Chapter 7-8 Feed the Beast (I)

Chapter 7-8 Feed the Beast (I)

We are made whole by the mother, gifted steel by the mother, blessed with victory by the mother

Of us, she asks nothing of feeble prayer like the air-sick lowlanders. She asks of no gold or song or temples.

All she asks is the way of things. The true way. The natural way.

The blood must flow. Lives must cycle. The huntress dies. The hunt remains.

Praise be Saathwu! Praise be the mother of blood!

-[Redacted], In Praise of Saathwu, the Red Mother

7-8

Feed the Beast (I)

A moment passed. A wavering quiver ran through the metaphysical matter comprising Kaes dais. Avo was was that you?

The naked worry of her thoughts sang through the Sangeist within Avo, and he felt its pleasure at inflicting such a response.

It was as if the emotion was twinned to his being. Within him. But within another as well. A new dichotomy arose within him; a subtle bifurcation spreading across the stretch of his ontology as another being awoke within him, a being within a being, like a doll containing another doll, yet with both dolls still bound to his control.

The connection came awake as the Sangeist did, a flood of thoughts and feelings that emanated out into Avo. In a sense, it reminded him of how a medical implant might inject necessary chemicals into the larger body architecture.

No. I spoke. I thought. I woke. Not the master.

The words sang free from oceans of shivering blood. Soulfire licked and carved new grooves into existence.

The Sangeist, smaller once, but never feeble, took on new ridges as vascular valleys rose through its slats, endowing its once flat surfaces with cords of muscle akin to those within Avo. A length of thickening support emerged from behind like the tower was molting an exoskeletal spine into position. A second dawn ignited above, the patterns of the alchemy expanding just as the wolf-like jaws were caged by a lattice of crimson.

As the evolution flowed to a finish, a note of keening joy rose from the Heaven itself, the notes of its mind loud and primal, a war cry from an age lost and bygone.

Whole. WHOLE! Silence fell. Avo felt a tug on his will, the act more request than struggle. The Sangeist wanted arms. Hands. Something to feel itself with. Something to touch. Thoughtless, he acquiesced, and from his surrendered control came two arms.

They were thick and roped with muscle. In a manner of build and shape, they resembled Rantulas arms, more than any others. The haemokinetic constructs displayed little in the way of augmentations. None that could be discerned, anyhow.

Like someone feeling their face after a blow or a smear, the Sangeist began to map its new body.

I am not how I remember. This is no longer me.

Distracted, Avo barely noticed Kaes quiet retreat away from his Heaven. She said nothing to make armor from distance and silence. Still, she was within him, and he felt the deafening shock reverberating within her, stretched across her gawking face.

Sangeist, Avo said, his voice coming from the Heaven as well. It belonged to him before it belonged to itself. This new development twisted at him. Did this make him an involuntary sovereign, now? Was this being more subject or slave in nature? Talk. What are you.

At his words, the blood around him bristled. The Sangeists reflexive ire had bled over into him. He reacted. He. Not it. But with the state of his ego, there existed a difficulty in compelling himself to maintain control.

SANGEIST? I WAS NEVER ANY SANGEIST. OF MY NAMES, I HAVE BEEN CALLED They called me Saathwu, the Giver. Seethwuld, the Bloodforge. Seethran, the Devourer. All these names, I am no longer. Here, within you, I am but an echo; the lesser to your greater divinity. A forgery, at worst. A copy, at best. Through blood, matter and Essence, you have roused me. Reforged me. And nourished from your flame, I am given presence anew.

You are a god?

To his question, she wailed with laughter, the pitch deep and mocking.

Once perhaps, but no longer. For what is a god that burns using the flame of another? A serf? A divine serf? Free to till the lands of its domain at the behest of a benefactor?

Another laugh. No sadness greeted Avo. No strain to break free. No horror or dismay. It did not feel as person did. Instead, it remembered. Channeled distant recollections of mixed emotions. Avo had done enough dives that he could taste the humanity with them, but he felt the strangeness of their joining.

It was as if the Sangeist had the lingering remnants of ghosts long forgotten, meshed together without care nor concern.

No. You are the only god here. If that is how you regard yourself. I am merely a shadow. A voice. An expression of purer design.

What expression?

The Sangeists arms opened, palms upward as if releasing the chains of a long-held truth. A desire we both share! To bleed the tapestry empty! To make proper shape of the ichor that flows!

Gazing at the tower, a living portrait of the past formed along its slats like shadow theatre, the shapes of a world made from animated blood. Heed, the final dreams of priors, master. Heed, and know that what is joined may be broken, and what is broken can be reforged.

Surging memories boiled into existence through Avos mind. Flashing histories and ancient vistas burned into his senses as he sank into a living dream, more vivid and material than any vicarity.

A small tribe of ten fled down a gleaming valley of glass. Tumbling storms sang a discordant song, the siren tones accompanied by lightning strumming on the currents. Flashing brightness cast distant shadows of slavering predators in pursuit.

Deeper into the valley, the tribe fled. Away from the darkness. Toward the flicker of a lonesome light.

No. Not a valley. A fallen voidship. A colossal husk that dwarfed mountains and shadowed hills. Impossibly, something had split the colossus in twain, the cut a clean wound.

They ran toward a light then, arriving before a dormant flame.

This was not the beginning, but that which came before is lost to me; my last wholeness shed without anything to linger. Yet, I do remember this. Of my first resurrection, restored form by my faithful. My huntresses. My red daughters.

For the first time, he sensed confusion from the Sangeist. What beast, master. There is only you.

The haste of his reply nearly overtook his mind, but before thought could be unleashed into the subreality, words of the Sangeist struck.

There was only him.

Only him.

Walton was dead.

The node had shattered their code. Taken his choice from him.

And removed the last shackles binding him to past virtue.

He had worshipped his father. Tried to live up to the mans ideals long after his passing. But to the words of his fathers shadow, Walton was dead.

Walton was dead.

And there were still other echoes of him in the city. Fighting a war Avo didnt understand, building new cages and funnels to herd him for their use.

Choose. Choiceless. Fateless.

Did he ever have a choice? Was he always meant to be used and wielded? Was he fated to be an instrument to an eternal group of masters, if not of immortal flesh, then of a rhyming mind?

No.

Walton was dead.

But Avo remained. And now, he was a Godclad.

A Godclad free to sustain himself on whatever diet of worship he so desired, and slake himself on whatever hunger that dared torment him.

Yes, the Sangeist said. Yes. That is your nature now. That way, and not some other way.

Avo Kae asked, daunted by his long silence. She was trying to get him to notice something.

RESURRECTION - 98%

REASSEMBLING HEAVEN

MODIFYING [SANGEIST]

THAUMIC OUTPUT RATING - SPHERE III

GRAFTING HEAVEN - 100%

REVIEWED - MYTHOLOGY STABLE

Giving you a new name, Avo said. Giving us a new name.

The Sangeist listened, eagerly awaiting redesignation.

HEAVEN - [WOUNDSHAPER]

DOMAIN: (BLOOD/MATTER)

THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 265 THAUM/c

Ah. How fitting

A thing it had to say, so leashed to his will.

Choice was a beautiful thing. Choice was a sweet thing.

And choice was going to see many, many of two particular Syndicates be made offerings to Avo. Offerings to himself, now the only god he had left to worship.

RESURRECTION - 100%

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 299 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [242]

LOADING PHANTASMICS