Chapter 10-21 The Shattering of Mazza’s Junction

Chapter 10-21 The Shattering of Mazza’s Junction

The Agnosi lied to us Keep lying to us I saw the truth. I saw it when my Daemon came to me. It didntit was so hurtall those lives inside screaming remembering the world that wasthe gods were anchors and the god inside me was awake but I was the virusI am the virus and I keep bleeding over into it and it is me and we wanted to become become become

The Agnosi lied! They lied lied lied to us allgodspeopleall! The Frame is another world but there are cracks bridges things to flow and rush and run and the Frames will usurp reality are more than subrealityit can eat. It dreams inside you but its a crippled dreamersomething is missing something is broken something something something...

I dream of the Silken Spiral. I dream of it. Dream of the one that built it. The Broken Weaveress and the first daughters who fed themselves to the fire who burn still and burn and dream with the Weaveress who woke inside but but it was we and we were joined but wanted to part and break but joined and consciousness melded man-cant-be-gods

No! No please dont take my Soul from memy firethe truest FIRE! The only thing that is real, we are all dust and distortions in the tapestry let me be real please let me be real

-[Redacted], The Dissection of a Daemon, Firmament of Voidwatch

10-21

The Shattering of Mazzas Junction

For a fleeting heartbeat, as time choked down the pipe of his surging reflexes, Avo beheld the form of the Daemon, and found himself entranced.

The scene unfolding was one of fission and dichotomy. Amidst a ballet of swirling spatial fractals, surrounded by falling pieces unlatching from the megablock, a being of pulsing flame drew shape from glass. It was a near-perfect mimicry of the Twice-Walker in structure, but the nuances were all wrong.

Abrel and the other Highflame Godclads were missing somewhere in this chaos. He had no trace of their whereabouts nor any estimation as to when they would resurrect, but they had to be in this chaos somewhere.

For now, though, he was alone.

Just him, his allies, and that which his cog-feed was screaming to him about.

ANATHEMA OF REFLECTION, THE TWICE-WALKER AWAKENED

Separated by a distance of five hundred feet, the Daemon unlatched within cascading debris, emerging from a wound in the megablock. Opposite to it, Jhred Greatling rose as if drawn up by a counterweight.

Flesh and hissing fire licked out at the air between the cracks lining its body. There was a blinding glow crackling within it like its quavering exterior was straining to hold a furnace back from a meltdown. Finally, a twisting loop connected it to Jhredits form unveiled in the real for the first time that Avo could remember.

Time itself bubbled into form, the faintness of a translucent dragon echoing beneath its waves. Scales containing writhing bodies and grasping forms called out the world beyond, each screaming proclamations and oaths of devotion.

Praise be the King of Mirrors!Praise be! Praise be the twice-fold path!The treaded routes stand open! We need but follow!Praise be!Praise be!

And with each revolution the dragon made, the head of the serpent eating away eternally at its own body, the flame maintained itself.

Avo watched as he plunged, darting through fractures in the nature of space, twisting from place to place as anomalous reflections sent him in myraid directions. Enraptured by what he beheld, he barely regarded the words of his Woundshaper.

So. Such is what clothes mesuccor of the unceasing variety. These are the faces of our worshippers, then? Bound infused and reinfused into our fire? Delightful. It gave a low, bemused laugh. And to think I held such unexplained loathing for the chrono-autosarcophagics.

Such was the first time he heard his Heaven process its dislike for the dragons, but such things were of tertiary notice as Daemonor what Avo assumed was the Daemonbegan to reel Jhred Greatling toward it.

Mo-ther! It called out, voice chiming like a million-million bells swinging in unison across the rooftops of a city. For. for motherThis chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.

Again, it pulled, and Jhred, shattered in mind and spirit, merely bounced as he was drawn through the vortex of swirling chaos. Between them, tangled within the once-empty epicenter of the dragons coil, Soulfire began to flicker and build. Glass began to shudder and crack. Reflections twisted and jumped and blended as bindings shifted into glass and more of the remaining megablock vitrified.

Snapping free from the distraction, Avo shaped his body and constructed propellers as he attempted to navigate the maelstrom of twisting mirrors and crumbling matter. He couldnt go too fast or the ones within him would splatter. He couldnt shift to his Galeslither for there was no way he could react in time to the unfolding chaos around him.

WARNING: DAEMON DETECTED

->ASSOCIATED HEAVEN: [TWICE-WALKER] - FOURTH SPHERE

->REND CAPACITY [TWICE-WALKER]: 63%

SPATIAL METAPHYSICS UNRAVELING

REND SPILLOVER DETECTED

Daemon pulled again and Jhred approached. Three more times and they would be joined. The flickering Soulfire flared this time, blasting out a tide that flensed the structures of reality, undoing the fabric of all that was and exposing the foundational symbology knitted beneath the bones of existence.

The surge crashed against Avos Frame, the uncanny sensation of ontology scraping against ontology like his bones were being dragged against Jhreds.

Space came asunder like brittle glass flung against a wall. Domains bled over into domains as the Jhred and the Twice-Walker screamed, their voice a union of pain - a divine echo grafted to the voice of the man wailing unwanted epiphanies.

Holding firm in the form of the Woundshaper, his surroundings broke into a chaotic kaleidoscope of reflective tunnels. The block was dissolving, coming apart as vitrification spread and more glass shattered free, sailing masses of collapsing infrastructure. Lines of blood and water remained halted, stained with the paint of eldritch fire. Jhreds Hell had broken a sacrament in trying to reap the substance of fluids for his singularity.

And he was going to need to vent soon. All his protective measures, constructs, and haemokinesis were creating entropy at an unprecedented rate. If he found the chance to die, perhaps he could find some method to upgrade his Heavens and Hells again.

Eyeing the Shadowcrawlers and the lashing beams of light, he growled and subsumed the golem as well. They would provide ample additions to his Galeslither, perhaps. He couldnt use them for much of anything at present with how fleeting the passing shadows were. Might as well add them as canons afterward.

A trickle of thoughtstuff flowed up from the locus of the Fulgerhund into his blood. His ghosts carried the message budding across the Nether-lag caused by their perceptive differentials. With his former cargo securely contained within the golem, he accelerated faster, his propellers drilling through the sound barrier as he picked up speed.

Draus was augmented. Essus too. Chambers was an acceptable loss if it came down to it. Avo could still get what he needed to examine from the ex-enforcers ghost. He veered off course almost immediately, but he was still moving back toward where the Daemon was drawing Jhred back into himself.

And then a near-perfectly translucent pane of glass glitched into existence in front of him, sparking free from reflections on droplets of rain. It opened as light erupted along its core and another place shown throughthis location was an open chasm of devastation that led out into another portion of the city.

Flipping his spinning propulsion constructs, he fought to slow himself, but his Phys-Sim revealed what he already expected: His velocity was too high and this was too close.

Maybe Zein would

+Get in the golem.+ Draus thoughtcast had finally loaded into his ghosts and Avo mind twisted. He didnt fully know the functions of the golems, but both Zein and Draus seemed aware of its use.

Shrugging aside anxiety, he released the majority of his mass before threading his mortal form back into shape within the Fulgerhound. Spilling into a cockpit too narrow for his size, he immediately felt his bones snap painfully backward as the intensity of the g-forces bore down at him all at once, his perception of time snapping back to normalcy like a rubberband.

He choked as he toppled back, bouncing off a gimbal and elbowing Essus in the chest.

Then, just as swiftly, the pull of acceleration faded static tickled his body.

Avo, Draus cried, not bothering to turn her head around, get ready.

Lashing out with his blood, he jacked into the locus that Draus was leaning against. Exo-sensory data filled his cog-feed as multiple systems and details painted his mind with a swirl of colors. They were jumping between stretches of reflection as an arcing bolt of lightning. With each turn or transition a number indicator diminished. This Fulgerhund had eight-four jumps left before its Rendsinks were full.

Presently, they were about four more jumps before the external simulation showed them reaching the Daemon.

Warning klaxons screamed through the golems internal systems as Avo linked his mind with Draus as well. +Going to eject out using my Galeslither when we approach. Kill Jhred. Absorb his Frame before the Rupture happens.+

Draus head snapped to shoot an alarmed glance at him. +Rupture? Theres gonna be a Rupture?+

Right. His few seconds had been a lot longer than hers.

+Just get ready. Frames going to be yours in a minute.+

A note of genuine trepidation sang out from Draus. +Yeah sure+

She still didnt truly want it, to live in endless loops and forget the weight of life and become like Jhreds motherall power, all folly.

Nothing was ever easy, but some choices were harder. Remembering the fragile lives he cupped, he pondered the alternative for her. What was a Frame but more chances to choose? To learn?

But it had to be her choice. It had to be.

One jump. Two jumps. Three.

Four.

He whistled free from the hissing gaps his blood left within the structure of the golem. With how rough he punched through to get at the locus, it was a miracle the entire thing didnt decompress.

Gusting out into the screaming form of a tri-headed steed, the Galeslither brayed loud as the Daemon looked up, regarding him for the first time. This close, they were bare to each other, with no place to hide. Jhred was mere feet away from touching it. Avo didnt know what that would cause, but with how the anomalies grew with each tug of the dragon, he didnt want to find out.

Glass tore out from the Twice-Walkers impossible twin like ten thousand surface-to-air missiles of all shapes and sizes. He felt them cut up through the air, an unseen hand guiding them as they sought him out. The matter would not touch him, but if managed to form a gateway just in front of him

The Fulgerhund slammed into the Daemon, spearing it into place upon what few plasteel bones remained of the megablock.

Mo-ther! the Daemon and Jhred screamed. I want to be whole! Givegive me back my mother-body!

Inside, the Woundshaper understood something. My broken kin theyre tapping into the mind of the Frames host. The Heaven is rememberingusing the mortal to channel its stripped ego Its stripped thoughtsAvo didnt have time to consider the implications of what that meant. Jhreds body was carved and sliced by countless pieces of shrapnel. One of his arms was folded the wrong way at the shoulder, most of his suit and skin denuded along the air. The eye Avo ate had grown back, but the other now had a piece of rebar jutting out of it.

Funneling himself down Jhreds throat, Avo took no more chances with his targets death. There was too much to risk with a Rupture, and his hunger demanded to be sated nowtoo long had he denied himself the life of this Guilder.

Jhred, for his final words, gave but a rasping whimper as sense seemed to return to himif but for that briefest moment. Not worthy never worthy.

And Avo expanded the currents inside him, prying Jhred Greatling asunder.

Just in time to hear Abrels despairing scream rise above the cacophony.