Chapter 13-16 The Flames Awakened (I)

Chapter 13-16 The Flames Awakened (I)

+So you want me to do what?+

+Im trying to make someone. I want you to be a part of them.+

+...Someone? Jaus fucking Avandaer, Strix, I look, Im thankful for all that youve done for me and all that you taught me. Hells, youve been more of a dad to me than the actual half-strand that pulled a pump and dump on mom but I dont think Im ready for our relationship to go here. I mean, for fucks sake, consang, I dont even know you in the real. Im not just mailing you my fluids so you can grow a juv.+

[Soft laugh] +I dont mean it that way. Its not just you and me, anway+

Holy fuck. No, Strix. No. I do not consent to whatever gene-juice cocktail bastard youre trying to breed into existence. No.+

[Laughing continues] +Im going to miss provoking you, kid.+

+Miss me? Strix, are you in some kind of shit right now?+

+Well, Ill be dead in a few minutes, so this is as much a farewell call as its a favor.+

+Fuck. Where are you? Im gonna jack over. Theres a FallwalkerStormsparrow. She owes me favors. Big favors. I can burn itget you out+

+Listen to me, I need you to cast a few memories over through this session. Make them moments between us. Im trying to grow the sequences together and make them all seem more real+

+Are you in the Warrens? The Tiers? Stormsparrows good anywhere. She can cross Idheim in a footstep. Shell be there+

+Rabbit. Raldi. There are things I dont want you to know. Theres a war I dont want you involved in yet. I enjoyed our time together and watching you grow and all that. A lot of things are going to be happening in a few months. If someone shows up one day thinking your home is theirs, tell them what you know about me. Youll understand then.+

+No, fuck you, consang. DeepNav ping now. You dont get to cast and die. Youre not some snuffer trash+

[GHOSTLINK DISCONNECTED]

+Strix? Strix?+

-The Strix and White-Rab

13-16

The Flames Awakened (I)

Something was wrong.

As Emotion cast his perception upon the creatures mind, he could see that its ghosts were afire. From the edge of its halos accretion to each individual strand of phantasmal substance, unnatural flames gnawed within the Nether.

Fires outlined by a pulsing film of emptiness.

Disquiet and fascination became bedfellows in that instant; the priest realized this construct was unknown to him. Something of Defiances personal design, perhaps?

Though the ghouls thoughtstuff oozed and burst like a flickering bubble as it struggled to awaken from its mind-stunned stupor, its memories seemed almost entirely intact, and impossibly, the vanquished sequences were being cauterized back into existence. Ghosts regrew as if branches of living incandescence, each reaching for each as brambles thickened, forming new junctions.

+Emotion,+ Peace said, voice taut with baffled rage. +The fuck are we looking at? What the fuck happened?+

A gulf existed in their minds as well, but the absence of Joy revealed enough. A War-Mind had been used. Likely as a demonstration to cow Defiances upstart offspring into capitulation.

And render it easier to subvert in the aftermath.

Now, however, withered particulates leftover from Joys annihilated mind dotted the phlogiston of the Nether around them like scattered debris, and past the frayed entryway of their Auto-Seance, a disorganized tangle of the fifteen Incubi tumbled free from half-severed sequences.

Another unexpected outcome. The ghoul had thought itself clever drawing the pretenders into the mindscape as expendable help, but its expectations would have been folly. They had more than the local sequences subvertedthe Greatling girl was under their sway as well. It took little effort to use those compromised Exorcists as a vector for this expansion, after all.

Admittedly, Defiances successor was more effective than assumed, though unrefined when it came to the delicate details of sequencing emotions and artifacts of poignance within memories.

Such was why it likely never noticed them dwelling within Abrel's memories of the love she held for her brotherthe gentler aspects of being far from its base comprehensions. True empathy was a step above mere fathoming after all, and in this was the loss of Defiance most felt.

Yet, despite all this, the ghouls mind had been altered somehow, and most of the Incubi remained alive.

Emotion was no longer sure what was to follow. There were too many factors resting beyond his comprehension, too many developments he could not foresee.

This meeting was meant to be a lure. Something to draw the ghoul in and enchain it to the purpose of Old Noloth, for the glory of the city eternal and the world that Jaus stole. They assumed by exploiting its hunger and bloodlust it would have offered its fealty for pleasures denied.

Instead, the beast yearned more to mock them.

Now, as confusion rose from the disoriented minds scattered before them, Emotion released a low note of disappointment at the outcome of the affair and prepared to surrender the reins of his control.

+Peace,+ he said, sinking below his brother-self, +I cede mastery of the priesthood to you. I no longer have faith in diplomacypursue our objectives by your other means. I will call upon another instance of Joy and keep the Exorcists blind.+

As his Metamind lapped over Peaces, he heard bone-grinding growls of low laughter. As it echod outward he felt the waves of the Nether ripen with the pressure of malice. The poor fools were not prepared for that which was to come, and from the ghouls shattered mind would the Famine of Peace reclaim that which was stolen.

+You should have let me at the cunts from the start, Emotion,+ Peace grumbled. Across the entirety of his cognitive structure, lighting the circuitry of his sequences, trauma-patterns built and crackled, the first bolts whipping out at the Nether beyond his accretion like the tongue of a ravenous dog. +It would have saved us all so much fucking time.+

***

Regaining your bearings after getting flattened into a second-person perspective and blended with the conscious minds of twenty or so Incubi was a mite bit difficult.

Awareness forcibly hammering back into you as all your ghosts are screaming at you in a cacophonous symphony of voices across the totality of your memories also does nothing to diminish the chaos.

[CONGITIVE DAMAGE REPAIRED]

[MOSTLYWE ARE LOSING GHOSTS]

+Why arent we casting back?+

[WE DONT HAVE THE WILL.]

[NOT BASE-MIND.]

[NEED ALLOWANCE.]

[VERY INCONVENIENT.]

[WANT TO NULL.]

His bloodlust flowed and in the same instant synaptically charged currents tipped with Secondhand Fatality lashed out at the Low Masters thoughtstuff.

The priests of Noloth shifted the angle of their assault to him. As their attacks came at an unceasing tempo, Avo found himself wondering if they werent using some kind of cognitive accelerant themselves. Their first of their counteractions clashed against Avos trauma and shattered, one blade falling before the other.

What followed was a feat that made Avos insides twist in envy. In the period of a micro-second, the Low Masters managed to assemble a new pattern just as their original shattered and cast it out.

This time, however, when the traumas met, the Nether came alight like twin blades carved from pain charged lightning breaking to a halt, edge to edge.

Avo felt his ghosts recoil at the sudden repulse clashing against trauma so symmetrical, but a deeper instinct bade him reach out.

Through the connective tissue of ghosts chained to his mental being, he buried his fluid ego into the sequences of the attack trauma and stretched out his cognitive capacity. His ghosts burrowed into his foes like drilling tendrils, eating through the shell of their patterns like a plague.

Memories broke apart and melded into him. His total ghosts shot back up past eight hundred. Awareness and knowledge flooded into his mind and for a flickering instance, he felt his perception overlap with the Famine of Peace, as disbelief and horror erupted inside them.

The shock lasted but a scant second. Grandmaster Necrojack that the enemy was, they ejected those ghosts and jacked out.

Just in time for another series of attacks to cut out from another vector and skip off Avos wards.

[ADJUSTING MEMORY-AVAILABILITY PARAMETERS]

Suddenly, a portion of his memories regrew and the canon of Haemokinesis became known to him again.

+How was that a non-essential memory?+ Avo asked, casting his annoyance at his sub-minds.

[WAS BUSY CONSTRUCTING WARDS.]

[WAS BUSY REBUILDING EVERYTHING.]

There was a tinge of frustration in his auxiliary self.

Choking back his annoyance at his secondary selves, he fired his reflexes and bound himself again to liters of blood.

The pace of time stretched, and Avo stole the momentum of the offensive.

He cast out at the Incubi then, uncertain as to where the Low Masters were hiding. Flashes of firing Ghostjacks pulsed out from leaking sequences and Avo moved as he struck.

He directed his strikes with finer control than he ever felt, hammering Secondhand Fatality down against Quicksand wards before cycling in the next option. But as his command reached his Ghostjack, so too did his ghosts obey as well.

Even far extended from him, he felt his trauma transform from within. What began as a memory made from the materials of Lucilles pain turned into the hurt Chambers endured when the aratnid sank its egg-infused fangs into his testicles.

He drove his shifting weapon against the adaptive wards and felt himself sink in.

In the same instant, the bones around the Auto-Seance began to realign, and all around him flashed accretions and ripples of thoughtstuff. Time within the mindscape skipped forward. The Auto-Seances confines flickered as the memories comprising its structure began to stutter.

The Low Masters were weaponizing their Nether lag against himtrying to strip him of his speed advantage.

He needed to get out. Staying and engaging them in a prolonged engagement on their terrain was folly. He could just jack out. Find another section to come back in or

[YES. WE HAVE ACCESS TO THE INCUBI.]

[THEY ARE HURT. CRACKED. VULNERABLE. SUCH PAIN.]

Yes. That was a far more enticing option. Far more.

Through the tendrils of his trauma, Avo peered into the cracked shell of his foe and leered at the memories inside. He could hear the Incubus screaming. He could taste their fear. Their pain. Their vulnerability.

This fight could continue. He knew it could. He just needed a change of skin.

And with a thought, Avo began to pour the entirety of himself through the cracks lining his victims flesh, devouring all their memories, all their phantasmics, all of who they are, and who they could be.

Like a parasite wriggling its way into an egg, he slithered into their being to the choking accompaniment of their psionic screams and bathed the mind-shred hurt he was causing, all three facets of Avos cognition exhaled in euphoric glee.

***

Talon-1 screamed as she felt herself go away.

Words vanished. Things she knew darkened as the fires approached.

The burning crackled with inhuman laughterwith hungry laughter.

She was she was she was she was she was

She was Avo she was

She sheshe

At some point, the thoughts stop coming from her, and started coming from the beast instead.

Talon-1 stopped thinking, but Talon-1 didnt die.

Someone else grew in place under her inner thoughts. Someone else learned to wear her skin.

***

[MENTAL TEMPLATE SAVED: TALON-1]