Chapter 7-10 Feed the Beast (III)

Chapter 7-10 Feed the Beast (III)

Hes killing my soldiers. Taking my Heavens. Hes hitting me in my home.

Why? Why now?

What do you have to gain, Guildling?

Whats this play youre making, Jhred?

It cant be insanity. Madness. I would understand you otherwise. The chaos, the compulsion Its not you.

Ive seen behind your walls. Seen how you order your outfit and have them dancing to your ever order. A little slave driver hiding from daddy; a real sloppy control freak.

But maybe thats it. Maybe youre that one flavor of broken that only comes from the Tiers. A juv with too much of everything, and not enough sense to get your head straight.

Look at you. Look at the state of your home. Your soldiers. Its pathetic. Its FUCKING PATHETIC.

Im sorry. Was I yelling? It comes over me somethings. Its like a leak

Ah. Right. Im not actually talking to you yet. Its just me. Just me.

Heh. This fucking kids about to learn. Yeah. We gotta teach him. Hes gotta learn the way of things.

And I think Highflame might want that Frame you took from them back.

-Mem-Log of Vincentine Ripperjack Javvers, Head of the Scalpers Syndicate

7-10

Feed the Beast (III)

Avo tumbled into the embrace of death with a newfound momentum, mem-data curving around his consciousness as he wasted no time, diving inward to access the root of his Soul. Sinking in, he cast a command and then parted, lingering for but a passing moment before remerging.

An internal separation followed. He ejected his Soul free of his Woundshaper, clinging stands of blood reaching for his departing light as if a joyfiend groping for another.

Tired of me already are you, master? The Woundshaper asked.

Can you fly?



Perhaps if fed the proper patterns and given means of propulsion

So. Not now.



The old god was silent, sullen at the lack in its abilities. From its structure wafted a note of disdain, with the fullness of its ire cast at the Galeslither. Can the pony match my current might? My capabilities to build? No, master. You will see it is little more than a messenger. A rank courier amongst true divinity. What worth is it to merely serve as beast of burden. The Woundshaper snorted. Imagine yourself worshipped as a mule might. That makes you no god, but cattle. An ass with a memorable name. Absurd.

Can imagine being made by humanity, Avo said, too focused on his transition to argue with his Heaven of Blood. Cant imagine having all that power and getting broken though. Bad look. Embarrassing.



The Woundshaper fused folded arms around itselfthe petulance behind its verbosity making it seem more childish than primordial. Perhaps, that too was something human-influenced. The need for its ego to be sated, to be wanted at all times.

You will see in time what I have to offer, it said. You will learn of the might we possess, and of the knowings I can share. The experience which you lack, I might yet bridge.

Avo speared the flames of his Soul into the silent Galeslither. The lightning-plated ribs of the horses expanded into an open rift, allowing him easy entry. Clapsed by the Heaven, he found himself in a place of calm while the walls around him rippled with discord, consumed by twisting winds. Solidity was strangely missing here, with gusts and vortexes enwreathing his fire with a protective shell of stratocumulus veined with forking bolts of lightning.

Lashing needles of electricity injected themselves into him, prickling a dull sensation of static in his being, the feeling like he was neurally lacing with an exo-rig again.

The sigils representing the domains appeared then, one in the shape of a nine-lined deltawith three stripes on each side of the triangleand the other in the curved shape of a cup with a spherical component crowning it.

HEAVEN GRAFTED - [GALESLITHER]

DOMAIN: (AIR/SPACE)

THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 55 THAUM/c

How does it feel to be mantled to nothing, master? The Woundshaper taunted more than it asked. Speak and let your learnings be shared. Let us both be joined by education so that we both might build on potential deficiencies in our structure.

There was a lightness to his being, but an impossible strength as well. Air, in reality, was chained by gravity, chained by molecules and mass. But the powers of a Heaven were closer to active analogies from lore than distortions of science.

Feels like I can probably fly. Such was his eventual response.

RESURRECTION - 95%...100%

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

DOMAIN RESPAWN ENGAGED

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 299 THAUM/c

Ghosts: [242]

LOADING PHANTASMICS

The time of his rebirth arrived mere moments after his fall. Through a growing pellucidity, existence quivered as the fact of his death was unbirthed from history. Yet, this time, he did not spawn back in, or within, his own body.

Instead, he rose into existence from the funnel of air left in the skull of his former corpse. Crawling free from the mangled strings of gore that swayed with leaking trails spewing from his hollowed head, Avo climbed onward, pulling himself free as if the air was a fabric he could tug on.

His egress came paired with song. With a flex of effort, the air shrieked. Thunder tumbled forth from around him as a chorus of neighs screamed out, the cry of the Galeslither resounding in a binary of realities.

His senses and form billowed wide like a rising torrent of wind, he rose high, the cocoon of his former corpse erupting as fluid sprayed and muscles tore. The sound of flesh coming apart rattled against his expanded being with satisfaction. It was like popping the lid on a soft drink, like folding the vertebrae of struggling prey.

Chunks of meat rained down just mere feet below, his descent to street level halted at the last moment by his manifestation.

He knew not long it took him to fall from before, only that his return had been accelerated to the utmost. The fact he managed to emerge from a falling corpse instead of the air mopping at a splattered puddle was testament enough to his Frames pace.

His cog-feed came online to a spill of errors. He realized that he wasnt so much seeing the world around him as he was feeling. Bound to the heart, three eldritch steeds stitched to a synchronous stride. He cast out his Whisper to scout ahead and add a layer of sight to his already expansive awareness.

A crackle of thoughtstuff leaked over into his mind. A session activated.

+How are the wings?+ Draus asked.

Turning his mind to his DeepNav, he found her two hundred feet ahead. His hastened return saw her lead blunted but not undone entirely.

That came with a single gallop of his winds. With but a single stretch, he zoomed, the Galesilther braying plumes of cascading wind as he trailed behind Draus rust-coated Zephyr.

+Handles like a dream,+ he replied.

REND CAPACITY: 1%

Twisting against the laws of momentum, Avo shifted movement vectors without the need for deceleration, his track formed from platonic lore of wind and air, lacking the limitations of actual physics.

The drones were scanning for missiles. Sudden attacks bearing mass and numbers.

Alone, he was little more than a distortion in the wind, and this deep in the Warrens, his coming bore little notice when there was all of the dark to watch for.

Using his Whisper as a guide, he slipped past the perimeter guard and found himself twice-incensed at the lack of Specters.

+Necros aint doin their jobs,+ Draus said. +Might be because they think theyre having this party in their basement. That theyll be able to scramble reinforcements real easy-like here.+

Hubris made victims of giants and cripples of gods. The Scalpers stood neither, and evidently, the attack they experienced in the Spine clearly didnt leave a deep enough mark.

Perhaps repetition was needed there. Few things stressed the importance of learning than repeatedly dying. Avo could attest to that. Just a shame none of the Scalpers could.

Arcing, he descended toward the bulbous dome of the theatre, a falling artillery shell of screaming wind.

REND CAPACITY: 13%

His Hell was filling gradually, but the pace was languorous compared to his Woundshaper.

And this is a fault of my making?

Slipping through cracked planes of painted glass, his Whisper saw faces and figures disfigured upon the artistry, cracks petition the wholeness of their likeness. Below, a truck-sized locus spun, its presence a gleam bright chasm splashed upon his cog-feed, with new Specters filtering in each and every second.

Four square-shaped drones with articulations meant for engineering filtered through the room. The audience seating had unbolted by way of a fusion burner, the ground still ashen with soot and heat. Their absence made space for the position of said locus, while supplemental machines spilled from its open-clawed base.

Three Necros worked the room, their minds more uniquely warded than the others. Beneath the stagepounded into a frozen tide of bent boards by an undetonated warhead still lodged through the woodtwenty drone-jocks lay slumbering. Neural needles ran plugged to the base of their skulls while minor locus above each of their stations hummed, doing their utmost to keep each operator in sync with a dozen or so machines.

Jocking was more management than it was piloting. Indeed, they represented the bulk of New Vultuns martial forces these days, with enforcers a necessary reserve to hold territory, bioforms for another angle of attack, and then golems in place of now obsoleted coldtech vehicle platforms.

--another ten-thousand casting in, one the Necros said. She stood a bit taller than her two compatriots. Gazing upon her legs, two very different implants greeted his mind. Her left was a fifty-year-old SSzwa Grasshopper-2, designed for running. Her right, meanwhile, was a Dynamitea non-Guild street-grafter special that mesh of heavily armored chitin implanted with eight thrusters usually found on micro-missiles.

Enforcers tended to like that leg. Avo didnt. Hed seen plenty of streams detailing what tended to happen to someones unaugmented pelvic region should the thrusters misfire at any point in the wrong direction.

The other twoher juniors, he guessedstood next to her. One had a set of three extra arms rigged to their spine while the other seemed almost entirely clean of chrome beside the eyes.

An eclectic bunch.

Good thing they were all worth the same to him dead.

Avo dove. The senior Necro kept talking. A flash of curiosity possessed him as he tangled himself. In seconds, the weight of his presence shivered the room with swirling wind as he accelerated to his maximum velocity.

What remained of him outside the dome of the roof plunged inward. Metal warped and tore. Glass shattered entirely.

Eyes turned and minds spiked with alarm as he fell. The senior Necro noticed himher hand blurred, the motion by instinct as she drew a large pistol and fired. The slugs skidded for the merest instant against Avos winds before he swallowed them, pulling them into the Yondergales as well.

And then, before anyone else could react, he enveloped the offending Necro in his grasp, and coiled himself, through skin, pore, orifice, and bone.

In a place between realities, the Galesilther carried the voice of its master, its neighs thundering with savage delight.

Her veins burst. Her skinenhanced with polysynthetic fibersshredded and tore. Bones swiveled, drilling through calcium. And for a final flourish, Avo released his grasp on the bottle and her bullets.

A rip opened between the currents. He listened as the shells flicked through her parting jaw, made wider yet by a suddenly emerging bottle. Screams flowed in from the outside, the other logisticians and Necros breaking before the unfathomable horror of facing an immaterial threat.

REND CAPACITY: 21%

THAUMIC CYCLER: 300 THAUM/c

SIPHONING GHOSTS [21]

Ghosts: [263]

DOWNLOADING PHANTASMIC SEQUENCES

DOWNLOADED

PHANTASMICS ACTIVE - [THOUGHTWAVE DISRUPTOR]; [BINARIST]

Ignoring the new phantasmics he just reaped, he shoved his full destructiveness through the passage of currents. The corpse of the Necro dematerialized as his steed emerged, coming apart as little more than mist and stray flecks of tissue.

A typhoon in a bottle, the Galeslither swirled into existence in a sudden cataclysm. Latching onto those yet living, he urged his Heaven to do a little prance along the room.

Bodies and machines were torn from the ground and pressed against the ceiling. He could feel their lungs straining as he sank his being down their throats. He found that he enjoyed the strain building within their chest as he forced screams back into the lungs from where they were pushed.

The resulting pops greeted him as a chorus of applause, a fitting final play as past came unmade upon gales of destruction. He stroked the walls with new paint, though his new victims passed from rupturing organs before they dissolved into smears.

He would have to find someone more durable to prolong his experimentation.

Just a pity so many Scalpers had fusion burners.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 322 THAUM/c

SIPHONING GHOSTS [35]

Ghosts: [298]

A list of new phantasmics flashed through his cog-feed and vanished upon rejection. Nothing new, and nothing he couldnt replicate.

The grinding sound of the locus base twisted into folded petals of metal pulled him from one reverie to another. He noticed that the locus was still functional and that spectating Specters were still coming through.

A memory spiked through his mindthe unpleasant delight of having voyeuristic parasites suckle amusement by using him as a vessel.

From such unpleasantness came inspiration, however, and a special concoction of cruelty was roused.

REND CAPACITY: 29%

The winds lifted into stilling tides. The steeds faded. From behind a cloud of dust and falling debris, Avo reformed himself into flesh to better gaze upon the dangling locus.

He and Draus had done much to harm the Scalpers. To provoke them.

So far, however, all that they have taken were replaceable. New golems could be smuggled, and new meat came cheap in this city.

Trust, however, was a thing less easy to reforge.

And the lives of those in the Tiers were infinitely more valued than the ones below.

Avo loaded Secondhand Death into his Ghostjack as he approached the physical shell of the Scalpers local lobby.

How many did the Necro say just arrived? Ten thousand? He would take a peek, and then decide to wait a moment longer.

Or to sever whatever length of the snake had dared dangle down from the tree immediately.

He had never nulled a few hundred thousand people at once before. He wondered if a few hundred shattering minds would feel any different to him than one.