Chapter 10-26 Fate Denied (II)

Chapter 10-26 Fate Denied (II)

[WARNING: NINTH-SPHERE LIMINAL FRAME DETECTED]

Veylis.

Mother.

I see. You have sensed me.

I have. Youre falling into your old habits again. Predictably twisting and pruning every possible future down to the quick. You didnt leave enough time between your skimmings upon the surface of time. Did you expect me to be too occupied by my own affairs to notice?

Ah. But your house seemed so messy. Would you blame me for making such an assumption?

No. Instead, I will blame you for being discovered and allowing yourself to be killed by me.

[Laughter] You make me proud, my girl. And you have not yet slain me.

And you break my heart always, mother. Always.

[Sigh] Veylis

I will stray. I will not bend. I will prevail. I will fix what has been broken. As is my will. As is what you have taught me.

Oh? Did I teach you to murder your own father? To cast all that he had fought for into decay and ruin

I murdered father? I was trying to make him eternal. In place of accusation, I will ask: What did you do? What did you do to the man you loved? You speak as if you were any better when you stained your glaive with his blood.

That thing was not Jaus. And I committed no such act. The leaping of the Ladder was not of my doing, but a response to your defilement. Against your own bloodyour own father

My father will live again. You will live again. I will make everything right. I will not bend. I am sorry. I love you. I loved him. But this is more than love. This is the culmination that is. All that will be. And he was going to give away our ability to choose for ourselves. To Voidwatch. Our from our hands. I could not Could not

I am still your mother, Veylis. It does not shame you to cry before me.

No. I will not. I will not. I am a child no longer. I am human no longer.

But you will always be my girl. No matter the path.

...

Come. Come and embrace your mother before you try and kill her. Let us have this, at least. [TEMPORAL DISTORTION DETECTED] Ah. It feels as it always has. Your shoulders feel softer, though. Have you been negligent in your conditioning?

You will learn how negligent I have been soon.

[Soft laughter] We will be family again. When this is over. When we are done. That is a certainty between us, at the least.

And if someone else wins this game? If another imposes their desire on what is to be.

Well, dear daughter, I suppose we will always have yesterday. Oh, and do change the taste of your eyes. Make them sour or bitter. It dissuades people from eating them.

Through the dust and chaos, he watched as something large swam beneath the murk of the ash.

Highflame! To me! Abrels voice was a piercing avian shriek. From the length of her soundwaves, the Phys-Sim estimated her to be only a hundred feet awayand closing fast. Falcons spilled free from the ash surrounding them they extended into arms and legs.

Without any more hesistation, Avo flared his Soul and reached to subsume the Heavens of the three golems. They came loose into the grasp of his Frame, like plucking fruit from a branch.

With all his bounty claimed, he turned to commit to the final task that concerned him: Escape.

The new portal forming at his feet was an anomaly. He didnt know how a stormtree functioned or what the rules of its canons were, but he knew that staying here and fighting was to risk Draus and the others.

Firing his reflexes, he laced a circuit of blood into Draus' mind and cast his intentions at her. No words were exchanged. She was of the same regard. It was long past time to leave, and this run had gone beyond sour by means above their control or comprehension.

As the Strider painted itself into shape, as the rain was wrenched away from striking soil and diverted into the grasp of another, as the wind screamed to the eruption of a volcano that basked the surrounding dust in the glow of a lantern, Avo pulled Essus off the ground and jumped down through the new portal.

Draus followed soon after, Chambers kicking and flailing, tucked beneath one of her arms.

Descending the portal of the stormtree was not like stepping from one threshold to another. No. There was a destructiveness to its transfer and interconnectedness to its pathways. Almost immediately, Avo felt his form compressed into a forking bolt of lighting. Matter dissolved into energy within this domain, and before his senses, the district of Nu-Scarrowbur was stripped down to the bone.

All things bearing circuitry and static expanded into fluid outlines as he found himself shuttled through the countless arteries within the tree, striking and bouncing from the other only bolt of transferred materialDraus and her carry-on.

They sank down to the roots of the tree first, awareness spreading as the real crumbled down to facets of lightning and destruction expressed through the mythology of an ever-growing tree.

Behind them came the intrusion of another presence. Someone else had dived in. Someone else was coursing through the same channels after them.

But they were a step behind.

Upon striking the foundation of the roots of the tree, the entire architecture thundered and he was launched upward, light peeling along his perception. For a fleeting instant, the world around him peeled into shape as he twisted up the length of the tree, peering past its thaumaturgic flesh.

His eyes greeted the cityscape around him, and he found himself staggered by the damage.

Nu-Scarrowbur was a ringed district once. Ringed in architecture. Ringed in design. Ringed in its aerolanes and streetways. There had been a slope to its geography before the fighting and warheads disfigured it; the stormtree at the center of the district was nested as a rose clutched between rising layers of domed plasteel.

No more.

Carpets of devastation formed detritus-paved pathways from hollowed structures and mangled bridges. Between the warheads, the Godclads, and the fighting in general, no section of the city was spared. Much of the southeast side was flattenedits cause of unmaking a mix of heavy bombardment, chasms spewing molten heat, and blood-drenched trails that gouged the urban hellscape to its foundations.

All that dared move now were the encroaching form of Godclads swimming through the thick of the falling ash and rain. A few among them traded attacks still, but most were pressing for the tree, the remnants of the Highflame cadre following Abrel while Bloodthanes and wargs followed them.

Light began to build around Avos perception. He was a bolt loosed out toward the bottom of Layer Two, and he braced for impact as the hexagonal plates approached.

His gut emptied when he sank right through and leaped through another Layer of the city while colors and sounds flitted by around him.

The exit came with an explosion of sound and light. He tore free from a portal and Draus followed in his wake. Tumbling out, he found himself tossed into the gasp of gravity as he slipped through the holographic static of an emptied aerolane.

A new landscape expanded before his eyes, the stretch of the horizon bright and pristine, crystalline edifices gleaming with a mirror-perfect polish while pale sting ray-like bioforms swept across the sky.

The sky. The naked sky.

Avo felt his mind stutter to a halt as the lilac hue of the Darkstar glared at him, painting the shining district below with its ebbing face. Rain fell hard here, and the streets and grids slickened by the wet.

They werent in the Spine anymore. This was Lights End. They were topside again. Turning as he fell, the first sounds of drone sirens cut through the air as he beheld the vast metallic cliff-face that speared upward to gut the clouds. Beyond the overcast sky shook a place of sound, light, and splendor. Beyond the overcast sky were the Tiers.

The wail of sound drew his focus. A Tadpole-like drone dove out for him, with its wisp-thin tendrils outstretched. Along its pellucid shell projected a symbola fang manacled by twin chains: The sign of the Exorcists.

Forty feet long and thirty wide in radius, the machine held enough space for either him or Essus within the opening beneath its cage. With reflexes still running high, Avo whipped a haemokinetic conduit into its shell before it could draw too close and spread his influence. It took him less than a second to strike the locus. It took him three more to crack its protections.

Exorcist Necros were competent across the board. But with all his traumas, and with the Nether crippled so, all it took for him to assume control was a bit of damage and a brief resequencing. He left the drone-jock entombed within his gimbal, ignoring the urge to jump over and subsume her mind as well.

Instead, he directed the machine low to catch him and Essus before they fell and affixed himself to its top using blood-made cables. Several other Tadpoles speared past him in pursuit of Draus and Chambers, and nearly a dozen more were swimming through the air to come after him.

Diving full power to the thrusters, he accelerated after Draus and away from the portal.

The single branch of the stormtrees stretching limb began to surge brightly.

The pursuing jocks werent prepared for another person to dive through. They especially werent prepared for said person to be a full-blown Godclad.

The Strider was stitched into existence bolt by lashing bolt. The arms and the legs came first. Soon would be the body and wings. Avo dove low after Draus as he curved down along the buildings.

Less than a second later, winged light cut out to cleave through the blocks.

And failed.

From glass and alloy, the buildings remained unblemished.

Memetic matter. Avo sighed. Now things were definitely going to be an incident; they were fighting where the FATED put their imps.

It looked like Zein might be getting her frame-job done yet.