Chapter 10-10 Blood Upon Starlit Strings

Chapter 10-10 Blood Upon Starlit Strings

Tig, you uh You seeing this?

What? The Galeslither swallowing all those aeros? Yeah. Yeah, I see it. Shit. Cant tell if its one of ours with the Nether all fucked.

Yep. Yep-yep. Its also moving methodically. Piloted. Last cast I got from our Necros said something about weird sequences in the traffic lobbies. Something off about the mem-data sourced from the junction managing loci.

And that Galeslithers just plucking aeros out and flying fine.

Yep. Agh. Fuck it. Cut the thing out of the sky.

You serious?

Yeah. It isnt ours. It might be Greatlings. Might be someone elses. But seeing as the Nethers down and the districts are blind, whos to say anything about who did what. Better safe than snuffed. Got your assignment, Breaker. Cut it down.

Synced on that, Reva. Just let me find my tune

-Conversation between Reva Javvers and Tigertail, Bloodthanes of Stormtree

10-10

Blood Upon Starlit Strings

A spear of blistering light rang loud against the thick of Avos blood just as he manifested his Woundshaper, their collision a melodious twang.

Sound and starlight fractured out at the point of collision, each crack a strand shivering bright, all tautly coiled like vast strings bound to an instrument unseen. With time lurching to a halt, Avo struck back. Constructs exploded out from him in rivers of rushing crimson. A clash followed. The metaphysics of asymmetrical domains warred, and force met force as a construct of light and sound fell against blood and matter.

LUMENLYRIST, MELODIST OF THE CLEAVING DAWN

Against the outer layer of his vessel the world burned; the air ignited around in a blossom of flames. Yet, he found the force lacking and too limited in direction. A whip spilled free from Avo and curved up, splitting the manifestation of light through its beam-like shaft.

Pockets of sound burst from his whips velocity alone. The javelin that struck him stilled and shattered into a spray of fading notes, breaking before the construct bearing greater force. The light and heat splashing against him faded, but the strings around him only grew.

Radiant wires spewed out like parasitic worms into the real, penetrating the tapestry of existence from every emanation of noise. Alarm spiked within Avo as the chords of brightness formed even within microfractures beneath his sloshing blood.

Each string brought the whine of a new sound made low and droning by his accelerated perception.

He was facing a Heaven. Be it connected to a golem or Godclad he couldnt say, but the image of the strange entity vanishing over the blocks of Nu-Scarrowbur came back to him. If that was the eldritch being from where the light sang, then he saw no sign of the machinery of a golem afterward.

More importantly, the golem would have needed to remain disconnected from traffic to avoid the deleterious mem-cons plaguing the Sovereignty.

More and more, he suspected another of his like. Worse, he knew nothing of their true capabilities, and such left him in hostile waters.

He needed to break from this encounter. Re-engage on his terms, and avoid being swallowed by an ambush.

Good thing they seemed just as surprised as he was. A pause followed as no assault followed. The strings of light around him, however, began to bend.

Time to leave.

He flew blindly afterward, avoiding pockets of heat and flowing fast upon undulating scythes of displaced air.

When he managed to pull away far enough that he could feel the threat of heat triggering his hubris no longer, stitched himself back into existence from a swirling vortex, settling upon the eaves of above an unfinished G-Tube station.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 83%

REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER]: 42%

There, in the distance, the portrait of his escape called out to him. Debris and ash continued to spew free from the disembowelment he inflicted, with structures built on the edge of Layer One coming free like intestinal ropes of plascrete instead of flesh. His initial penetration had left a critical weakness along the lip of the hexagonal threshold, and the light-infused detonation that followed denuded entire panes of silicon that once served as a backdrop to the simulated skies.

The buildings he impacted were still groaning, enormous rents looking as if a bladed hurricane had torn and shredded its way through the district while a supernova followed in its wake.

More pressingly, however, Avo found his attention pulled back by a vast arc of droning obsidian rumbling itself into existence, a construct of unlight sewn into being by reversing notes and transparent strands. String by string, the colorless markings inched below the flesh of existence and formed into a knot of snakes.

In the end, a vast trail of darkness licked an indelible wound upon the world as screams and the loudness of collapsing buildings suddenly went silent. A hive-like veil shivered over the arching pathway the blackness took from beyond Layer One all the way to where Avo discarded his blood husk.

Attentively, he studied the actions of his unseen foe, and considered the miracles displayed by the Heaven he faced.

If did originate with the sun-headed titan at Nu-Scarrowbur, then its reach was long. Perhaps not in the sense of Mirrorhead and his reflections, but for this Lumenlyrist to detonate manifestations of eldritch radiance from miles placed Avo at a severe ranged disadvantage.

It seemed capable of tracing his movements with sound, but more than that, it could strum a chorus of falling explosions on strings of snapping light, which then cycled the process anew through the volume generated. What he was not certain of was if the explosions were an automatic process, or if the user on the other end was aware of his position, their Heaven operating in the fashion of his Echoheads.

Seeing this stroke of sound-swallowing darknessthe Hell to the Heaven, he assumedreaching after the last known position of his Woundshaper, it was better to err with caution: He would assume a broadening awareness on the part of their Heaven for now.

But not that broad. He had managed to break from the engagement, after all, shifting back into his Galeslither after he found a spot cool enough. Furthermore, they didn;t know he was here, studying the effects of their powers, watching the Hell slowly return to transparency.

Comparatively, his Woundshaper imbued himself with an excess of speedthough the noise he made was like a perpetually running fuse of dynamiteeven if it did fizzle out at the end. He withstood the initial block-erasing blasts well enough, though it hollowed him of some mass. Still, it would be wise of him to avoid direct confrontation. Which didnt seem to offer much endurance, but the damage was still close to that delivered by a mini-nuke.

After a few moments more of deliberation, Avo descended the station by venting Woundshapers Rend through it, carving a pathway in and out the interior of the stop shearing away another section to the tubes. After dissolving much of the architecture, he flicked a look at his timer and winced.

One minute and Fifty-one seconds. It would be close. He considered his excursion to be a half-success at best, but at least he had some idea of the severity of the situation. He needed to think. And potentially build Nether-redundant ghost circuits into the EGI Core. For now, he could interface with it via alchemized matter.

Exercising caution, he kept to the Galeslither and galloped hard for the gateway. Winds squealed as he gushed through the alleyways and reconstituted himself in his mortal form. Twelve seconds.

He needed to think. He needed to consider his approach. No movement was coming from Conflux, but from this recent skirmish, Conflux had a less than zero odds of surviving an engagement with the forces currently arrayed in Nu-Scarrowbur.

More and more, Mirrorheads death was writ in a substance deeper than fate itself; the divine hands of his adversaries conspired and worked, crafting a future in which they were the ones to use up his, and amongst these groping forces was Avo himself, bumping into foes unseen.

Before him, the shadows of the alley spiraled inward as a tunnel formed. As the doors flung open at the end, the first thing that greeted him was the flash of a chrome barrel. Draus took it offl his person the moment she recognized him.

So, Draus shouted, gesturing for him to enter quickly. Hows the lay of the chaos lookin.

Bright, Avo grunted. He doubled his pace with help from his Echoheads. Loud. At least one other Godclad on the scene. Stormtree mostly likely. Hit me miles away from Nu-Scarrowbur. More problems. Mem-cons in the traffic lanes

Draus placed a hand on his shoulder. Before you go in

Zein flickered into existence between the two of them. She was barely at Draus nose and didnt even reach Avos lower chest, yet she pushed them apart with contempt and ease. She strode past them looking uncharacteristically upset. Come. We have much to discuss. Regular, bring the Agnos. Tell her it is fine if she cries, so long as she continues to be of use. Avo, I wish to stab and kill you at least three times. Vent one of your Hells if you have not already. My annoyance is great with you.

Avo blinked. Draus did a double-take as Thousandhand shouldered past both of them. The fuck did she come from.

The better question was probably from when she arrived.

Cease your gawking. Especially you, little dagger. You have no right to act the fool for your sins.

Draus shot Avo a look. He made his Echoheads shrug on his behalf. My sins? Avo asked. He followed Zein into the nexus. What sins? I was thinking this was all your fault. That this was part of your distraction.

She stopped. Then, she was right in front of him, index finger placed upon his chest as spoke up at him with narrowed eyes behind her transparent visor. Perform this service of recollection for me, little dagger. Did you, perchance, possibly, tell the Hungers and the demented collection of personality flaws constituting your parental alternates that Ninth Column sends their regards?

Oh. That.