Brent Stinebaker
patreon
14-20 A Sudden End
🕑 Added 2023-08-09 19:19:10 +0000 UTC+Dear mhet-ma,
I have come to a conclusion. I have seen too much. I have seen enough.
For years I have served the mechanisms of the city, seeking to produce for its highest echelons Heavens and miracles so they might better lives and raise us from the shadows of our past.
Not so. Not so.
Do you remember when you used to place me on your shoulders as we watched the grand processions of the Guilds during Salvation’s Day? How the dormant golems gleamed, and the drones danced, and how the Agnosi were venerated for their knowledge–and sacrifice–in delving into the tortuous mysteries of the old gods?
Remember how I swore every time that I would become one of them? That I would prove myself flexible in mind and pure in spirit to descend into the taint of canonicity and emerge as myself still.
I do. I remember your pride as they took me as a neophyte. I remember your smile when they promoted me to full initiative. I remembered your tears when I was fully inducted into the order.
But my induction was the worst day of my life… I wanted to do this then, but I didn’t have the heart to hurt you. I still do not. I am a coward, and so this will arrive after my deed is done.
By the time this message loads, I will be gone forever. If not by my own hand, then under the heel of some Guilder snuffer. Do not be sad for me. Do not cry. This was the right thing to do.
The only right thing to do.
When I was made Agnosi, I… faced knowledge. True knowledge. Not these facades of truth depicted by the Overclan. I learned of our past and the gods and witnessed the ugliness of reality in all its forms. And the voiders–there was no respite with them. I… think wanted me to do this. Which is why they “forgot” to hide the classified information when they loaded the data into my terminal.
I have killed millions in the past month alone. Millions to just change and alter the aesthetics of a Soul for the vanity of its master. Millions to bind a thaumless Heaven to cold metal. Millions more for every inconsistency and contradiction our teams made for the lore.
Millions. It was easy before because the number is so vast and the sacrifices are kept separate… it’s just the press of a button. But I’ve seen them now. I know what the world was, what could have been, and what we lost.
We fight for nothing. We fight to prolong our suffering. The Guilds will not liberate us for this because they are drunk on their own glory, and so, as with the endlessness of the horizon, so too that I cannot conceive an end to this war.
There was a time once. A time before time. A time where the void was but quiet space and coldness. A time when the stars were stars and concepts were concepts and things were just things.
There was war then too. Atrocities. Sins. But people were getting better. People rose and ascended to their potential. Humanity flourished amidst a garden of plenty.
The voiders even have a name for the era of expansion and exploration. Of expression.
“Eden Found,” and the garden of paradise was but the cosmos mastered.
But it wasn’t enough for some. It wasn’t enough.
The great enemy that was entropy remained, and so, with even nigh-eternal minds of silicon and intellect fearing a fated end, they sought a final ascension from the chains of entropy, and in their efforts followed transgression instead.
I don’t know what they did to the vast singularity that once stirred at the core of all that was. The voiders will not tell me. All I know is that things grew entwined thereafter, and the act of belief grew to bear its own weight where the tears in the tapestry spread.
I’m telling you this because I don’t have the strength to keep this to myself anymore. You should know–you and everyone. We could have born to a paradise if our forebearers hadn’t burned the garden down, but more than that, we managed to seize the fires of ruin! We managed to break the gods and claim ascension anew.
We could have restored ourselves to prominence and cultured a paradise from flames with what we possess now. But we didn’t. Instead, we cling to this singular granule in the vast infinite and war and fight and kill and kill and kill and never learn.
I love you, mhet-ma. I am privileged to be your blood. Proud.
Know that what they say about me isn’t true. Know that I’m doing this so people may know. If my transgression is committed properly, then there will be no way to silence my message. If not…
Let it rest in the quiet of your mind, and speak these truths to those you know may listen.
The city must wake up. The people must awaken. We have overcome the oppression gods, but now we face a far more insidious foe.
Ourselves.
-[Redacted], The Salvation’s Day Bomber
14-20
A Sudden End
Killing the Fallwalkers left a dry taste in Avo’s mouth.
It wasn’t the lack of effort it demanded–though their ignorance and unpreparedness for him did disappoint. Rather, he found himself more taken with new concerns, his suspicion turning inward as he delved into his own mind, guiding Whispers to serve as an in-facing eye to monitor the changes in his consciousness.
He knew not what possessed him to butcher Glitch so. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kill her, but more that he didn’t even realize he had.
The lapse was just like with Zein, just like sneaking sensations prior still.
It was as if something else assumed control of his vessel and actions when he turned his attention away.
Ultimately, even as he spilled across the floor and infused himself in shadows of his newest victims while White-Rab layered distractions among the Witherguards to distract them from Glitch’s sudden absence, he found nothing shifting beneath the waters of his thought.
The waves of his mind ebbed to his absolute control. Deeper still, the dark waters of seized memories withheld nothing from his sight. Nothing. Nothing was denied to him.
So how could he have lost control?
COG-PATTERN {SPRITE} INTEGRATED
A strange pulsing sensation spread over his thoughtstuff as he found himself thinking in branching numbers that signified possible choices. The first faintness of static settled over him, and thus did a feral pleasure dawn inside his heart as he finally claimed a long-sought reward.
He didn’t know the depths of this new change he inflicted upon his mind, but he yearned to test it.
In the meantime, dealing with the final two of the cadre took a simple tug from his Woundshaper as misted constructs snatched them from where they stood and plunged them into the watery dark.
His assassination was timed to White-Rab disrupting the perceptions of all those in the vicinity.
Stinging their cyclers with his excess Rend before bursting the veins in their head with a thought, the two Fallwalkers died deaths more befitting those far below their stations. No terror, fear, anger, or dread came in the end.
They were.
They weren’t.
And they passed without ever knowing who killed them.
Their actual selves did, anyway.
Their templates, however, gained a new perspective behind their killer.
[FUCK!] Lip roared. The ghosts around her simulated form scattered, and beside her, Corner stared off into the distance.
[Eh,] the former street squire muttered. Bitterness passed over him like oil upon water. As Lip raged, he offered but an accepting shrug. [That’s New Vultun for you. Just when you think you’re the flame, someone else takes you for a wick. Well played, rotlick. Well played.]
[You’re complimenting the creature? He murdered us! He–this was supposed to be an easy job! I died for this? This?] The Scaarthian wanted to break something, and accepting her tantrum, Avo let an artifact of a desk manifest before her. In a place made of phantasmal haze, only she and breakable items existed for a while, and so was rage indulged.
[LIMINAL FRAME] OBTAINED - MOTE PATTERN
->STARVATION’S ENVY HEAVEN TEMPLATE DOWNLOADED
->THAUMIC CYCLER x3
->SOUL x3
->ONTOLOGICS x6
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 4325 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [42,019]
SPRITES: {4.2TB/s…}
His bounty grew to bear a nice heft, and Avo found himself pleased with his thaumaturgic returns for this dive. Of course, there was still the matter of the five hundred or lives he still had to take and all the ghosts that ran inside them.
A surge of alien data ran through cog-feed and a new icon populated the expanse of his awareness. Radio signals and beams of concentrated information became known to him, their movements constantly shifting based on distance, longitude, latitude, and a cluster of other pertinent factors. Crackles of echoing dialogue whispered from on high akin to wind passing overhead.
The voiders were speaking to each other. They were speaking without ghosts.
But he could see them now. See their world clearer than he ever had.
+Alright, the squad leaders are starting to sync their units to the “emergency session” I reminded them about. Casting you the mem-data now…+ New knowledge poured into the molten basin that was Avo as the required memory pattern became known to him. He sampled the sequencing and found himself appreciating his cog-donor’s handiwork.
White-Rab wasn’t Walton. There was a certain warmth that his work lacked. But the younger Necro was inspired and efficient and meticulous in his handiwork.
Even with the memories churning in his flames, it took Avo passing seconds to locate the first hint of something resembling a flaw. Careful was too soft a word for his technique.
Little wonder why Walton chose him. Little wonder why Avo thought him deserving of a Frame.
+Have choices for you,+ Avo said. +Heavens of Ice. War. Cooking. Signals. Pick the one you want.+ He considered offering a second Heaven and cycler as well but found himself considering Draus and the others still waiting for him far below.
They needed to be stocked for what was to come.
Suddenly, the loot felt insubstantial.
He needed more. His allies needed more. This would not be the end of his raids but the beginning.
Deaths were easy. Ghosts were plentiful. But Souls were hard to claim and cyclers were a rare sight. This, and sobering epiphany he endured moments prior to Glitch’s murder were all it took to make other Godclads his new favored prey.
+...Jaus, you’re actually serious.+ White-Rab turned his perception over to Reva. +He’s serious.+ He laughed. +An easy Ensouling out of nowhere…+
+Yeah,+ she breathed. Unlike her lover, from her mind flowed a constant stream of fear and disquiet. +He’s…+ The words ended there and Avo felt her swallow. Flashes of distant memories leaked out from her mind and were licked by his peripheral flames.
Agony and struggler were the prices she paid to claim her Frame. She proved herself in combat first and endured horrific rituals before the Longeyes to prove her mettle as they bound in mind and body with a stormtree. Lesser beings shattered in seconds. The strong made it a few seconds longer.
Reva held even as her sense of self was disintegrating, even as her throat was raw from screaming and her nails were folded over flesh as she clawed against her restraints.
All that to become a Godclad of the First Sphere, and here was a monster she just met by happenstance offering power that could alter the course of someone’s life like it was trinket to be traded.
Avo recentered his consciousness and struggled not to mock her.
Poor Bloodthane. Poor ignorant girl. There was still a pebble of delusion in her heart–that being a Godclad was a thing to be deserved. Frames were given out of duty, pity, relations, mockery, and even apathy. To give a Frame was an expression of power above all others–an act of influence unparalleled.
“By my hand are you a god made,” were the words it hinted.
For those of true mettle like Corner – who still died so ignorable and senseless – the truest demonstration of individual will was to seize a Frame by way of murder.
Of course, symbology paled before the harder edges of reality.
+I’m going to start the killing when they gather,+ Avo said. +You can think about what you want. I’ll reach into the Witherguard and take them into the dark before killing them.+
+One more thing,+ White-Rab said. +Some of the Witherguard are still engaging with the defenses up in the twenty-fifth so you might have to handle them directly. A few other infiltration teams are trying have been trying to jack into a transport junction in the block so they might be running Incogs. Might require you to do some legwork in the end.+
+Fine. Prefer this way.+ Avo extracted the Skimmer from Ori-Thaum. Casting out reasoning wavelengths of perception ensured that all things hidden would have to endure under the weight of his notice, and seeing that he channeled over forty thousand ghosts now. His presence would greet theirs as a falling hammer would glass.
Time passed and he waited. Three more accretions winked out above as more of the Witherguard lost their lives in battle. Pity, but not unexpected. The defenders were holding the upper floors still, and without the Fallwalkers to support them, the Witherguard now found their assaults a choking affair of attrition mixed in with the misery of ambushes.
Well over two thousand Wights had already been expended in the past twenty minutes of fighting.
Already, there were dispatches directing reserves to ascend past the secured floors.
Of course, as Avo watched the presence of minds begin to build as the assault teams began to coordinate their efforts anew, soon none would remain among them, and silence would return to the block again.
A shifting presence moved through the walls not far from Avo and found only a shivering family huddled against the far corner of their room, waiting for the block raid to be over inside an armored compartment in their closet.
So many little lives scattered everywhere…
+Alright, most the teams are syncing now,+ White-Rab said. He regareded Avo’s burning ego once more and let out a shaky breath. +Not gonna lie, I don’t envy their fates right now, but I am damn curious about what’s it like to burn in your fire.+
Avo grunted a reply and prepared to shift his mind. +Can give you a firsthand experience after you get a Soul. Reva too. If she wants.+
The Bloodthane’s thoughtstuff recoiled at the very suggestion.
Shaking off the urge to prod her anxiety further, he sensed the phantasmal flow of ghosts rushing down symmetrical paths as minds were bridged with minds and a makeshift briefing lobby was formed.
So far, the missing Fallwalkers remained a distant shadow in their minds.
Whatever adjustments White-Rab made, he did them well.
They didn’t even think about the cadre. Not even when Avo accessed the session and erupted out in their midst.
Things became known to them in that sudden massacre. Lifetimes worth of memories sailed through him, and the grips of his Heaven expanded to encompass over four hundred and eighty-nine bodies. Meat and metal dipped down as a sea of darkness opened beneath their feet like a chasm, and as Avo’s Sanguinity pulsed, all matter disconnected from a Rendskin unraveled in his grasp.
The entire act was like putting on a single shoe with nearly five hundred different layers. Where all the stacks were separate egos and separate thaums, all vanished into the touch of the fire and descended into the Soul.
The volume in his consciousness grew louder. Cries of rising dismay mingled with loud notes of confusion became his new templates, and digging through their recollections, the last of their number was easy to uncover as well.
Casting his Skimmers out from the bodies he briefly kept, the crashing waves of his perception were like a traveling avalanche that never ceased and never concluded. Wards and Incogs shattered outright beneath his pressure. Between fissuring Metas flowed the nectar of wounded minds, and before accretions could break apart entirely, Avo cauterized them into his gestalt and spared them an uglier passing.
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 4826 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [42,019]
In the end, twenty active snuffers were lost to him–dead behind Highflame lines.
The rest, however, burned in the cradle of his thoughts. He let them feel and writhe and rage as he swept through the dark and gathered their drifting armor. Flooding the halls with his haemokinesis, he liquefied all remaining Wights and drones as well and poured the evidence down into the darkness.
In a single, startling instant, what was an active assault simply ceased to be without hint or reason.
Meanwhile, gauss fire continued to tear free down hardened chokepoints, and skirmishers skittered through the dark, unaware that a being far greater than they judged them from the shadows they hid in as they searched for signs of their now vanished adversaries.
Flames collapsed back into Avo’s original body like lungs drawing in smoke. His halo burned ever-brighter, ever-thicker. His Soul felt pleasantly heavy, but still hungry for more.
Always hungry for more.
+Block war’s finished,+ Avo said. +Lots to consider. Lots… Hm. Come on. Let’s go see Walton’s drop. Should be in a room on the seventeenth. I go first. Might be Low Master trap. They don’t know about either of you. Keep it that way if possible.+
As the currents of darkness turned to his whims, he found himself bathed in Reva and White-Rab’s perceptions once more. Neither spoke, both only stared, and unblinkingly so.
+What?+ he asked, listening to the pleasant churn as his new templates began to argue and fight among one another.
+That was less than a minute,+ White-Rab muttered. +I… I saw what you did earlier but it’s… that’s just godsdamned terrifying.+
Was it? He honestly couldn’t tell anymore.
Sure, the little minds he just ate felt that way, but what did they know?
What did any of them truly know that he didn’t?
Comments
Jack Smith
Gotta say, the part were he started talking about diving up the loot reminded me of dark and darker. Never enough loot…
