Chapter 4-11 Galebreaker

Chapter 4-11 Galebreaker

Why Godclads instead of Golems? The fact you phrased the question that way tells me youre looking at this wrong.

The question is why should we attach a Soul to one person via a Liminal Frame rather than mass-producing a bunch of cheap Heavens juiced up with thaums and a pocket for a pre-dump of Rend?

Tempo.

Intensity.

Sustainability.

Anyone can pilot a golem with training, but a Liminal Frame is special. Its burned into the ontology of an individual in a process thats half thaumaturgical genius, half ritual suicide. A good golem can fight for three hours at high intensity without requiring a Rend-dump followed by a thaumic refuel.

A Godclad can keep fighting. Theoretically forever.

Yes, there is the issue of their thaumic cyclers effectively causing them to over-produce Rend and need to vent at nearly ten times the ratio compared to a golem with an equivalent Heaven, but the fact that they have active Hells within them instead of needing to store that waste in a physical Hellsink is the difference between pushing your enemies back or needing to abandon your golem because theyre just too full of reality-tearing waste heat to fire up without godsdamned Rupturing.

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

4-11

Galebreaker

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 31%

Avo despised the Galeslither.

Even coated by the waterfalling flames of his Soul, the rancor that seethed within him stung hotter, the feeling more akin to the heat of an infection rather than the warmth of a flame.

It was two and nothing now. Twice the golem had killed him. Twice it left him less than a smear. Without his ability to resurrect and the sheer blind chance he didnt cast his shroud out in the wrong direction, his death would have been permanent.

Learning to be a Godclad was a lot like training to be a Necrojack in a way; Avo might have had the tools, but lacking the mastery and a proper plan, all the Heavens, Hells, and phantasmics were wasted on him.

Quelling his impotent rage as best he could, he reverted to his best practices when faced with an impasse.

He accepted the situation, as Walton always did, and began working at the problem from there.

He had ruined a Sangeist with each deatha pity that he didnt manage to paint his remains over the newest golem he killed. Didnt know why it's Heaven was misfiring by the end either. He was like a blind ghoul manually piloting an aerovec when it came to metaphysics. Guesses and hopes were all he had.

There was a saying in New Vultun: If you were going to hope in one hand, you best have a gun in the other.

His raw power was unreliable against the Galeslither with its miracles far out-angling his. He needed to stick to the fundamentals. Build a overarching plan of attack, like he did with his dives. Letting his rage simmer in the background of his thoughts, he broke the situation down and approached it with as much candor as he could muster.

Against him were the following obstacles: the Galeslither could fly; the Galeslither could tear him out from reality and throw him into its demiplane; the Galeslither could engage him at leisure; the lingering effects of the thoughtwave bomb removed his offensive phantasmics from play in the near-term; the surviving enforcer and their fusion burner were still in the equation.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 31%

To his advantage, he was dealing with a far more even field now. There was a single enforcer left. The pilot of the other Sangeist might still be alive. He didnt remember drinking in her Essence. What he did remember before he splattered, however, was the shape of a dog and two people in the room.

So, he had a Woundhound to avoid if that was true. Thankfully, he knew how to deal with that problem. Kill the host. He willed that the pilot didnt know how to transfer hound ownership as Draus did.

If such was the case, it only left him, the pilot, the hound, the enforcer, and the Galeslither in play.

Avos thoughts halted to a screech.

The enforcer.

Avo had puppeteered one of them to kill the final Sangeist a mere minute ago, their fusion burner working through blood and alchemized matter to slag the command module. Yet, more than that, enforcers rippled with thoughtstuffgave off signatures in the Nether, at least when it wasnt all distorted by a thoughtwave detonation.

A most enticing flicker of an idea crackled ablaze like the fires that formed Avos metaphysical sinews. The Sangeist he was nested in shuddered with pleasure, blood rippling as the roots of a plan began taking hold.

The plants around him were burning. A consequence of biomatter getting kissed by hyper-heated air generated from multiple fusion burners firing as one. Forty feet away, cupped upon a small dais created by constant clotting pustules ballooning in an inverted U from the broken husk of the second Sangeists chassis.

Something burned wrong with its Heaven. Avo could feel it. Whatever urge he once had to shape from its blood or claim its radiance to enhance himself fled in an instant. Right now, the thought of taking from it was like supping from a bowl of contagious tumors.

The enforcer staggered then, but too late. Their fusion burner came up in an arc just as two haemokinetically projected spears punched through their shoulders.The enforcer howled, their struggle was all but vain as Avos control expanded through his bloodstream, holding the Scalper like a flesh-mitt.

Avo released his symbiote. The fires around him suddenly cried in unison, their crackles unheard during the dilation. Behind, the pilot finally collapsed.

With a flex of his claws, Avo tore every ligament and connective sinew in the Scalper's limbs. To their credit, they only choked out a muffled shout, shuddering as the pain consumed them.

Through the gap in the ceiling, a vortex poured in. Debris danced in spirals, the synchronized motion an augury for the coming of the Galeslither.

Perfect timing. Told him the duration of his resurrections ran longer within the confines of his Soul than in reality. Avo checked his Rend.

REND CAPACITY - 12%

Almost nothing. Good. Hide. Wait.

Jaus, the Scalper coughed, voice wet from internal bleeding leaking into their lungs. As Avo stepped past them, they twitched, surprise somehow shining through despite their crippled state and body language. GhoulGodclad? Ghoulclad? A delirious giggle rang from their rigs voice modulator. Avo heard pain. He also heard genuine incredulity. What the fuck.

Profanity aside, Avo was inclined to agree. The Soul burning within him made him feel powerful beyond measurehad given him access to prey he previously couldnt even dream of consuming.

It also wasnt meant for something like him.

Draining and converting the debris around him, Avo funneled the glowing mass of his blood to form the shape of a Sangeist around the enforcer.

Wait, they cried, what the fu

Avo encased them utterly and released his hold over the Scalpers right arm, where the fusion burner was installed. Immediately, the sonorous thrum rang within the flowing crimson of the decoy Sangeist. Already, Avo was feeling his blood evaporating, fleeing from his control. Before he could accidentally trigger a backlash by clinging or trying to shape gashowever his hubris workedhe inflicted his decoy with Linger and watched as a pinprick of brightness began to bloom.

REND CAPACITY - 55%

The column of neon-bright radiance Avo stood under just moments prior faded, a coiling vortex surging low, the winds washing in with a neighing scream. A throb of discomfort clicked through Avos ears as he dove for the glass-coated tunnel he and the enforcers had a hand in making earlier.

As he dropped down and peeked over the edge, he watched as rivulets of blood were melting from his decoy, its insides bright like a lantern. Not noticing or simply too late to stop, he watched the Galeslither wash over the three-ton Sangeist bearing a special package of entombed-enforcer.

From sight did the currents slip into faint nothings, the Galeslither peeling the brightness of his decoy out from tangible existence with itself. The clashing winds wafted loose and spun inversely out through the long series of punctures Avo made during his fall earlier.

Sweeping out his shroud, Avo carved a final chasm into the hydroponics chamber and vented his Rend. As soon as his capacity was empty, he immediately began spiking it again, forming hound-like jaws from his body to snap through the bulk of an ash-claimed tree. In moments, Avo reached the mass needed to produce his grapple.

Triggering his Celerostylus againmomentarily this timeAvo launched a javelin of blood into the ceiling and felt it punch deep. He expanded gripping roots from its point of impact before using the link to reel himself up.

REND CAPACITY - 23%... 31%...

As soon as he reached the lip, Avo clasped himself in skittering insectoid-like legs, pushing and bounding upward as he smashed through the already wind-frayed edges of the exit wounds leading up and out of the block. Light spilled down from above in dappled undulations of shadow.

And as Avo finished his ascent, he understood why.

Smoke was flowing free from multiple currents of air, leaking up into existence as blood would trickle from a cut. Within the wind, a chorus of explosions thundered, and the draughts laced with smoke began to concentrate, began to fissure, and began to rejoin.

And from where once was just open air and clear skies, a burning steed tore screaming back into existence. One of its heads was shorn clean off, and between flickers, saw that a segment of its command module had been utterly cored by what looked to be a concentrated beam of heat.

Here then, was his hope. And there, burned through the body of a much-loathed foe, was the sign that his aforementioned gun had gone off.

Like a meteor, it trailed, speed and impact zone lined in Avos cog-feed via his Phys-Sim. He clacked his fangs, the beast hungering for the flesh of the pilot, his Soul yearning to consume a new Heaven.

Through a distant series of squat blocks, the whinnying husk of the Galeslither met aged plascrete in a thunderous clash, smoke and rubble erupting high into the air.

Clambering down the block, Avo rode out with steed-shaped legs of his own, galloping to claim a new Heaven.