Godclads

Chapter 6-15 Seize the Tempest (II)

Godclads enjoy an addiction to killing, do you know this? I say enjoy as we do not suffer. We do not even die, should we be worth any merit, blessed so with our Frames.

The price we pay for our violence is bestowed unto the lessers. Other Godclads who cannot face us. Rival guns. And collateral damage.

Always, always collateral damage.

A kill committed with a Heaven resonates within you differently than one naturally performed. There is a depth to the deaths you taste. You… sense what you’re doing to another’s body–their life–through the narrow gaze of your domains.

Little wonder most of my ilk grow so addicted. And little wonder why most Fallwalkers last less than a month before they lose their Frames to another.

Eventually, you will seek a higher path. Mountains will wish to summit greater mountains; stars to burn beyond their rivals; pleasures to be surpassed.

To kill a person with one Heaven is to taste a cessation of existence in but one flavor. To see the dimensions of a life stripped from the tapestry in totality, more is required.

And so, apotheosis must always grow, for there is nothing more addicting than the kill, and there is nothing more thirsty than a wanting Soul.

New Vultun Sunrise Interview with Ying Yang Wei, The Stormsparrow

Seize the Tempest (II)

Few things were worth more than surprise in a battle.

Conferred from the gaze-scouring radiance cleaving through the air from the dead Enforcer’s fusion burner, blindness was given sound by a droning chorus of warbled wails from a dozen lips.

Lacquered in a second skin of blood, the immensity of the burner’s heat pressed on him still despite being directed away from him. Its touch dipped deep, steaming the very fluids out from his outer shell. His discomfort was comparatively minor.

Not twenty feet away, a crackle snapped loud even in Avo’s time-quelled ears. Flesh hissed and cooked. Water boiled, stripping the moisture from sloughing flesh.

At his whims, the burner halted, the corpse unclenching its right fist as the last spills of coruscating bright died down to a fading orb.

The strain on his Celerostylus built. The burden now was placed entirely upon his nerves, his Heaven serving to enhance the frailties of his broader flesh. He could perhaps squeeze another five seconds from its use. Five seconds better left as a cushion in case of the unexpected.

Spurred by two windows of time–one belonging to his implant, the other the disorientation of the Scalpers–he sent his three puppets up the steps as he followed closely behind, masking himself with cover as the Conflux enforcer took point as the primary meat shield.

Trails of gauss fire ran diagonally in his sight as he reached the top, impact trajectories painted by his Phys-Sim. A rain of ravaged metal fell; two drones cored clean by still-traveling flechettes crossed his feed. Across a mental bridge, he felt faint sensations from a mind synced to his. Draus was ejecting her clip. Draus was reloading. Draus was firing again.

All done in the smallest fraction of a second.

Calamity had erupted outside the bar front. Some were fumbling back, clutching eyes made permanently blind by the spear of light. Many of the enforcers were only stunned, their optical implants adjusting to the sudden spike in brightness, their other senses compensating. The drones, automated and devoid as they were of human limitations, were the first to respond.

Three of the arrow-shaped drones split and held the stairs, moving to intercept Avo. The remaining five spread out and ascended as a squadron, triangulating Draus’ position from the impact vectors.

REND CAPACITY: 16%

Circuits of ghosts came alight across his Metamind in a sequence of stars. Each of his phantasmics flickered as all nonessential cognitive enhancements were briefly deactivated. His Ghostjack solidified then, injecting itself deep into the flesh of the greater Nether as its spire-top was tuned with new and ruinous thoughtcasts.

Secondhand Fatality primed itself first and delivered in a scythe of screaming ghosts, Avo swept his cognitive blade up at three approaching drones, their guns on the cusp of firing. At the vanguard, Avo’s Conflux puppet shuddered as a hail of hyper-accelerated kinetics hammered its armor.

Inside the exo-rig’s shell, the corpse’s sternum was dented as cartilage tore. Even a reasonably augmented enforcer would have been halted, bathed by these threads of force. But a piloted corpse was a different matter. Blood pushed. Flechettes struck. Between two hammers of ever-increasing acceleration, the flesh within the shell came apart.

As did the loci of the drones when Avo’s ghosts finally licked across them.

Functions shaped by a system of ghosts, the Secondhand Fatality impacted against wards in a mind-rattling splash of clashing phantasms. Two drones overloaded outright, their vents hissing flames as their governing sequences were rendered unmade by a glimpse of true death.

COG-CAP: 20%

The final drone, spared by its cohorts blunting the worst of the damage or just protected by better wards pressed on, its fire unceasing, barrel warping.

One of its shots found fortune. A needle swam through the exposed wound left in the Conflux enforcer’s armpit. Before Avo could respond, to harden the local flow of blood, the left arm of his corpse tore free, swaying on strands of gleaming sinew.

Displeased, Avo had his newer puppets take aim. Positioned on the flanks of the Conflux enforcer, he made one of his controlled Scalpers shoot the monochrome-rigged corpse in the back. The other of his Scalpers aimed a bit higher and let loose with their rifle.

Avo had hoped to mask his puppeteering under the guise of friendly fire.

Unfortunately, guns also had ghosts of their own, and this Scalper’s gun was made never to fire when pointed at an ally.

REND CAPACITY: 24%

Avo could feel the burn seeping out from his spine now. Ten seconds. Maybe less. Lacing his trauma into the gun, its locus cracked as ghosts smeared in the air, fragmenting into fracls as they shattered beneath the weight of ego-killing memories.

Again, his second Scalper squeezed. This time, it did fire. Blindly. Loudly. Sloppily. Coils whined and tungsten zipped free. With the trigger held, Avo let the gunfire run. His Conflux enforcer parted in armor and body both, viscera weeping like crimson yolk from a chrome shell. The drone fared no better, coming apart as its own organs of circuitry and fuel detonated.

The explosion washed over the crowd. Bodies tumbled. Drinks were cast from tables, shattering. Avo released hold over his Conflux enforcer. What remained of his first puppet spewed free from cracked metal in rivulets. With the heartbeats of the yet living calling to them, he pressed both his puppeted Scalpers forward in a sprint, sending them crashing into the crowd.

Then, he severed them too from the touch of his Heaven, instead stripping from them their blood, and thickening his haemokinetic armor. Beneath his holographic veil, blades of fluid crimson grew from his claws, and mono-thin tendrils inched free from his frame.

Few Scalpers had the sobriety or reflexes to react to his approach. The few who did bore pistols or implanted side arms. Most were too slow to track his coming and those that held the conditions for speed were lacking in stopping power.

But Avo was a creature that liked certitude, and his recent experience had taught him wariness toward blind assumption. He held the edge, but they were still responding. He needed to fix that.

His Ghostjack hummed as phantasmal stratocumulus arced through his mind. His cog-feed flickered as all but his ward and basic perception enhancers dimmed. From his mind loosed a roaring swirl of raging memories, Lucille’s echoing screams spearing out into the minds of the reacting Scalpers, instances of harm delivered within packages of forking lightning.

COG-CAP: 80%

Wards cracked. Thoughtstuff spilled. Trauma bit deep into the supple flesh of inner minds. Avo’s maddened ghosts feasted, and with it, the fullness of the beast’s yearning for violence was roused.

He fell on them like a tiger unleashed upon a pack of wolves. His claws and blades, impossibly sharp, never dulling, greeted skin, subdermals, meat, bone, and then air. His tendrils touched and slithered, detonating hearts and veins with explosive expansions of force. Lives passed upon the arcs of his falling instruments as blood capitulated to his will.

The hunger in his heart was paradoxical: the more he tried to slake it, the more it boiled with want. Reaching within, he found the beast churning with delight. A shudder spread through him then. A dawning realization; the desires of ghoulhood had been met by this bloodletting.

What was lacking came from a void that echoed deeper.

Below the turbulent waters of reality, a Soul swelled as flooding Essence stretched the borders of its resplendence. Veins of crackling embers glistened between the scales of the cycling serpent now, the thaumic loop growing stronger, perpetual motion strengthened by nourishment in the form of a massacre.

He wanted this. He yearned for this.

Beyond just the bloodthirst of the beast emerged a new dimension to his relationship with violence. It empowered him, and in turn, the power satisfied him, consecrated him, and protected him.

A mere week ago, any one of these Scalpers would have been a threat he only dared engage from ghosts and shadows. They would have left him broken physically, been too fast for his sight to follow, and too strong for his strength to contend.

Now, he made a feast of them by the batches. Heads and limbs tumbled loose. Bodies burst as if struck by explosive ammunition. By the time agony was spreading its fingers along the length of his spine, he found himself standing upon a dais of his own making. Ringed by gore and painted with blood, Avo unclenched his reflexes as time snapped back to baseline flow.

REND CAPACITY: 48%

THAUMIC CYCLER: 299 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [242]

Glinting fragments slid off Avo’s flowing protection. Across the stretch of the street, burning husks of drones greeted the ground in thudding impacts. Avo’s nerves vibrated with soreness, and his mind thrummed loud in the aftermath of euphoric butchery. Twenty-five lives. Twenty-five Scalpers made sacrifices for his Soul and to fan the flames of a new gutter war.

No drones sailed through the air. The only hint of life were in fleeing accretions and sprinting feet fleeing the scene. He stood alone, aglow in the light of an open bar. A few server drones lay in pieces as well. Business was unlikely to recover.

This had been easy. This had been a joy.

Climbing up the food chain truly held pleasures of ineffability.

+Avo, golems,+ Draus said, voice cutting the fog from his mind. +Twenty seconds. Snatch the Heavens. Cut the Rendsinks. Brick the rest.+

Urgency usurping thrill, a cold focus filled Avo’s mind as he returned to the task. To the resonance of his Soul the dormant Heavens were drawn. A single hand dangled from the open cockpit of one of the Sangeists. One of the Scalpers tried thinking. But a shame they were too slow. Caught between pleasure and preparedness, they chose the drink over the golem.

Drawn to the pull of his Soul first were the three Sangeists, their Heavens tumbling into his Soul with but a yank. The Galeslither resisted a moment longer by mass alone, lingering for a moment before it too succumbed to his pull. Blood flowed, masked by the pools leftover from the slaughter, and the shroud of Sangeists reflected upon the ichor. The wind inched into him moments after, needling past matter, through his orifices and pores.

Down into the fathomless depths of his subreality, new Heavens greeted old and domains mingled. A weight settled upon his Soul, and the metaphysics of his ontology grew heavy with untethered weight.

Yet, before he could move and bury his haemokinetic tendrils and tear the Rendsinks free from the drained golems, a voice rumbled from within, its words echoed from the blood in his veins before stretching out further into the greater spills beyond him.

“WHOLE… MAKE… ME… WHOLE…”

Inside his Soul, Avo felt his Sangeist speaking to him. A flash of something eldritch, something alien and long-passed flickered to life, if but for an instant.

He remembered his Heaven speaking to him before. Somewhere in Burner’s Way. It was louder now. More coherent.

Draus’ voice thundered through his mind. +Twelve seconds. Ask Kae about that shit later, we need to peel out!+

Ignoring the unease rising from within his bones, Avo shaped new appendages and drove them into the undersides of each golem. Kae had gone over details regarding the Rendsinks, and it took him little time to locate their positions on each respective golem after some research in the Nether.

It was housed in a compartment just behind the Sangeists. For the Galeslither, it operated with two sinks, and they lined the bottom. Avo wasted no time with surgery, instead opting for a more brutal approach. The golems sagged as he alchemized gulfs of matter into blood, slicing the Rendsinks free as pieces from the whole.

With a grunt, he pulled hard. Even with how fast he could pull, his blood was affixed to his strength. As such, he held little hope of lifting each cube, heavy as they were. Thankfully, he didn’t need to. Exerting his Heaven, he rendered the outer surfaces of each golem liquid.

REND CAPACITY: 83%...88%...94%

And following that, he silenced his Heaven and made to balance the scales with his Hell.

Plunging his entropic shroud through the ground below him, he scooped matter away in a flaying fog. Across from his position, several tons disintegrated at the touch of his Hell. Across his cog-feed, his Rend Capacity fell back down to three-fourths as he sliced the incline of a ramp into the ground.

DANGER: DAEMON MANIFESTATION POTENTIAL GROWING

Avo frowned. That was new. His Hell did mention the possibility of a daemon if he focused the powers of his Hell on one area alone.

+Negative two,+ Draus said. +Windows passed. Leave the sinks if they’ll slow you.+ In the corner of his vision, a new marker appeared. A line of text expanded across it, forming the words “exfil.” It strayed a good hundred feet down the street and a level below.

REND CAPACITY: 39%

Avo growled. He had this. He didn’t need to lift. All he needed to do was pull.

Guarding himself against the pain, he fired his Celerostylus again. His senses felt like they were on fire. His skull thundered as a headache spread from the stem. He didn’t need reflexes this time, but acceleration. Something to make up for his lacking strength.

Latching onto each severed compartment, he pulled. The ground sparked. Blood and bodies oiled the groaning path of his Rendsinks as he constructed lashes to pull and augmented legs to push. With each surge, his Rend filled and his nerves crackled with torment. But by the limits of his flesh, he drew his prizes over the slope and let them slide.

Smears of blood ran behind. They slide outward. Avo quelled his reflexes and barked a laugh. A laugh that turned into a choked gasp as their continuing momentum tore him from his feet.

REND CAPACITY: 49%

Tumbling out into the street, Avo groaned and tried to right himself. Faintly, he watched the exfil marker approaching. Overhead, the hovering form of a fifty feet long garbage barge passed over, its six propulsors left at minimum thrust, its underside opening as it descended.

+Brace for grav-pull,+ Draus said.

+Grav-pull?+

A sudden weightlessness snatched Avo from the ground as the insides of the garbage barge shone, grav-projectors coming alight. With the Rendsinks in tow, he floated for but a moment, and then fell back down, slamming against a cold metal surface with a grunt just as the doors closed.

+Got the sinks,+ he said. Faintly, he heard a legion of wailing engines approaching. They were growing by the second. +Company?+

+Yup,+ Draus said. +Later than I expected.+ The barge lifted hard, engines blasting in a loud scream. Gravity pulled hard on Avo again, his insides feeling as if they were being drawn through his back with a string. +I think we’re gonna have to work on your arithmetic there, Avo. Hangin’ round them Necros might’ve put you through fancy word-school but it clearly ain’t done shit for your math.+

He shook his head and chuffed. +When’d you get this aero?+

+Yesterday,+ Draus said. +Had it followin’ us around. About five hundred feet distance increments.+

+Really like using garbage trucks, don’t you?+

+Well, it’s the right tool for the job, ain’t it? What else are you supposed to use to pick up trash?+

Avo’s felt an involuntary growl coming on. The beast coiled, incensed. With a thought, he reactivated his Morality Injector. The coming rage shattered against a flood of counter-memories. Across the session, he could feel Draus smiling.

+Feelin’ sensitive?+

+Just drive.+

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