Chapter 2-16 Welcome to New Vultun

Chapter 2-16 Welcome to New Vultun

Want to know what happens when two Heavens clash?

A paradox. Paradox forms. And if theres too much paradox, Rend backlash turns to thaumic overload, then someones Heaven falls and Ruptures reality.

If it's suicide you want, I got a dealer you can call. They got the stuff that will make your heart pop instead of killing everyone else.

-Captain Osjack Wells, Guest Lecturer at Axtraxis Academy of Highflame

2-16

Welcome to New Vultun

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

DOMAIN RESPAWN ENGAGED

PSYCHOLOGY BASELINES ESTABLISHED - REMOVING MEMORY STABILIZATION FEATURE

SOUL ONLINE

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 20 THAUM/c

LOADING PHANTASMIC

WARNING! TRAUMATIC OVERLOAD! NETHER UNSTABLE! NETHER UNSTABLE!

Existence stuttered. Reality screamed. As his senses crashed back into him in a muted rush, Avo felt a supernova bloom within him as he broke free from a puddle of blood, manifesting in reality. Around him, space itself quavered like a dimmed candle, his brightness usurping the natural laws and subverting them with the Heaven that was now grafted upon his being.

He knew what he was now. There was no way to deny it now. He had beheld this radiance nightly, gazing upon the blots of fused chimeric gods that dotted the naked flesh of the sky as they formed from ascending pillars of techno-thaumic energy.

He and those gods stood kindred in a way. But he was whole while they were merely puppets; a Godclad.

His Liminal Frame had exiled him from mortality now, returned him to life, and bound him to the deeper powers that dwelled with the metaphysical, the divine. This too must have been why his new Metamind sounded like him. Because the system had to be forked from his mind to prevent consciousness rejection.

With this known, a million more questions ignited inside him, but he cast all that aside as he found himself aware of the toppled cockpit, bobbling like a shell down a shallow pool. Inside, Avo felt the blood flowing inside Little Vicious, and could somehow see the rushing currents of red surging through her body as her heart screamed with fear.

Blind to all other desires, Avo strode past the father.

The man was soaked in red, weeping. In his arms, the boy spasmed and twitched, hemorrhaging from his orifices. His skin was sloughing off from his body as his muscles atrophied as sagged, his metabolism burning away to nothing. Impossibly, Avo also felt the haemophage eating away the childs organs, breaking down all his mass and drawing it up to his prefrontal cortex. Soon, only a misshapen hive of flesh. Perhaps just enough to produce one ghoul.

It was only a matter of time now.

A-Avo. Draus. Her voice came from behind him, hoarse with pain. He would speak with her later. Now, he had a debt of pain to squarean act of cruelty to inflict.

Perhaps it spoke much of how base he was in that moment, so deep in his vicious intent that his mind and the beast hummed the same bloodthirsty thoughts.

He could detect no ghosts around him. The spectators were still afar, mostly peeled back around the locus above them, holding its exterior in the Nether as if standing in defensive formations, not daring to approach.

The golem, on the other hand, spewed broken drifts of thoughtstuff before him. Something sparked and smelled of melted microplastics, a flame rising in a slot on its backside. Currents of chaotic memories and emotions washed over him, bifurcating against his wards, a stream cleaved by a yielding crop of rocks.

He had been torn in half earlier. He had felt it. Draus and the father had undoubtedly seen it. Witnessed it with their own eyes and minds. Yet, there was no sign of his body anywhere. In fact, if it werent for the infection of the boy, it was as if all the pain Little Vicious had inflicted on Avo had never been.

Striding across a carpet of gore, Avo felt the blood he was in tactile contact with gravitating to his will, surging like a tide to his footsteps in by desire alone. Though his knowledge of thaumaturgy was lacking, his instincts guided his new capabilities. His momentum became the bloods momentum. His strength became his blood's strength.

Reaching out into his domain of blood, felt his haptic senses widen, the pooled blood beneath his feet greeting his cognition like a newly implanted limb. Above the lights of the approaching level flickered, the platform wailing upward as its warped matter ground against the mechanical pillar. Below, in the reflection of the red, Avo beheld himself not in flesh, but as the burning avatar that was the Sangeist.

But then again, it was now as much a part of him as his thoughts were.

With a simple act of will, he shaped the blood beneath him. A new interface manifested through his cog-feed, feeding his mind with new reports. The structure of his Heaven greeted him, the cognitive menu dense with information and overwhelming to behold. Several menus were flashing red. He knew little of Rend or how it was supposed to affect him. All he knew was that it was bound to his Hell, and his Hell was currently nonexistent.

He needed more deaths before it could kick in.

From his shoulders, a thin helm of blood instinctively clasped over his face, coating the right and left of his head in armor shaped like a hounds jaws. Above his rippling Metamind, a new pattern burned, its structure spinning the properties of plasteel into the blood.

Perfect.

Avo shaped all the blood he could control, mapping the design after his own clawed hand. Connected to him by wisp-thin threads, he controlled his new haemokinetic constructa near ton of matter bearing the qualities of both blood and metal. Rearing it over the ejected cockpit of the golem, he brought it down.

And knocked.

The beast inside him wailed, unwilling to wait. But Avo didnt want it to be easy. He didnt want it to be just another killing.

No. The torture and pain she had inflicted on him aside, she had infected the boy using his blood. That was an act that fit his former masters. That was an act upon the choiceless. And for that, Avo thought he deserved to eat her eyes.

Vicious, Avo said, unable to contain the chuff of slavering excitement inside him. Open the door. He felt her blood rush through her body at twice the rate it did before. The knowledge pleased him, and like a joy-fiend building up to a buzz, an uncontrollable grin spread across his face.

Now he knew what it was like to be her. How intoxicating.

Staring at his prey, Avo gave a sigh as he heard the crunch of something pushing against the roof of the boys skull. The child was dead. Avo couldnt hear his heartbeat. Still, better this way than in some gutter. At least the last thing he knew was hope and joy. That would prove to be his last forever.

As he drew Little Vicious in close, he found her looking everywhere but him. He cupped her face into his hands and forced her to meet him, eye to eye. You had a choice. You chose. You chose to hurt. You deserve this.

No, she whimpered.

You deserve this, Avo said, uncertain who he was trying to convince. He wanted this. She should die. She killed the boy. But the torture. The cruelty. That wasnt for her. That was for him. Walton might have killed her. But not tortured her.

Avo wasnt Walton.

With a thought, all his threads folded, and her body did the same. The sounds he earned from her then were demonic, primal, pure. He left her spine and skull intact, but everything else began to shift and tear. She came apart and began pouring out from herself, his will sculpting her organs into inverted wings mocking her descent to oblivion. She mightve begged him at some point. He really didnt hear.

When he was finally done, her disfigured skull and spine hovered, a mangled totem that served as a centerpiece to the fused blocks of her organs. Her heart still pulsed as he forced blood through it. Her liver was still warm on the inside. One of her lungs popped. Sloppy on his part.

But he had delivered his loathing back to her. The feeling was wondrous.

Eyes empty, her thoughtstuff spurting as chaotically as the fathers, all her tangled cords were capable of producing now were whistles. Short shrieks of belonging more to a bird than a girl.

Placed his hands around her headso small that his fingers could wrap all the way around-he buried his fangs around her eyes and sucked.

In a sense, his hunger was the last thing she ever got to see.

Avo feasted. And for a moment, the world was perfect.

REND CAPACITY: 90%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

WARNING: NO HELL MANIFESTED

UNABLE TO VENT

ENGAGING SAFETY OVERRIDES

ADJUSTING TO ZERO BURN

Suddenly, felt his connection to Heaven break. A flash of incandescence pulsed through him as Little Vicious flopped free from where the pillar used to be, her organs pouring loose like offal. In his cog-feed warning icons were flashing through the menu of his Heaven. Several icons were burning at capacity. He didnt care. He was too busy chewing on her eyes. They were delicious.

After he finished, he heard another crack coming from behind. The boys body wasnt much of a body anymore either. His limbs had detached at some point, drained dry of all substance as a porous sac swelled from where his chest used to be. Something inside was swimming. Pushing. Traveling up the sack and nursing on the remaining brain matter within the skull. A ghoulling was about to hatch. Inside, Avo heard the tiny hisses of his offspring. Just the one.

The father was clinging to the boys hand, even as he whispered broken prayers. Artad this. Artad that. Artad was dead and so was the boy.

And Avo, even with all his newfound power, could never make that right again.

Avo ignored the man and walked over next to Draus. She was looking up at him, her wariness returning. Only when he matched gazes with her did he realize that she was probably thinking if he was going to kill her. Nest. About to hatch one.

Beaten. Maimed. Weary. She rolled onto her back over her scab-coated stumps and let out an exhausted breath. Yeah. I know.

Didnt want to infect him, Avo said. Going to deal with it.

She flicked her eyes over to him. You. You got a Liminal Frame. How?

He shrugged. Cant remember.

She scoffed a laugh. Jaus fuckin Avaundaer. Course you cant.

Another crack. A flap of the skull was lifting off. Distantly, Avo could hear the pounding of heavy footsteps approaching with a course of whining servos. Exo-rigs, it sounded like. Approaching from beyond the desiccated marble columns, standing like parapets before the partially collapsed walls.

Probably Syndicate hitters, Draus said. Come to collect us. Or finish us off.

Avo walked over to the boy. He didnt look at the childs face. He did his best to let there be no memory at all. With practiced ease, he brought his foot down on the boys skull, pulping it and the ghoulling festering inside. The crunches came with two echoes but only one ghost.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 22 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [35]

Ah. Right. One more of each from Little Vicious as well.

The father, past the point of breaking, just stared on as the blood pooled toward him. Avo dragged him away to avoid repeating the same act on him later. No sense in letting the man get infected too. As Avo returned, he looked down into the blood at his own neon-basked reflection.

He expected to see the Sangeist again. What he got was just a ghoul in a tattered undersuit, the holographic glow of a voidship rising over his skull like a crown.

He shook his head and chuckled mirthlessly.

The city was welcoming him back. The only way it knew how.

Missed you too, Avo said.