Chapter 9-16 Mindblitz

Chapter 9-16 Mindblitz

+Shard-2 is no longer responding. All indications are that she has been nulled. As of this moment, we go thought-silent. No communications outside our cell. Within the cell, do not contact the other shards. Direct your messages to me. I will relay all the necessary information.

All in-field operators: Burn your identities and blur your minds. Extraction is go. Assume your covers are blown. Assume that the leaks are coming from the inside. Trust no one. Proceed to take on secondary burner identities in the meantime. Re-establish contact via mind proxies.

All shards who do not report in on time will be considered burned. Good luck. Godspeed. Watch yourselves.

We are being hunted.+

-Mirror-Convex to Incubi Cell Peregrine

9-16

Mindblitz

Popular entertainment portrayed duels between Necros like a shooting affair. Ghosts bearing trauma loads crashed together in blasts of trauma. Wards rang like shields parrying falling blades. The duelists talked and taunted, their thoughtstuff alive as the waters of their ego struggled and strained, two oceans seeking to wrestle the other into placidity and compliance.

Reality was considerably uglier, and battles were fought in chaos-fraught desperation or slow, methodical intimacy.

Here was not a battle.

Here was Avo detecting a threat unseen. And here was the same threat, unmoving, uncertain between engagement and escape.

Their hesitation would cost them.

Nether-lag crackled in Avos mind as he fired his Celerostylus and re-imbued himself with the powers of his Heaven of Blood. He checked his Rend momentarily, and once more found himself relieved to have strengthened his Hell.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 4%

The world around him slowed. He cast a peek into Mirrorheads palace and tasted continual despondence. Good. The Godclad was uninvolved and unaware. That meant this was a third party, and this dive was not yet blown.

Now to keep it that way.

Avo had been too complimentary in his denigration of Essus wards. The analogy of its architecture was a large crude wall made to blunt impacts, the surface of which had the frozen screaming forms of various ghosts frozen in place, there to project their suffering, there to drink in more.

Behind it, was a man who experienced far too much alongside Avo. The ghoul had spent hours looking upon his naked mind, was there when the greatest wound was inflicted on his ego and the world came apart for him.

Finding symmetry to slide into Essus was a task of great ease made near-instant thanks to Avos enhancements. What lay deeper, however, was call for concern. Right then, the unverified integer continued to quiver, their indecision writ into ripples of the mem-data, sluggish to near-stillness.

They were, however, prepared for his intrusion.

The first hidden phantasmic Avo detected was laced within several memory sequences Essus had of his son. The boy himself had been primed as a turret for trauma, the variables of his simulation packaged with the anguish and pain of several other parents who lost their children. The build was respectable, but Avo himself would have avoided placing it in such a position.

It was ultimately too obvious.

He extracted himself from that sequence and changed his approach. Using his Metamind to filter for other parallel memories, he sought one that contained instances of himselfhis foe had the advantage of fortification, but he had actual history with the father. Such would be a hard thing to use against him in any situation.

What came was Artad. Rather, the moment the man had told him about his dead god. Little weight or reverence remained attached to the deity. Faith died in despair. Convenient. Made it easier for Avo to sink into the sequence without faking religiosity.

For the second time, Avo used a past variant of himself to shuttle him across anothers mind. He knew where he was heading, but more than that, he knew the memories well. Being a direct participant provided one with such useful insight.

Over three hundred trauma phantasmics and two dozen planted Specters lined his path. Even enhanced, he could not deny his adversary's skill. Obvious mistakes hid greater dangers, with blatantly corrupted mem-data left to lure a rival Necro out into the open for a direct nulling. Whats more was the broad nature and shifting defenses they installed. For each phantasmic Avo removed, unseen mem-cons activated behind him; deactivated functions manifested as wards within wards, trying to quarantine him into a specific quadrant.

There was no mistaking these techniques. The deception. The design made to narrow his choices until he inexorably found himself staring down the barrel of a final mistake, desperate for a tunnel to salvation.

He faced someone of Ori-Thaum tradition. With this understanding, the tension within him grew tenfold but likewise swelled the thrill.

It was good to sink his fangs into prime meat.

With his overwhelming superiority in speed and knowledge of the terrain he swam across, a plan formed in his head. He needed to cage the Incubi in with him before they fled back to the others. Claiming the memories from one would offer great insight into the players and board both.

Each strike painted a new color to his enemy's wards, cracking the diamond-shaped defenses just in time for the following blow to chip and the last one to shatter.

It was a testament to his enemys fortitude and skill that they were able to build phantasmal armor capable of taking an impact so extreme. It was their misfortune that, though they were able to survive Secondhand Fatality, their wards were also functionally broken. Their thoughtstuff spilled free like entrails unspooling into the pull of an ocean.

And like a shark tasting the blood of a nu-whale, Avo yearned to dig into a meal of organ and liver.

Tearing through the open wound, Avo jumped a third time as he ripped through the savaged thresholds of the Incubus mind. He was now using both Chambers and Essus as a ladder to his new prey, and the Nether lag grew ever more immense.

Without his current speed, time would likely feel like it was skipping.

Lashing his quarrying from the inside with Lucilles Regret over and over, he felt their mind tear and collapse from the inside. Distantly, he caught glimpses of the world beyond, their body striking ground from seizures and vomiting, coming undone before his assault.

Good. He needed them broken but not unraveled. He struck ten more times until the mind itself stopped responding and slowly ground away toward a slow collapse.

Then, with the Ori-Thaum mind agent broken, Avos objective changed. No longer was this to be a hunt. Now, he was to raid.

COPYING PHANTASMICS

[QUICKSAND SYNC TRAUMA]

[INCOG]

Of all the phantasmics, those two were of the greatest importance. Those two, and the treasure trove of encrypted memories the Incubus had. Agents of Ori-Thaum locked their personal lives when they were fielded on assignment. This one was not different, but their operational memories were consumed in labyrinths of confusion.

If Avo had longer to stare at the design of their palace, he might have copied a few things more. But from the inside, he already noted the mem-data shifting, with several new variables enteringand one acting at speeds far faster than the other.

This operative had friends and Avos looting time was short.

Siphoning away all he considered useful, he collapsed out from the Incubus palace and tethered on the brink.

He waited, just as the other few manifested through the Auto-Seance to fire his Second Fatality thrice more.

The palace quivered, and sequence by sequence it turned vaporous, dissolving as two other minds went into nulled freefall within it.

Avo, on the other hand, slipped back through into Essus confines, and then out again into Chambers.

Noticing that the father was clutching his head and frowning, Essus was still standing. The damage wasnt too severe. The battle was fast. Quiet. And victory was absolute.

As time flattened and Avo returned to his senses fully, he found himself laughing hoarsely, his triumph a glorious thing.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 5%

Never before had he imagined himself indulging in such a thrillhe had raided the mind of one of the Oris elites. He had broken a foe that was his greater in several aspects of Necrotheurgic artistry, and done it easily.

Draus gasped, the fullness of his encounter loading into her mind long after all the work was finished. +Shit. Did you just null a fuckin Incubus?+ She sighed. +Course those shits are here too. Cant get away from them no way no how. You know why theyre here.+

Holding onto a few encrypted memories, Avos grin turned from feral to methodical. +Not yet. Going to need some time to crack it. Likely has self-nulling if access is wrong.+

+You think Mirrorhead knows?+

+No,+ Avo said, reaching across the link he planted. +Still too wounded. Still beneath his notice. Lived without knowing there was an infestation. His throne was rotten to begin with.+

Turning his attention back to the memories, Avo frowned.

What was Ori-Thaum doing here? And if they knew Mirrorhead was planning to kill their ambassador, a greater question emerged.

Why hadnt they stopped him yet?