly arriving Godclads or a Knot of golems contained within block-sized inverted delta that propelled themselves with a stream of prismatic exhaust.
Eight spatial signatures popped into his awareness and hundreds of newer drones slipped free from each flat surface of the demiplanar deltas. Light cleaved and shifted through the fissures without trouble. A concentrated intersection of projectile fire helped Avo trace Abrel’s position.
The Strider was slashing its way through the veil of heavy rain. The water above was imbued with the hue of ethereal luminosity and beyond the clouds thundered revelrous melodies from the peaks of the Tiers unseen.
The daughter of House Greatling faced an ocean of foes alone, cutting, thrusting, dissolving, and always moving in a ballet of combat, her form a dichotomous visage of sight-piercing brightness grown from clouds of smoke.
At the moment he noticed her, at the moment his haemokinetic mist brushed through her being, their Frames rattled against each other again, and Soulfire struck Soulfire. Perceptions met and she froze for but a fraction of a second, turning to present with him the fullness of her hate.
The Woundshaper quivered in excitement. The Galeslither, overwhelmed by its return to existence, found its attention jumping from moment to moment, the chaos overwhelming its attention.
“What… need is there for me…” the Galeslither whispered. “The skies are no longer mine alone. So much metal… and space–so crumpled. What has become of us?”
The Woundshaper snorted. “Defeat, kindred. These are the fruits of our subjugation. From them, we will grow anew.”
As space began to crumple in around her, she flicked a wing out at him. Her speed remained beyond his despite his risen tonnage, but where once he was left with no choice but to endure her onslaught, now he had other options.
He invoked his Domain of Lightning for the first time, and the sinew of storms forked free from his flowing arteries, burrowing beneath the metaphysical flesh of existence like spreading roots.
In tandem with Sanguinity’s Reign, the expansive weave cast by the hypertube’s shattered light came into form within his mind’s eye as if his DeepNav was still running.
He stepped and felt the totality of his being stretch far. The world did not slow further, but when he dashed, his velocity covered entire miles within fractions of an instant. He plotted his movements and snaked his crimson currents between cracks of eldritch brightness.
A squadron of drones broke formation–desperate to avoid Abrel’s descending swipe. Two crossed through the fissures spread out from the tubes. Their chassis, then, was peeled clean as the light funneled their matter through flowing pathways toward horizons unglimpsed.
The other drones survived but a moment longer as the Woundshaper drank them out of existence from stride to stride. Omens of lightning speared from drone to drone as sound broke and the air came afire with friction. With each relay of acceleration, the Woundshaper grew, and within a second, it climbed to its full mass as Avo let the excess blood wash over him.
This was an expression of power he hadn’t known. Beast, mind, and Heavens all found themselves united in common pleasure.
It was a thrill to break. It was a thrill to dive free through the skies.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 24%
The Rend Boltstride generated, however, was alarming. Even with a Fourth Circle, each vectored thrust filled his capacity by increments nearing a full percent.
Not that it didn’t make sense. Kae had told him once about the cost being scope and vulgarity. At eighty tons, transmuting oneself into surging bolts of electricity while retaining mass and size caused reality to scream. Inertia fought to keep its nails buried within Avo, but altering the vector of his next stride was as simple as angling his foot.
Falcons soared through the air and Abrel rematerialized six hundred feet away from him. With both their Heavens completely manifested, it was absurd to realize this was knife-fighting range for both of them and that some of the dynamic from their earlier scuffle in the lightrail carried over.
But with each burst of moment time slowed and tides of apocalyptic fire spread through the world. The advantage in speed tilted further and further in favor of Avo. Her wings split through the fissuring cracks of light as if they weren’t there. But she swung. She jabbed. She slashed. There was a prelude to each moment–like her wings were blade strokes.
Even within the lattice of the hypertube rupture, all Avo needed to do was move, and move again.
As her attacks carved through the space he once occupied, he strode twice. The first allowed him to squeeze through a crevice of unaffected space and arrive sixty feet just behind her. The second started from an angle where his path was unobstructed.
She followed where he was and could feel his presence behind her. But knowledge was not capability and nothing–not even the brightening of her wings–could have stopped him from tearing into her with storm and Rend prepared.
Nothing but another unexpected Heaven.
Reality twitched at the same moment Avo jumped. He dove out as a lashing stream of storm-stuff, yet glanced away from her–twisting hard and right. More interestingly, the light emanating from her wings suffered the same way, as did the smoke, as did the wind, as did the movement of every drone around them.
Twice again did he try to jump back toward the Strider and twice again he ricocheted further rightward. It was as if the act of moving left was all but impossible.
Scars of shattered brightness spread out before him like a lattice.
Avo forked himself through an opening as lightning unstitched and then restitched his form back together in strips and splashes.
Then, suddenly, he felt his Sangunity sinking inside one of the prismatic deltas like it was a sinkhole he could dip a finger into.
At five hundred feet in height, each of the four facets comprising the demiplanar construct led into a separate pocket containing a different golem. Their matter and forms were myriad, with some corresponding to his touch while others wafted between his fingertips like water. One, in particular, caught his attention–one that felt like a gnarled anchor curving rightward when he skimmed his mists through it.
He took a chance. He liquefied it with a thought and let the blood run free where it may. Relief settled through his structure. An unseen grip slackened from reality’s throat. The sides of the delta turned opaque as the construct accelerated toward him in an explosion of motion.
Avo aimed another stride and put himself at the full fifteen miles it offered. He cast himself out and his perception tunneled. His lightning traveled the entire distance within a fraction of a fraction a second. Drones around him disintegrated outright as he left a trail of erupting fire that twitched upon the surface of reality.
Yet, as soon as he poured himself back into physical shape, he found the delta the same distance away from him and closing. Avo fought the urge to sigh. Abrel’s equation was mostly solved, but as usual with New Vultun, new problems like introducing themselves without courtesy.
Prismatic light erupted from the tip of the delta as it drew closer, swimming through fissuring obstacles left by the hypertube rupture without worry.
Avo strode twice more but found himself unable to outrun his pursuer. It was like their distances were tethered to an absolute number while all other moving bodies were variable. His cog-feed came alight with colors and sounds, warning of more spatial anomalies.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 49%
New drones spilled out into existence from the various deltas, and Avo felt their numbers swell well past the ten-thousand count within the hundred-and-sixty-mile stretch of awareness provided by Sanguinity’s Reign.
Brushing them with his domains, he felt aspects of blood, biology, and matter emanate from within them most of all. Their aesthetic was bee-like with a hint of cyberization, and the chitin looked like the armor on Draus’ new bio-rig. Not drones, then. Bioforms. Swarm bioforms.
He recalled vicarities of runs going sour in Sang territory. He would have seconds before the sky turned into a hive of flesh-grown missiles. If they couldn’t breach his form, they would undoubtedly try to cook him out by beating their wings at a heightened pace.
The real danger remained that which they spawned from. Even as he strode again, it inched into the five-hundred feet radius–too close for comfort now. He didn’t know what else it was capable of or what would happen should he let it touch him, but he wasn’t keen on finding out.
At least he wasn’t keen on using himself to find out.
He was going to need to find a way to get the delta to expose itself again. A thought trailed through his mind–could he use his Sanguity’s Reign to serve as localized Nether? The prospect ignited his focus even further as he cast his ghosts out.
All around him were options to select from–drones and humming bioforms galore. He splashed back into physical shape just above another stretch of the hypertube and immediately had to convert himself into electricity as a wide of slashing light cut through him.
Abrel was still fighting five miles eastward. How the deltas had not contained her yet he did not know.
He accelerated again and a thousand bioforms splattered in his wake.
Shaking the thought free, he activated his Ghostjack and tried to channel his phantasmics through waves of haemokinetic moisture brushing across the expanse. His ghosts emerged from his Metamind and injected themselves across illimitable motes of blood, using them as conduits.
Casting into a drone next to the delta pursuing him, Avo cracked their semi-adaptive wards using a mix of traumas and linked himself to its manually controlled locus. The pilot, coldtech machine that it was, tried to fight him ineffectually. Its cognition still gave off something vaguely similar to thoughtstuff when he brushed it, but interfacing with it gave him a static chill.
There was something alien about the mind of a thinking machine–the pathing of its sequences offering nothing for Avo to bury his claws into. He liquefied the mech and moved on.
Accessing the Wyvern-II Multifunction Assualt Platform, he directed it to approach the spatial construct chasing him.
As it drew within twenty feet of the delta, his broadcast wavelength waned and his connection began to fail. The drone itself folded and funneled into a facet of the delta’s face and vanished from his grasp.
Well. That was troubling. He didn’t want to be drained off to… wherever the drone went.
Shifting his thoughts, he turned his attention to his Galeslither and sought a place of shadows. Perhaps if he couldn’t avoid it materially, he would be able to escape as another aspect of space itself–
A squadron of drones vitrified and shattered into a sprawl of glass mere feet above the tubes. Three other signatures materialized into existence. He felt them strike his Frame the same way Abrel did. Draus stood alone, separated from Essus and Chambers by a distance of miles. Essus had spawned exactly where Avo did, while Chambers was currently falling from the sky, screaming as he emerged from plumes of fire spewing out of a failings drone’s engines.
Avo had a new idea. He had several new ideas.
Channeling his ghosts through his mists again, he created links between himself and his group.
His cadre.
As the delta closed past four hundred feet, he cast his intentions out to each of them.
+Draus. Need you to create a gateway for me and kill it right after.+
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Brent Stinebaker
Errata Note: The Woundshaper is running a Fourth Circle Hell. This has been updated.
