Brent Stinebaker
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14-8 Home (II)
🕑 Added 2023-07-23 17:38:33 +0000 UTCAre you tired of all the ads and invasive miracles licking at your skin every time you walk the streets?
Are you seeking a community of like-minded people who strive to make their lives better while also elevating the prosperity of their Guild?
Or maybe you just earned your FATE and are looking for some affordable shelter while you acclimate yourself to the wonders of the Tiers?
Whatever it is you want, block-15 at Pendross’ Ravine has you covered.
Powered by a modern-twelve-core techno-thaumic and imbued with Heavens designed to bring convenience to you and yours, block-15 has now been cleared to house 50,000 new homeowners thanks to upgrades made to its geometric-efficiency canons.
But don’t linger! The available rooms are dropping and dropping fast, with the hydro-pent housing at 100 units–sorry, 32 units and falling!
You didn’t get here by waiting, did you? No. You took life by the throat. You proved yourself one way or another.
You are worthy. And you deserve to be blessed for your achievements.
Tarry, and the moment slips, but if you take that plunge, you might just find out how far up into the sky one can fall.
Home is just a thought away.
-Pendross’ Ravine Housing Ad
14-8
Home (II)
The most obvious deviation between a block in the Warrens and a block in the Undercroft was the aesthetic.
Where most buildings below the reach of the Tiers were little more than hulking cubes of abused alloy held together by patchwork repairs and clicking flaps of tarp when the wind passed through, block-twelve was more like a cake with its stacked layers. The divide between the floors was marked by dotted lines of pulsing neon, and delineation ran symmetrical to the sheets of inch-thin water that held additional housing within specialized demiplanes.
Like most blocks of its design, its central thaumic engine was nested deep in its structure away from easy access, and the sheen of ever-changing phantoms spewing a non-stop stream of Highflame and Omnitech sponsored media. Figures moved and writhed as colors descended the full spectrum of light along the side momentum of change. As the light bloomed, shadows shivered, and Avo found his swim at an end.
He surfaced from the black. Light showered him, but unwanted attention continued to glance off his person. The crowds were a mesh of implants, heights, sizes, and colors, with several of them running holocoat privacy functions and a few baring their allegiance out and proud. Hustle, bustle, and noise were insufficient descriptors for the streets of the Undercroft.
Minds pulsed loud with music being openly streamed straight through a nearby lobby, and more than a few ran cognitive filters that adjusted their visual surroundings to a theme more to their liking. Nu-dogs, nu-cats, and nu-pets of divided morphologies strutted upon streets of gleaming plascrete behind their owners. Some towered over their masters while others were engineered to fit within pockets.
A few were even implanted organic sockets grafted into their masters’ flesh, but that veered toward the extremes of even the New Alloyist modding scene.
As an ad changed and light struck the street again, Avo finally noticed the constructs that gave the Undercroft its namesake.
The Wights.
There were fewer of them than ever now. Ever since the Guilds had improved their in-house drone manufacturing capabilities, the need to use locus-implanted corpses as menial labor grew impractical.
Still, their accumulation over the years left something bordering on the edge between sentimentality and indifference to their presence. For those that couldn’t afford a top-end machine, Wights were still cheap and common enough to supply most households.
Unlike the people, the Wights sported plastic faces locked in an eternal rictus or a blank look completed with a hollow gaze. Some among them carried bags, while others served as perception points for vicarity stars.
More worked in tandem with spider-like cleaner drones, scrubbing at more intimate stains while the machine they were festooned upon rattled along the sides of builds and bridges.
Spurring his Echoheads to chitter, a blanket of static reached out from him, and he laid his mind upon his surroundings as a proper greeting after a long absence. A few eyes recoiled from his person and he felt three of his ghosts shatter into rising steam.
An intrusive thought came to him, wondering just how many lives he could snuff out as a response to the ignorant slight he just suffered, and how fast the Guilds would respond.
His Woundshaper hummed appreciatively at the idea. “There are ten thousand lives with our gasp on this street alone. It would but take a squeeze before we take another step up the ladder of divinity, master. Just think of the potential… just think of the rise.”
Angled away from the Heaven of Blood, the Galeslither brayed its disgust. “Do it then. Betray your ideals towards choice and individual. Be the rank butcher you were made to be by your betters.”
Betters. Of all the words of his Galeslither, that was the only one that truly tasted ill.
[It’s tempting. Risky. Estimate at least a few hundred thousand deaths if we use our Sangunity. Simulated Guild response will be near-immediate. They will pocket the area we affect. Can’t hide the action. Too much damage. Our prey don’t have Incogs. Spreading our mind will leave us vulnerable to more vectors of perception…]
Testing his consciousness, he shifted through his various templates and nearly staggered from the eruption of horror that seized his thoughts.
[We were thinking of casual genocide–]
[These were FATED! The rights imbued within their persons by the Articles cannot be–]
[Kae will never forgive you. Essus will never forgive you. Draus will try to kill you. Chambers will… well, Chambers is pretty much in love with you, so you can do what you want there.]
With a surge of effort, Avo cast off his newly invoked humanity. The mountain of anguish vanished from where it was within him, and his Echoheads scraped along the memite plating of the walls he was leaning again.
A few swinging gazes splashed new to him, minds confused as to what could have made such a loud screech when there was no one there.
But by then, he was already gone. Going vertical, Avo set a path for the side of block twelve as he fired his Celerostylus and cycled his blood. Tendrils worked in tandem with his Echoheads as rose like a fired flechette.
There were countless loci dotting the exterior, serving as anchors for ghosts and surveillance phantasmics. Between each shard of embedded vivianite, however, was a crack–a crevice he could make large, and through the shadows sprawling through the block’s internal system would he find his way up.
Being a Godclad was really quite the convenience. No need for front doors or thoughtscans. No need to be shunted across the in-block transit system to arrive.
Tunneling beside stretches of circuitry and humming filters working to keep the air clean, he followed his DeepNav and spilled out on floor 324. This deep into the structure, most minds were parted from his attention by lobby-directed ghosts that put up veils of obfuscation between each room for privacy.
Strange. He didn’t remember his block having that. His apartment had been far less insured, demanding that he built his own protections personally.
This, however, looked like it was covered by the block-admin itself.
It was unlikely things could change so much in the month or two he was supposedly absent.
Painted shards of glass glinted from the walls, each slotted against the other with their broken bits fitting perfectly between plasteel doors. Ahead, he heard a set of mag-locks disengage. A child–no more than eight–shot out from the open door with his triple-jawed nu-dog in hot pursuit.
“Hey, slow down.” A stocky man shoved the door open as he strode after his son. Avo expanded his Sanguinity and caressed the shapes of the other bodies in the hallway with him. The boy and his dog were all flesh, while the father had certain changes made to his eye, spine, and skin.
Blinking at the air, the man’s eyes flashed as he swept his perception around. His attention skipped right over Avo like he wasn’t there.
Shaking his head, the man shed his suspicion and locked the doors behind him with a thought. Avo sidestepped into darkness and let the boy and his father pass.
Those were the tenets from fifty-three A.
He didn’t remember the No-Dragon grafter that lived next to him having a family.
Stepping back into the hallway, Avo kept his apprehension in check as he made his way over to his door.
His home.
Standing before his old doorway, Avo found himself frozen.
The door was thought-locked, and if he touched it with his mind, he would likely just end up subsuming the phantasmal structures it was tied to. Taking the entirety of the block’s loci-based infrastructure into himself would have been easy. Just as easy as killing all those people out on the street.
A new thing he learned about the Undercroft–being here teased the basest of his desires.
Silencing his urge to do harm with his subminds, he settled on making his entrance through more miraculous means.
He had been thinking about things too much like Necro.
Sometimes, being a Godclad made all the difference.
Forming a domed shroud of blood behind him, the lights of the hallway instantly dimmed, and Avo plunged back into darkness. He dipped and rose on the other side in a single action, and as he took the first steps into his abode, he immediately noticed how dusty everything seemed to be.
Like no one had lived here in years.
His living room table was missing, and beneath his wall-mounted locus should have been his fishes, long and colorful, darting about in the twelve feet of the room they were allotted. Right now, there was nothing there. Just two empty alcoves taunting him with absence. On the other side of the room, the dining quarters were uprooted and demolished as well. Things had been unbolted from the ground itself.
The only thing that stayed consistent with his memories was the Wight he owned left slumped opposite to him against the wall. The dead woman continued smiling her wax-clasped smile at him as if all was well in the world.
The fact she was the only thing that bore any symmetry drove him to frown.
[Memories increasingly questionable.]
[Too many inconsistencies. Couldn’t have been evicted in two months. Could we?]
Even if his status as owner had been cleared from the block’s systems, that didn’t mean they would be remodeling so soon. Presently, the place looked more abandoned than anything else.
Broadcasting his blood wide and allowing his Echoheads to chitter again, his mind an influx of material patterns rushed through his mind, and his uncertainty flared as he felt five different loci embedded between the floorboards and within a chair leg respond to his touch.
A succession of blasts pulsed from each loci as Avo felt perception wash over him.
Hyper-sensitive pressure triggered loci.
He didn’t remember setting that, and more importantly, that wasn’t something someone would set up for pleasure. There was intent behind its design.
This place was a trap. He should–
+So, you’re finally here.+ He encased himself in haemokinetic armor as the thoughtcast took him by surprise. Across from him, the Wight lifted its head and turned its face from corner to corner. +You must be running an Incog since I can’t see you, but seeing as there aren’t any aratnids around, I think it’s safe to say we’re finally Wight-to-face.+
The unknown Necro chuckled, and the Wight blinked its eyes at him rapidly. His initial response–to swallow the locus directing the Wight with his Conflagration–was intercepted by hesitation.
What was this?
Did Walton plan this?
+I’ve known you were coming for a while,+ the speaker continued, their true tone masked by a deep chorus of other voices layered over each other. The situation became known to him in an instant – someone had installed an Auto-Seance within the Wight’s locus. +The Strix told me about you. Apparently, you’re supposed to think your home is my home. I guess that’s what I get for trusting another Necro with my memories.+
[Confirms it. Our memories are false.]
[No. Nothing confirmed until we devour their mind.]
[Don’t know if anything’s true. They could be wrong too. Walton isn’t honest. Maybe to protect us from other Low Masters.]
A ghoul could hope.
+Listen, do you mind dropping the Incog? I jacked into the block’s systems. You won’t be noticed, but I’d like a face to speak and not a blank spot my mind refuses to notice. Also, I want you to know that this is the nicest I have been in months. Usually, if I suspect someone’s running an Incog, I let a disruption rip. Better safe than nulled, eh consang?+
[Can’t trust him.]
[Walton told him we were coming. Not about trust. About more details.]
[Can’t show ourselves like this. Too distinct. They’ll get an image of us. Easy to track.]
+The grafter next door pulled a runner a few months back. Also, she moved apartments even before that. I stopped keeping fishes after the No-Dragons started using them to spy on people. Turns out they made a Heaven just for that.+
Avo clenched his fangs together. He might have some questions about Green River after this.
+The Wight’s the only thing I left. And it’s for you. I figured if I remembered it, you would too. Now, I don’t know how, uh, “alike” we’re gonna be, so I’ll tell you what. We can do this face-to-face if you want. Meat to meat. That might inspire some trust.+
The door behind Avo opened in perfect sync with the end of the man’s words. Avo spun around just as the doorway opened up.
Revealing nothing.
Avo blinked.
Then he felt it–a new pattern unlatching itself from the plascrete, striding free as if they were part of the matter themselves. The holocoated figure pointed out at them.
Avo fired his Celerostylus first.
He tried to liquefy them but a clash of eldritch resonance rang out between them.
[Godclad.]
His subminds drained away his startlement before it could settle and sharpened his instincts. Where his haemokinesis strained to spear through his foe’s presence, the Galeslither’s Hell enchained them in stasis.
But by then they began to vibrate, and his Rend emptied fast.
Tensing his consciousness, he prepared to burrow into a new mind, and from his stretched clawing flames that licked through the realm of cognition.
He was a breath away when the entire room erupted into a thought-rend tide of force.
He died instantly.
RESURRECTION - 1%
***
In one instant, the space in front of Reva was nothing but room, and then in the next, nine feet of a pale betentacled bioform collapsed like a marionette with its strings severed and died.
And over its corpse, a fiery metaphysical scab began to form.
She caught herself and staggered, feeling a strange lurch of resistance flow through her momentarily. Her cog-feed also showed her Shatterborn’s Rend as up by a few percent.
Something just paradoxed with her.
A lingering hiss rasped over her mind as she imbibed a passing memory of hunger denied.
Whatever that was, it felt feral and frustrated.
The Bloodthane blinked. +Raldi, what the hell just happened?+
+Ghosts got too close to your wards. Whoever our “consang” is, they must’ve triggered my proximity countermeasures.+
She suppressed a shiver of discomfort. Getting nulled twice in less than two days was too much even for her. +Thanks. When’d you put those in?+
+Just now. Easier when I’m piggybacking. It’s hard to hide from your Stormtree-sequenced crap–what are your Necros doing? I thought you guys work with Ori-Thaum.+
+Like they tell us anything,+ she sneered. Looking at the corpse, she shook her head and sighed. “Fuck me, that’s a big one.”
Hard to imagine it had been right in front of her this entire time.
She traveled through the concrete to arrive in the room at the same time Raldi started talking. For a good while, the target remained hidden, and her patience frayed.
If there was one thing Reva Javvers hated, it was Incogs. Godsdamned Silvers were half-strands for making that.
Walking over to the unmoving creature, she looked down at its still form and the eight twitching carapaced limbs connected to its back. There was something bone-like about its appearance, but when she nudged it over and one of the plates shielding its face flopped open, she found herself wondering if it was some kind of heavily modified ghoul.
+What is that?+ Raldi whispered in her mind. +That looks like a ghoul… but… it was running an Incog… What killed it?+
“Never mind that,” she replied, her attention entirely fixated on the building plumes of fire prying from between the scar tissue of reality, “I got some shitter news.”
+I… oh, fuck… I see it. That’s a bigger problem…+
“Yeah,” Reva breathed. “I’m not the only ‘Clad in this room.”
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
Updated 7/26
Jeremy Russell
Get well soon, thanks for the chapter!
