Chapter 14-8 Home (II)

Chapter 14-8 Home (II)

Are you tired of all the ads and invasive miracles licking at your skin every time you walk the streets?

Are you seeking a community of like-minded people who strive to make their lives better while also elevating the prosperity of their Guild?

Or maybe you just earned your FATE and are looking for some affordable shelter while you acclimate yourself to the wonders of the Tiers?

Whatever it is you want, block-15 at Pendross Ravine has you covered.

Powered by a modern-twelve-core techno-thaumic and imbued with Heavens designed to bring convenience to you and yours, block-15 has now been cleared to house 50,000 new homeowners thanks to upgrades made to its geometric-efficiency canons.

But dont linger! The available rooms are dropping and dropping fast, with the hydro-pent housing at 100 unitssorry, 32 units and falling!

You didnt get here by waiting, did you? No. You took life by the throat. You proved yourself one way or another.

You are worthy. And you deserve to be blessed for your achievements.

Tarry, and the moment slips, but if you take that plunge, you might just find out how far up into the sky one can fall.

Home is just a thought away.

-Pendross Ravine Housing Ad

14-8

Home (II)

The most obvious deviation between a block in the Warrens and a block in the Undercroft was the aesthetic.

Where most buildings below the reach of the Tiers were little more than hulking cubes of abused alloy held together by patchwork repairs and clicking flaps of tarp when the wind passed through, block-twelve was more like a cake with its stacked layers. The divide between the floors was marked by dotted lines of pulsing neon, and delineation ran symmetrical to the sheets of inch-thin water that held additional housing within specialized demiplanes.

Like most blocks of its design, its central thaumic engine was nested deep in its structure away from easy access, and the sheen of ever-changing phantoms spewing a non-stop stream of Highflame and Omnitech sponsored media. Figures moved and writhed as colors descended the full spectrum of light along the side momentum of change. As the light bloomed, shadows shivered, and Avo found his swim at an end.

He surfaced from the black. Light showered him, but unwanted attention continued to glance off his person. The crowds were a mesh of implants, heights, sizes, and colors, with several of them running holocoat privacy functions and a few baring their allegiance out and proud. Hustle, bustle, and noise were insufficient descriptors for the streets of the Undercroft.

Minds pulsed loud with music being openly streamed straight through a nearby lobby, and more than a few ran cognitive filters that adjusted their visual surroundings to a theme more to their liking. Nu-dogs, nu-cats, and nu-pets of divided morphologies strutted upon streets of gleaming plascrete behind their owners. Some towered over their masters while others were engineered to fit within pockets.

A few were even implanted organic sockets grafted into their masters flesh, but that veered toward the extremes of even the New Alloyist modding scene.

As an ad changed and light struck the street again, Avo finally noticed the constructs that gave the Undercroft its namesake.

The Wights.

There were fewer of them than ever now. Ever since the Guilds had improved their in-house drone manufacturing capabilities, the need to use locus-implanted corpses as menial labor grew impractical.

Still, their accumulation over the years left something bordering on the edge between sentimentality and indifference to their presence. For those that couldnt afford a top-end machine, Wights were still cheap and common enough to supply most households.

Unlike the people, the Wights sported plastic faces locked in an eternal rictus or a blank look completed with a hollow gaze. Some among them carried bags, while others served as perception points for vicarity stars.

More worked in tandem with spider-like cleaner drones, scrubbing at more intimate stains while the machine they were festooned upon rattled along the sides of builds and bridges.

Spurring his Echoheads to chitter, a blanket of static reached out from him, and he laid his mind upon his surroundings as a proper greeting after a long absence. A few eyes recoiled from his person and he felt three of his ghosts shatter into rising steam.

An intrusive thought came to him, wondering just how many lives he could snuff out as a response to the ignorant slight he just suffered, and how fast the Guilds would respond.

His Woundshaper hummed appreciatively at the idea. There are ten thousand lives with our gasp on this street alone. It would but take a squeeze before we take another step up the ladder of divinity, master. Just think of the potential just think of the rise.

Angled away from the Heaven of Blood, the Galeslither brayed its disgust. Do it then. Betray your ideals towards choice and individual. Be the rank butcher you were made to be by your betters.

Betters. Of all the words of his Galeslither, that was the only one that truly tasted ill.

[Its tempting. Risky. Estimate at least a few hundred thousand deaths if we use our Sangunity. Simulated Guild response will be near-immediate. They will pocket the area we affect. Cant hide the action. Too much damage. Our prey dont have Incogs. Spreading our mind will leave us vulnerable to more vectors of perception]

Testing his consciousness, he shifted through his various templates and nearly staggered from the eruption of horror that seized his thoughts.

[We were thinking of casual genocide]

[These were FATED! The rights imbued within their persons by the Articles cannot be]

[Kae will never forgive you. Essus will never forgive you. Draus will try to kill you. Chambers will well, Chambers is pretty much in love with you, so you can do what you want there.]

With a surge of effort, Avo cast off his newly invoked humanity. The mountain of anguish vanished from where it was within him, and his Echoheads scraped along the memite plating of the walls he was leaning again.

A few swinging gazes splashed new to him, minds confused as to what could have made such a loud screech when there was no one there.

But by then, he was already gone. Going vertical, Avo set a path for the side of block twelve as he fired his Celerostylus and cycled his blood. Tendrils worked in tandem with his Echoheads as rose like a fired flechette.

There were countless loci dotting the exterior, serving as anchors for ghosts and surveillance phantasmics. Between each shard of embedded vivianite, however, was a cracka crevice he could make large, and through the shadows sprawling through the blocks internal system would he find his way up.

Being a Godclad was really quite the convenience. No need for front doors or thoughtscans. No need to be shunted across the in-block transit system to arrive.

[Cant trust him.]

[Walton told him we were coming. Not about trust. About more details.]

[Cant show ourselves like this. Too distinct. Theyll get an image of us. Easy to track.]

+The grafter next door pulled a runner a few months back. Also, she moved apartments even before that. I stopped keeping fishes after the No-Dragons started using them to spy on people. Turns out they made a Heaven just for that.+

Avo clenched his fangs together. He might have some questions about Green River after this.

+The Wights the only thing I left. And its for you. I figured if I remembered it, you would too. Now, I dont know how, uh, alike were gonna be, so Ill tell you what. We can do this face-to-face if you want. Meat to meat. That might inspire some trust.+

The door behind Avo opened in perfect sync with the end of the mans words. Avo spun around just as the doorway opened up.

Revealing nothing.

Avo blinked.

Then he felt ita new pattern unlatching itself from the plascrete, striding free as if they were part of the matter themselves. The holocoated figure pointed out at them.

Avo fired his Celerostylus first.

He tried to liquefy them but a clash of eldritch resonance rang out between them.

[Godclad.]

His subminds drained away his startlement before it could settle and sharpened his instincts. Where his haemokinesis strained to spear through his foes presence, the Galeslithers Hell enchained them in stasis.

But by then they began to vibrate, and his Rend emptied fast.

Tensing his consciousness, he prepared to burrow into a new mind, and from his stretched clawing flames that licked through the realm of cognition.

He was a breath away when the entire room erupted into a thought-rend tide of force.

He died instantly.

RESURRECTION - 1%

***

In one instant, the space in front of Reva was nothing but room, and then in the next, nine feet of a pale betentacled bioform collapsed like a marionette with its strings severed and died.

And over its corpse, a fiery metaphysical scab began to form.

She caught herself and staggered, feeling a strange lurch of resistance flow through her momentarily. Her cog-feed also showed her Shatterborns Rend as up by a few percent.

Something just paradoxed with her.

A lingering hiss rasped over her mind as she imbibed a passing memory of hunger denied.

Whatever that was, it felt feral and frustrated.

The Bloodthane blinked. +Raldi, what the hell just happened?+

+Ghosts got too close to your wards. Whoever our consang is, they mustve triggered my proximity countermeasures.+

She suppressed a shiver of discomfort. Getting nulled twice in less than two days was too much even for her. +Thanks. Whend you put those in?+

+Just now. Easier when Im piggybacking. Its hard to hide from your Stormtree-sequenced crapwhat are your Necros doing? I thought you guys work with Ori-Thaum. You should just let me sequence your Meta. Save yourself the misery.+

+Yeah, considering Im not gonna enjoy explaining our relationship to the Longeyes, the answer is still no. Sorry.+ Looking at the corpse, she shook her head and sighed. Fuck me, thats a big one.

Hard to imagine it had been right in front of her this entire time.

She traveled through the concrete to arrive in the room at the same time Raldi started talking. For a good while, the target remained hidden, and her patience frayed.

If there was one thing Reva Javvers hated, it was Incogs. Godsdamned Silvers were half-strands for making that.

Walking over to the unmoving creature, she looked down at its still form and the eight twitching carapaced limbs connected to its back. There was something bone-like about its appearance, but when she nudged it over and one of the plates shielding its face flopped open, she found herself wondering if it was some kind of heavily modified ghoul.

+What is that?+ Raldi whispered in her mind. +That looks like a ghoul but it was running an Incog What killed it?+

Never mind that, she replied, her attention entirely fixated on the building plumes of fire prying from between the scar tissue of reality, I got some shitter news.

+I oh, fuck I see it. Thats a bigger problem+

Yeah, Reva breathed. Im not the only Clad in this room.