Chapter 2-15 Apotheosis

Chapter 2-15 Apotheosis

Do you know why the Guilds banned the old scriptures? Redacted the canons of the old pantheons? To stop us from building our own Heavens, consangs. Theyre trying to keep us in the gutters.

This was not the dream.

We were promised more than these gutters. When Jaus joined the Eight and crowned this city with his Arks, he had a vision. A vision of existence shaped by a new order. An order where divinity was made to serve the people, not hoarded by the elites.

This was not the dream.

We are the people. And we are starving. I say I had enough. Id say we had enough. Its time to take back what theyve been stealing from us, what theyve been using our lives and labor to fuel.

This was not the dream.

They drink our lives. They fuel their machines! They think they can take the future from us and that well just watch? Fuck them! Fuck that! Lets build our own god. A new god. A true god. Lets take it to these half-strands one final goddamn time.

This is the dream. This is the new promise. This is our holy war. This is the Last Apocalypse.

-Cas eldCanduir, Rockstar, Cult Leader, Terrorist

2-15

Apotheosis

RESURRECTION - 10%

GRAFTING HEAVEN - 44%

REQUIRED THAUMS - [20 thaums/c]

REVIEWING MYTHOLOGY FOR PARADOXES.

WARNING: INSUFFICIENT THAUMIC MASS

[HELL: FIRST CIRCLE]The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñøv€l-B1n.

SIMULATING LIMINAL FRAME

No memory carried Avo out from the jaws of death this time. No lull in time was felt between the moment of his death and his consciousness transition to this nigh-infinite expanse of nothingness.

Around him burned an inverse flame, brightness funneling into his being, drawn to him like a star spilling into a singularity. It was like no flame he had ever beheld, for it burned with a pellucid shine. No heat poured from its presence. Instead, the flames ebbed outward in shimmering waves, each pulsing emanation simulating a hue of radiance, stretching as if establishing the borders of all existence.

Avo tried to move. No limb answered him. The absence of limbs or even flesh struck feedback from his mind. Somewhere between isolation and tranquility, he languished. He did not know if ghouls were beholden to the frailties of the human mind. He was molded to be psychotic by design, in knowing this, he wondered how much more deranged he could ever even truly get.

Perhaps this was hell. A place of perpetual torment that he was predestined for. But if that were to be true, then why was he bereft of hunger here? Why did the streams of his thought flow free? Unimpeded?

Yet, as he cast his perception downward, he found an actual Hell greeting him. A single concentric ring that ran as far as his fire could shine. Two blurred sigils took up opposite positions from each other as they spun slowly. He knew those sigilshad seen concentric chasms with this very same symbology built beneath techno-thaumic reactors.

They were meant to expel the wastage of miracles. He guessed that what he found serving near-nonexistent bedrock beneath him was shaped for the very same purpose.

Within the Hells gaping depths, a spiral of darkness swirled, draining down nigh-endlessly to an end Avo found himself unwilling to fathom. The Hell was a strange, flickering construct. Ethereal. As if it was missing something, something to fully anchor it before it could materialize. A counterweight of sorts.

Staring into it began to disquiet his mind. Avo felt a surge of emotionless dread. Only his consciousness was struggling. Straining.

He forced it to still.

Long-buried words from Walton returned to him. A lesson: the first lesson. Accept to adapt. Lies can be unraveled once you subsume them and assimilate the facts. Reality, however harsh, could be survived as long as one did not cleave themselves between the pulling tides of want and necessity.

Pouring all anxiety, all distractions from his mind, Avo thought not of his most recent murder. He ignored the ineffable ache he felt at being used by Little Vicious to infect the flesh of the boy. He also accepted that the primary thing he felt as the boy wailed in pain was hunger, however much the situation befouled the palette of his ethics.

Instead, he faced this small cage of brightness around him and realized he could feel all that existed around him. Suddenly, the metaphor of this place being a cage was wrong. This placethis plane of existencewas him. Or perhaps was simply laced to his consciousness that he could feel the mechanisms of this reality.

If his mind dreamed at the center of this machine, then the flames were akin to his nerves and memory both. As far as they could ripple, he tasted the emptiness around him. A moment passed. The brightness of his fire spilled out again, disturbing the tapestry of nonexistence.

As the ripple spun from him, he felt an eldritch serpent molded from gleaming mercury circling him just beyond the flames. Within it, he heard the echoing minds of those he had killed, drawn into his being. They were whispering to him. Praying to him. Worshipping him.

With each cycle, they would dissolve beneath the boiling incandescence of the flame. Yet, they would manifest anew when arriving where the serpent ate its own tail, returning as sure as the passing of seasons.

Eighty-tons.

Just like the golem.

Beneath the tower, he felt the spinning chasm of Hell he sensed earlier pulse momentarily and sputter. Disappointment filled above. The entropic chasm was spinning counter to the serpent bound to his Heaven now, but it wasnt solid enough to manifest.

He lacked the thaumic massmore sacrifices were needed for it to be grafted unto him.

All these sensations greeted him at once. He felt like a newborn festooned within the body of a giant. His quintessence flowed through every sinew, across every plate he could have, his fire forging trueness into the shape of his new frame.

So overwhelmed by all that was unfolding before him that he didnt feel a rogue shard of memory snap free from the center of his awareness. What was that? How long had that been there?

Like a dagger, it plunged into the blood that formed his body, sinking deep before the shape of a man rose, breathing through the surface like a seed bearing the fruit of a ghost.

Overwhelming, isnt it, A familiar voice greeted Avo even before the figure fully emerged from the hardened slats of crimson. Before Avos awareness was Walton, standing upon a turbulent sea of blood, he himself a facsimile of thaumaturgy and blood.

For a moment, Avo just watched on in confusion and disbelief. Walton was dead. He had died five years ago when all the cojoined Heavens of Love and Lust fell and wombrash consumed the city.

Still, here the man was, standing before him. Same face. Same coat. Same smell of citrus.

How did that smell linger, even here?

RESURRECTION - 85%

Walton? Avo asked. His mind rumbled like the voice of thunder here. His blood vibrated and shaped into letters in Standard. His control here was absolute. All-encompassing. Total.

Walton didnt seem to notice.

Avo, if youre seeing me now, that means youre dead. Like me. Good news is you wont be dead for long. Better news is that you probably managed to get your first Heaven.Would be hard to simulate this memory I planted inside without a domain or two, Id say. The man shrugged sheepishly, the muted expression the closest he ever had to shame.

I know it's a lot to...hehtake in, but I will be as Ive always been with you, and tell you the truth: this is the beginning. This is as simple as things get. Youre now a Godclad of the First Sphere. The mundane will quail before you. The ones with power will want to feed from you. Andyou might just lose yourself in all this.

Avo didnt understand. As was often the case when he spoke to Walton. Experience told him to wait. The memory of Walton played on. His father was always a mystery, but never obtuse. He always told Avo the objective. When something was withheld, it was for the sake of discipline or education.

This time would be no different.

You might be trying to talk with me right now. Might not be. I dont know the state youre in, but I have faith that you are still unbroken. Still whole. Walton gave a soft smile. Your nature has given you a fortitude that most would envy. And, rightfully, I think my teachings have instilled in you the ethics needed for you to succeed.

If Avo could whimper, he wouldve. Succeeding was not among the things he had been doing recently.

Walton rubbed his jaw and looked down. He was thinking of what next to say. There are some things you dont know about me. Some things that even I dont know about me. But thats not what matters right now. Right now, you need to know that this city, the ones who cant choose, need you.

Why? Why father?

Right now, you need to go to the Easy Armistice at Lights End. Depending on where you are right now, youll need to descend the Tier and go down to the Warrens. His father pursed his lips and sighed. I know that yourplace of origin troubles you. But remember what I taught you. You are what you do. You are the choices you make. And you dont need to be the same person tomorrow as you were yesterday.

Once you get to the Easy Armistice, talk to Fredritch Three-Eye and tell him that you're with the Ninth Column, and that the dream is broken. Hell give you an engram containinganother itinerant of me. Ihell tell you morebut with this being said, theres no going back now. Walton shrugged his shoulders, the act almost mournful. I didnt want this for you. Wanted you to have a life. At least for a while.

A million more questions swirled in Avos mind like a whirlwind. Ninth Column? Easy Armistice? Another iterant? He didnt even know how he got cast down into the Maw? Was this Liminal Frame what allowed him to possess a Heaven? To come back from death? And how did Walton even know about any of this?

Just how dead was his father

Avos mind screamed all those questions in unison at Walton. Around him, the red waves swept up in a grim reflection of the cataclysm brewing within. But Walton just stood, unbothered by the crashing waves of turbulence, and smiled as if there was nothing wrong.

Avo. I might be gone. But the best of me still echoes in through you. I know you dont feel it cant feel it, but Im proud of you. Always have been proud of you. I chose you for this not as a punishment, but because I want you to be more. To see all the colors existence has to offer. And maybe change its course. Youre going to have to make some choices soon. Few of them easy. None of them are enviable. But you need to climb the Tiers. You need to ascend the Arks. You need to reach the Ladder and stop the Guilds. This utopiathis purgatory that theyve madeit has to stop. Before they tear existence asunder, it has to stop.

RESURRECTION - 99%

The inverted fire fused over Avos consciousness now, squeezing him down into himself as Walton began to dissolve.

Waitwait!

This was not the dream, Walton said, an expression like steel even as came he apart. I wish I could've seen--"

RESURRECTION - 100%

IMPLANTING NOUS

Avo felt his consciousness fold over the veil of his Heaven, surging forward into the light of existence, back to the place of his murder.