Brent Stinebaker
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14-13 The Hand That Feeds
🕑 Added 2023-07-31 18:53:59 +0000 UTCMadness. Absolute madness.
Do the Guilds not see that they are courting ruination with what they ask me to build? Heavens aren’t just dead structures you can stack together. The work it takes to concept even the lowest of the Spheres requires a toll of death by the hundreds.
I understand that our erstwhile rulers believe they hold privilege over all life in this city, but each ego needs to be converted to the proper beliefs and then reviewed before they can be fed into the Ruptures.
The most minute flaws could result in catastrophe–do these people not remember Mahdrada and his plague of digitization? How Omnitech pushed and rushed and used that Heaven of Data without ever testing its stability?
Do they know how many Agnosi died to contain the conversion of physical matter into nonsensical data? Do they even care?
No. No they don’t. No one cares. And the ones that do are irrelevant or powerless.
All the Guilds want is power and new ways to defile reality. I can’t remember the last time someone asked me for Heaven to better society. The rains of midnight? The Woundhounds? All before the present. All before this endless, pointless bloodshed that just won’t end.
With each “Modern” Heaven my Agnosi are tasked to make, I feel my spirit screaming. The Guilds’ adherence to the Articles grows thinner by the day and more they ask for canons that are all-encompassing, all-powerful, and all-detrimental. Broader than broad. Taller than tall.
And if we cannot deliver, they get mad at us. Mad. For not making something of the Second Spherage a match for the Ninth.
Here is divinity–if you could control all facets of existence, you would bleed over into it, because totality is to be everything, and if your Domain could affect all of existence, then there really wouldn’t be a point of separation between it and totality, would there?
To design a “perfect” Heaven capable of achieving all these criteria would require years of research and review and focused worship. It would require death upon death and prototypical Heavens. Tests upon tests. Experiments. Learning! Learning that is impossible to do when every power governing us is at war, or engaging in shadow wars, and actively assassinating the best and brightest of my order when they might be on the verge of a breakthrough that would tilt the balance.
I cannot prove the Guilds are murdering us. I cannot. And the Exorcists and Paladins, whittled themselves by years of “accidents” and “misfortune” are in little better state than we.
The erosion of our humanity–of the dream has crossed the last threshold now. I have no hope in a resolution to this no hope. Even if a faction wins, what then? Peace? Prosperity? Laughable. Godclads stagnate in such conditions. How are you supposed to ascend the ladder of power without death and carnage?
How? Tell me! Tell me!
War! War will follow more war! Because unless a single individual claims victory and puts us to the mercy of their heel, the conflict will not end. Not with how we are! Think you damned fools! Think! Fucking think! You can’t even agree on the truths of the past, and somehow you expect the rest of us to believe that you will manage to achieve and accord once your Ark is the last standing?
No! War! War! War! War! War on the inside! You will find a disagreement to bleed each other over and commit to it.
Because what you say is a distraction. I judge you by action, and the only difference between you and a joy-fiend is comparative impotence.
To the Guilders who read my literature–it was you who deprived yourself of true glory all along.
You. Your fault. Always.
Murderers of Jaus. Bastards betrayers of the dream. You and your impossible egos. You and your delusions.
You will have what paltry Heavens I can muster, but you will never glimpse the promise of ascension.
When I was a child, I yearned to claim to the sky. Now grown, I wish for it to fall upon us.
-Mem-log of High Agnos Ossam Hariruda 2 Weeks before his “Suicide”
14-13
The Hand That Feeds
Reva’s flat stare was predicted by his subminds, as were the words that followed. “You know people have tried to kill me a lot of ways, but this is the third time I was offered an even-trade suicide by another ‘Clad.”
The fact this wasn’t a first spoke volumes about being a Godclad. Humans were creatures tempted by rarity and scarcity; the moment one’s own life became casually renewable, the thought of spending it ceased to bear any heft in its weight.
Nonetheless, the idea was planted, and soon he would need to provoke her curiosity if he wanted to inspire action. Mere words were insufficient, but he knew of the one true way to hammer his will into the bedrock of her conviction. One way, and no other.
Death was cheap. Death was a teacher. Death was an expression of goodwill. Death was an invitation; a means to an end.
Death was dialogue.
+I will give you the resolve you seek,+ Avo said. +I will die first. You can follow me after. Or not. It’s your choice.+
The accretions of both Reva and White-Rab bubbled with greater uncertainty than they did before. When they ambushed him, he expected himself to be at a disadvantage. Not so. Their encounter was fortuitous for him, and revelatory for them.
There was so much that lay beyond the bounds of their understanding, so much he knew they didn’t, and never could.
Not unless he showed them.
[Oh, it’s her choice,] Abrel mumbled. [Fuck happened to my choice. She gets the whole nice treatment while I got to see my brother die, my friends were butchered, I got halfway nulled… Do you just hate Golds, Avo?]
Across the inventory of his manifestable templates, the Talons, Shadows, and Benhata began sarcastically muttering to one another, each pretending that they had only just met each other, slowly building up to the question of which Guild they were from and how they all “died.”
[Eat my shit, you half-strands. You know what I’m saying.]
Benhata laughed. [I don’t. I really don’t. I was fine and alive one moment, then I picked up a cast and suddenly my consciousness disappeared into a roaring flame. Thanks a lot by the way, Shadow-1.]
A spike of annoyance came from the Incubus. [You’re welcome, Concave. How the hells was I supposed to know we were going to be diving into a mind-eating ego contagion? How were we supposed to prepare for that?]
Avo let the simulated argument brew in the back of his consciousness. He could have ordered his subminds to stop, but something about his victims devolving into a shouting match with each other tickled his amusement in a peculiar way. It also served as a calming ambiance for what he was about to attempt.
Previously, when it was convenient to die, he often requested Draus deliver the coup de grace since she was refined in the execution of such things.
With the ascension of his consciousness, things have become both stranger and simpler.
The hardest part of resolving his own survival wasn’t death now, but ensuring his real body wouldn’t be discovered. Thankfully, making a body disappear was easy when you had the right canons.
With a thought, he funneled the bulk of his ego over into his proxy as he liquefied his original form. Before detaching himself from his primary vessel, he dissolved the smear of gore that was once his flesh using Sanguinity, and the shadows in which he hid exhaled a breath of crimson vapor that dissipated with the passing winds.
Between the constant onrush of bodies, the filling of lungs, and the scything pulses of neon, his unraveling went unnoticed by even the keenest of eyes.
Manifesting a single shard of blood in the space between him and Reva, he bound the haemokinetic construct in stasis before using it to clear what little momentum debt he owed to his Galeslither’s Hell.
The other Godclad studied him with rapt attention, her expression transfixed between battle readiness and genuine anticipation. Something about how the light struck her hazel eyes made her appear almost childlike to him.
Activity centers across base-mind came alight with hunger and unslaked cruelty. A spot in his cognition mapped to the design of Shadow-3 fluttered with dopamine, finding the Bloodthane’s general appearance to be quite attractive. The rest of his cell mocked him for his easy fall and asked how he was to nurse this affection now that he was consigned to the ghoul’s will.
+What just happened?+ White-Rab asked. +Did you shuttle over twenty-five thousand ghosts across the Nether without… your blood-sheathe just lit up like a fusion bomb. How are you even channeling an Incog for all that? The sequences demanded must be…+ The Necro trailed off. +Are you going to do this Reva?+
+No,+ Avo replied, allaying apprehensions before they could rise. +Don’t have the means. Lack of a critical component right now. Might need some time to replicate the experiment. If that’s what you want.+ This was a lie on his part. As much as he was willing to alter Reva’s Frame to a minuscule degree, becoming a post-consciousness was an edge he had no desire to lose.
And if he was ever going to pit his power against someone like Zein, he needed every little advantage he could gather.
+Cleaned out Rend. All I need you to do is follow me into death. I will inflict no change that you don’t desire. Or want. Her mind will remain untouched. Call it respect. Call it pragmatism. Call it a good start to our… relationship.+
That inspired a faint grimace to flash across Reva’s expression. “A good start would be not getting nulled. There’s a precedent there, and I’m not keen on repeating it with you.”
Strangely, White-Rab sputtered a few awkward coughs.
It didn’t take much for Avo to understand that he was missing contextual details to fully understand what was being hinted.
+I will await you across the threshold,+ Avo said. +Come greet me if you wish to be more than what you are.+
He didn’t grant her a moment of dialogue before he manifested the Thoughtwave Disruptor in his mind. Immediately, its formation came like a fissuring wound at the core of his being, and when he willed it to trigger his demise took him like a stray gust of wind winnowing a flame down to embers.
RESURRECTION - 1%
Into the depths of his Soul he sank, and with his Heavens he waited to see the arrival of his guest. Should she arrive, it would take but the transference of a single thaum to make his point. Thereafter, what Heavens and Domains he had at his disposal could be discussed, but there was another means to this action.
Infection.
So far, none among those he grafted showed any signs of ontological adaption in their Liminal Frames. He personally Ensouled Draus, Chambers, Essus, and Kae, and so far they remained of separate patterns from the Stillborn.
Perhaps there was a debt of time that needed to be accumulated, but other factors could be at play. The nature of the Imitators tethered to the fires of his Soul was understood exclusively by Kae as a construct of thaumaturgy, and even then her study was incomplete and interrupted.
“Are we to play the role of hollow, broken gods with the coming of your new guest, master?” the Woundshaper asked. There was a teasing whisper that trailed after its thoughts, hinting at its desire to play the role of a surprise.
“No. Make it plain. We need her to be shaken. We need her to be tied to our interests.”
“And if you cannot secure her loyalty with avarice?” the Galeslither interjected. Between the three egos present, it regarded itself as the wisest. But the steed was also characterized by capitulation and escape.
Avo’s consciousness knew better. Though Reva Javvers was a Bloodthane, she held herself in reserve due to the unusual nature of their present circumstance and the fact that she was operating on behalf of her lover than her Guild,
The truth was none of them were supposed to be here, and any potential betrayal on her part came with serious caveats, grinding her between multiple vectors of interest.
White-Rab was at risk. Not just from Avo, but her own Guild. If he was as freelance as details suggested, he doubted the Longeyes of Stormtree would allow one of their number to frolic about with an unknown party.
That, and she should understand how easy it was for him to consume minds after his little display devouring Walton’s memory packet earlier.
A pulse of pressure brushed against his boundaries, and he found his attention directed outward. Finally. Beyond the borders of his Liminality, another Soul manifested, and though it's bright stood dim before his own, he knew himself facing someone of the Third Sphere at a glance.
The scant distance that parted them was but a momentary buffer. As Avo finished his initial appraisal, he cast his reverberating Soulfire out from his core and tunneled a pathway across subrealities into her threshold.
Her shock came with a sharp spike of startlement. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t an intrusion so quick, so causal nor sudden.
Where once death must’ve been a place of silent recess for her to wait out her resurrection and plot her next actions, now a foreign Soul intruded, bringing new noise and strange possibilities she could have never considered.
He found himself greeted by the unmoving form of her Shatterborn as he entered. The Forgemaster of Broken Things glared down upon him with three heads carved unevenly from jagged obsidian, and volcanic arteries coursed through its five iron-cast limbs gleaming with molten glows. Steam rose free from the Heaven’s chest, and countless charred hands worked the forge, twitching and writhing at the crackling of flesh.
Beneath the titanic visage of the former god’s upper body, the lower stretch belonged to that of a headless lamb.
A faint sense of familiarity came from the Woundshaper, though it also toned a suspicious note as it noted several inconsistencies in Reva’s primary Heaven.
SHATTERBORN, FORGEMASTER OF BROKEN THINGS
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 849 THAUM/c
Looking at her second Heaven from an angle across, Avo found himself facing a strangely familiar sight.
HOUNDMOTHER, BIRTHER OF WOUNDS
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 122 THAUM/c
Where most Woundhounds are defined by the wounds they are birthed from, the Houndmother resembled a sea of blood clasped between plates of layered scabs where there should have been fur. The colossal canine was all primal, its form nakedly animalistic, and its young swimming between the canals of its weeping injuries.
This, more than the Shatterborn, consumed Avo’s attention.
The Woundhounds had proven their worth during his ascent from the Crucible. If this Heaven granted him a free and easy supply of constructs that could spring forth from his injuries, he was more than interested to make a trade.
He still had a Lushburner to spare, after all. Its Domains might just feed into her designs.
Caughting himself after the long lull of his silence, he read from her Frame’s mem-data that she was at three percent resurrection already, and soon the return would be upon both of them. Thereafter, they would face each other in the flesh once more, but before then he had much allure to deliver, and some confidence to reap.
“Hello, Reva,” Avo said. “I thank you for allowing me to serve as your guest.” It felt strange being so polite, but he recalled the lessons his templates had taught him and decided against risking any kind of antagonism.
Especially considering how unprepared she showed herself to be. “...The only people who have talked to me in here are the Agnosi. You know that, right?”
“False-Hevs,” Avo said. “Useful. Unnecessary.”
“Alright,” she said, taking his words on as a challenge. “What else can your Frame do? It is your Frame that’s doing this, right? I don’t think our ghosts make it all the way down here.+
+Frame. A Highflame donation.+ He kept his words vague, but she could fill in the blanks herself. +Here. For your attention.+
With a thought, he transferred a single echo of Essence from his boundary into hers. Her ego gasped as she noticed the pulsing figment traveling between their Frames, the mote a representation of a life taken, and the only true currency of worth in New Vultun.
He promptly took it back before he lost it to one of her cyclers.
No free rewards. She would have to earn her prize and know him to be a patron rather than a charity.
If they were to play this game with each other, a reliance needed to be established.
“Did you just–” He cut her off entirely by flinging one of his intact Lushburners into the confines of her Frame. The crucified phoenix spared into the unmoving shroud spread out from her Soul and Avo took the chance to study the clash between her flames and his.
More than unmoving, his was animated and without limitations to its movements. Hers was still and frigid, curving out toward him in the shape of a narrow cone. Her options were limited to making powerful but limited-use Heavens. Even with two ontologics, he found her being to be cramped for space.
“How are you just moving that around?” she breathed.
“Oh, I assure you, the act is quite effortless on the master’s part.” Reva’s Soul went stiff was the Woundshaper chuckled, and across from her followed the Galeslither’s sigh.
“That…” Reva began.
“Wasn’t me,” Avo said. “It’s as I said. Following me was wise. You are now a witness to things few have seen. Few for now. A rare privilege. But enough about my Frame. That can be learned in time. Want something from you right now.”
Her being tensed. Even stripped clean of physiological fear, he could sense the worry building from the depths of her Soul. “What’s that?” She asked, keeping the dread clean from her mind.
She couldn’t face him here, and if he deign to fill her Hells with the excess Rend from his Woundshaper, there would naught she could do but rise and cease upon the call of resurrection.
Ignorance, again, was fatal.
But mercy, sometimes, was fruitful.
“What kind of goddess do you want to be?”
Comments
Arcane
Missed opportunity for a Reva POV. Just my opinion though. Thanks for the chapter!
Arcane
You can take a break if you're still sick!
Brent Stinebaker
Chapter done. Felt a bit of weird resistance while writing this one. Going to try to improve my delivery efficiency after the difficulties of the weekend.
