10-19 Daemon (I) (Patreon)

“Reva, did you know your uncle could do… that?”

“What? Talk with a bunch of loci-infested golems and stop them from glassing the entire district? No. No, I did not know the piece of shit was a golem whisperer, Tig.”

“Good thing too. The Shatterflames snuffed Ullens pretty quick. Heh. Poor half-strand’ll be pissed when he resurrects. ‘First of Reva’s Bloodthanes to die to a golem.’ Agh. Modern Highflame design will lessen the sting though. Shame.”

“Don’t tease the juv about it. He’s young. He’ll learn. And he’ll fight you.”

[Sigh] “Longeyes should’ve never made a Wargskin a ‘Clad.”

[Chuckle] “You and I aren’t exactly ideal Godclad material ourselves. Root manage to figure out how to collapse the containment yet?”

“Last I heard him crackle from that… uh… radio-gizmo, he said it’s atrophying by itself. Whoever put it up didn’t intend for this to be a lasting thing.”

“...”

“What?”

“Nothing makes sense about this, Tig. Mirrorhead somehow knows we’re here all of a sudden, somehow has four knots of bleeding-edge golems straight out of Highflame’s armories, but then throws all his assets away in a pointless assault… And then Uncle Vince manages to talk the golems down somehow. Some-fucking-how.” [Sighs] “The Longeyes are going to be howling at us from out our wounds for this. No way this slips by the ‘Watch. Voiders are going to call a Moot. You mark my words about that.”

“Fuuuuuuuccccckk… You’re right. We’re gonna spend half a month being questioned by one of their Full-Chromes. Streamed live to the entire godsdamned city. Shit.”

“Yeah. Well. Us and Jhred Greatling–the shadows are coming down. Get ready–what… “ [Discordant sounds; the shattering of glass] “RUPTURE! RUPTURE! DAEMON! GET DOWN! STAY AWAY FROM–”

-Conversation between “Tigertail” and Reva Javvers, Bloodthanes of Stormtree

10-19

Daemon (I)

Blade-edged brambles of blood sprouted from the sheen puddling above the linoleum. Gore and debris overflowed from the moat around the food court, the fluid heterogeneous and thick–porridge made from a massacre. Oscillating light spilled free from the virus-stricken aerolanes behind the collapsed walls of glass, the running red offered glinting reciprocations.

Above the red, two minds rocked on waves of haemokinetic Nether: The first was a sinking vessel capsized by regret and sorrow; the latter rose a lighthouse made from the blood sea itself, its shine a beacon of savage triumph.

“What… was it always… you?” Jhred croaked. It took a supreme effort of will on the Guilder’s part to produce those words. An effort of will Avo thought the man long hollow of.

A final staccato of gauss fire thundered from behind. Avo kept his attention on his prize. His sweet, delicious, broken prize.

“No,” Avo said, knowing the truth would fissure Jhred’s ego further. “There were many. Incubi were here. That wasn’t a lie.”

Heeding the command of its sovereign, the blood obliged. Spear-like threads shot free of the brambles and sank into Jhred’s flesh. To Avo’s disappointment, the Guilder gave no hint of pain or discomfort. The only thing that consumed the latter was the shame of a shattered desire and the bitterness of vengeance unsated.

The ghoul played at torture a few moments longer; this was to be a sampling of private pleasure before the main course heralded by the arrival of the others. Just a moment between him and his prey. The Woundshaper subsumed the blood coursing through Jhred’s veins, its presence like virus and boundary both, shaping new implants of torment from within the Guilder. Still, no screams or cries followed.

The man simply did not feel pain as a flat did.

Dismay filled the ghoul, and in its place disgust roiled. He should have known that the sensation of pain would be another thing the Guilders modified within themselves.

Jacking into the mind of his victim, Avo siphoned understanding anew from the exhaust of thoughts hissing free from Jhred’s cracked Metamind. A feeling of dull static ebbed from the man’s already healing wounds. There was only blandness; no true taste to this pain.

Avo growled. “Take. Take. Take. All you do. Take from me. Can’t even suffer right.” The pounding splashes approached from behind. Willing his Echoheads to rattle, Avo found the Blockcrawler sliding down from the slope of gushing blood behind him, emerging from a vast rent opened diagonally across the block–damage inflicted during the slaughter moments prior. Avo hissed in disappointment.

His annoyance was a fleeting thing.

Drawing weight from the lake of blood around him, Avo accelerated his reflexes and dove into Jhred’s mind.

As he descended this time, the simulation of the man’s inner palace flickered and glitched, missing mem-data and frayed sequences unrooting the entire structure from stability. Chasms bearing blocks rose and drifted, the place seemingly held together only by the tightness of wards. Activating his Ghostjack, Avo set to work, salvaging what phantasmics, sequences, ghosts, and traumas he could.

GHOSTS: [11566]

COPYING PHANTASMICS

[PHALANX DEFENSE WARD]

[STRATEGIST]

[QUARTERMINDER]

[ROOT OF THE IMPLACABLE]

DOWNLOADING TRAUMA PATTERN: [REVENGE UNSATED]; [JHRED’S HUMILATION]

Devastated hulks of drifting architecture unraveled within the palace, undone as ghosts broke from the chains of their union. Where mist and light and the flavor of folklore adorned Jhred’s mind once, now there were but static wounds building as scabs of errors consumed entire sections of his mind.

Even so, Avo’s procurement of phantasmics had proven to be a good haul. When he was finished with this task, he would have to examine the properties of the preserved assets, along with all other useful mem-data he pilfered. There was information to be cleaned out here. Details regarding the structure of Highflame and deeper revelations that they withheld from the public. Even the FATED who lived in the Tiers.

And then there was the most interesting artifact of all. Something that few would cast aside once granted the privilege: A FATE SKEIN identification code.

Avo recorded the code using his memories before doing one final sweep. Copying over a few memories more, he finished with the cannibalization of Jhred’s mind and returned to finish the job in the flesh.

If nothing else, the sheer wealth of phantasmal resources the Guilder possessed would allow Avo more room to experiment in the near future. He would, however, need to infuse most of them into crystallized blood fragments. The mass of over ten thousand ghosts guaranteed that subtlety was impossible, and again, a Necrojack’s greatest strength lay in being unseen.

Of course, he was more than just a Necrojack now. With his haemokinesis and the Yondergales, perhaps he might be able to find a way to engage in dives while augmenting himself with more asymmetrical means of stealth…

Avo felt quivering fingers wrap around his leg. Jhred was clinging to him, struggling to think of what followed such an action. “What… you took something… you give it back–”

Two Echoheads speared down from opposite sides. One sliced through the edge of Jhred’s elbow. The seams of his suit parted. The outer of layer skin peeled free. Yet, at the first touch of muscle, the tail rang off from subdermal enhancements. The other Echohead whipped up like an ascending flail, cracking into the Guilder’s forearm. Jhred jerked and flopped, face smearing into the blood. But his arm did not break.

Gazing into his quarry via the sense of blood, Avo noticed only a partially torn tendon. The Guilders never skimped on the quality of their enhancements. Such a thing reminded Avo of another set of details. Scanning the memories he just took from Jhred, he found twin Voider grafters that used to do business for him.

Good. That would give Avo the edge for future negotiations.

“Give… give back,” Jhred muttered, eyes face as he stared along the crimson waters coating his face.

“No,” Avo said. Lifting his hand, the blood mimicked his action, raising Jhred on a pedestal as newly construct tentacles held him aloft. “Give enough. Think I’m going to take more now. You smell good. Will you taste good?” He drew Jhred in closer, regarding the Guilder’s eyes. The orbs were gleaming bright, so watery, so ripe. Sniffling, the taste was something entirely novel, never indulged.

And for Avo, it was forbidden fruit no more.

Salivating, the ghoul opened his mouth and bit down around the man’s face. Jhred didn’t struggle–didn’t fully remember what it meant to struggle. He made a gasp of discomfort as Avo inhaled, fangs anchoring against bone, tongue finding purchase beneath the folds of the eye.

Then, with a bit of help from his Heaven, Avo began to imbibe.

The taste of it was divine. The flesh of new nobility was a different drug, and the sweetness of the eye bursting upon the buds of his tongue made Avo chuff with pleasure. Slurping up the optical cords as well, it took a concentrated effort liquefying all the genetically thickened threads before–

“Couldn’t’ve waited for one fuckin’ minute, could you rotlick?” Draus’ voice interrupted him at his moment of reverie. Swallowing the delicacy that already slid down the back of his mouth, Avo bit down and severed what remained of the organ as he turned, leaving Jhred to sag against the pedestal of blood, moaning low notes of horror.

The Blockcrawler had been parked just beyond where the bridge was–the one that led into the Mall Brawl during the first fight. Draus, black and armored in the chitinous carapace of her bio-rig,  walked up to Avo and Jhred, unphased by the ichorous horror around her.

The same could not be said for Essus and Chambers. Standing on the back of the vehicle, the former father regarded his surroundings, stupefied by the sheer scale of the slaughter. From out the bottom hatch of the block-penetrating vehicle, Chambers emerged left foot first, coming down just in time to step and slip upon half of someone’s face as it came carried on currents of blood.

“What the fuck–” Chambers stumbled and fell back. Rantula’s coat opened, exposing the fullness of his indecency to Avo. Considering the swell of his intestines, there might still be aratnids inside him. Landing hard and painting his backside with gore, the ex-enforcer gave a startled cry as he realized what he slipped on. The cry turned into a yelp when a leg bounced off his shoulder. “What… the thorough fuck.”

Unlike his previous cursing, a note of confused dread and anguish muted the enforcer’s voice.

“Jhred fuckin’ Greatling,” Draus said as she approached. Looking the beaten Guilder up and down, she collapsed her helmet and spat at his feet. “Funny how we turn out lookin’ like our ma and pa. ‘Cept none of us much remember her.”

Jhred’s lip twisted in a fleeting flare of rage. He tried to remember what one was supposed to do when insulted, but thoughts and memories were hard–so hard.

Injecting a circuit of blood into Draus’ Meta, he invited her past the veil of his thoughtstuff, together beholding the devastation he wrought on the Guilder’s mind.

The Regular whistled. “Shit, Avo. This is beautiful. Just beautiful.” She turned and aimed a smile at him. “Nothin’ quite hurts inside like a thought-castrated Guilder.” Her amusement dampened. “Would’ve liked for him to really know why we’re about to hurt him, though.”

“Too dangerous,” Avo said. “Let him keep thinking and he’ll use his Heaven. There will be a fight. Rend should be spiked up to seventy percent. Good as snuffed.”

“Hell yeah,” Draus laughed. “Good thing for us the half-strand was too big on himself to have some kinda kill switch implanted. Lets us have a little time for dialogue. Regrettin’ that now, aren’t we Greatling? Doesn’t that remind us of someone?”

“Reminds me of another thing,” Avo looked at Draus. Jhred Greatling’s Frame. After they finished real-deathing the Guilder, he would pull it into himself. Graft it onto Draus.

If that was what she wanted.

Inhaling sharply with annoyance, she sensed his flowing thoughtstuff and turned to say something. “Avo–”

The sound of vomit splattering into blood interrupted Draus. The stench hit Avo, the thick sour of stomach acid and pasty blandness of nutrient mush. Turning, he found Chambers on his knees at the edge of the moat, retching violently as Essus held him up. An expression of mind-blanking horror continued to remain scrawled across the former father’s face as his head swung from left to right, beholding the ruins of the Mall Brawl.

He had been here, once. Slated to be offered to Avo’s brethren here, the entertainment was a lure to draw Avo into the arena. Afterward, Essus tried to end himself using the arcing electricity surging across the pylons.

The holographic projections of the boy and Avo now faced the blood-swallowed rubble which once held thousands of enforcers–enforcers who now found themselves ingredients of the blood-soaked slurry instead of rowdy spectators.

Essus gazed at Avo. Beneath him, Chambers moaned as he spat clinging strands of stomach fluid. “You told me once of Artad’s absence. You told me, and I lied to myself, invoking my god as philosophy; as a virtuous idol.” His burning eyes shone as he gazed upon the glorious atrocity spread out before him. “You were right. You were right–the city was right. Artad is dead. Dead in his entirety. Dead like all the other gods.”

Essus looked down, focusing on his own reflection in the gore-mixed puddle. Suddenly, he rose, his face mask a mask of anger as he dropped Chambers into the crimson and strode across the bridge toward Jhred’s kneeling form. “Is this how things are to be now? Is this all that we could conceive as… as free people? That you could conceive as master of this city?”

Avo clicked his fangs together, desiring to impede Essus before the fool could claim the kill for himself. New flavors though Essus’ retribution might offer, this was a pound of flesh Avo wanted to indulge personally. It was not ever that a ghoul got to taste the meat of a Guilder. They could all share in the mutilation and harm of the Greatling, but the ghoul would not abide by all the pleasure granted to only one individual. Before he could halt Essus, a hand caught him by the crook of his elbow.

+Relax. He ain’t gonna kill ‘em,+ Draus said, looking at the father. +He ain’t got it in him. He’ll break. It’ll be us again.+

Shooting a look at the father again, Avo let the Regular pull him along. +Certain?+

+Beyond certain. He ain’t got it.+

Standing over the downed Guilder, the FATELESS faced his tormentor–the sponsor behind his ascent into the city via Crucible and master to the girl who butchered his son. No longer did Jhred Greatling look Tier-perfect. No longer was he a being of impossible superiority compared to the former flat.

An open gorge of ropey sinew bounced from the man’s left eye. If not for the scabs and rapidly crawling pinkish-sheath trying to reconstitute the missing eye, it would have seemed the Guilder was going be down an eye forever.

Even so, the question of who was more fragile between the two remained. For an instant, Avo thought Essus would shatter there and then, his face twitching between uncontrollable anger and inconsolable sadness.

The man known as Mirrorhead portrayed himself only between moments of regret and confusion, a thought-cleaved haze guttering his thoughts. “Linge–Lingerer? My Lingerer?”

“No. Not yours! Never yours again!” Reaching down, Essus seized the Jhred by his collar. “Tell me,” Essus cried, voice rising to a desperate howl. “You have the power… endless power! Endless!” Lifting the Guilder up, he made him turn and face the slaughter. “But was this the most you desired? This? To drive thousands to their death.”

“I… I had to avenge… I needed to kill…”

“No!” Essus roared, taking the object of his hatred by the shoulders. “You did not need to kill! You wanted to kill! You chose to kill! You chose to hurt people–men, women, children! Everyone you touch you hurt! Never once did you do something good–never once!”

Jhred choked back a sob. “My… my mother. I had to… to avenge…”

“What about my son,” Essus seethed. “My son. He did not kill anyone. He did not start any war. Why him?”

Faced with such a question, all Jhred Greatling could offer was a tilt of the head as he struggled to string together an answer. “You’re… FATELESS. I… needed you to do… greater things… I… I never thought of him… as…”

As a person. As my equal. As worth regarding as anything more than fuel for the city–fuel for a Soul.

Looking over the carnage, Avo felt the fire of his own Frame roaring, its radiance like a nuclear warhead exploding–constantly exploding. Disquietingly, he understood how Jhred felt. More than merely for the joy of killing, for the taste of flesh and the hit of cruelty, he liked the growing bulk building within. Liked the deepening hum of his thaumic resonance. Liked the flare and reach of his Soul’s growing borders.

He liked being a god. And in the depths of his being, the Woundshaper crackled with laughter.

So the truth was revealed. Jhred Greatling’s open admission. A thing Avo understood.

And the words that shattered Essus entirely.

Draus was right. The father didn’t have it. He never had it. Not even for the boy. All that time, Jhred Greatling never regarded the child’s holographic form once.

Releasing the Guilder, father-no-longer took two steps back, his titanium legs pounding and cracking linoleum, throwing up sprays of blood. Looking up at Layer Two–a blockade of alloy and glass and screaming error codes, the man screamed too, howling a note of anguish and despair toward the skies unseen.

And with all the miles of city above, Avo knew the father would go unheard all the same.

“Is this all there is,” Essus moaned. “This city… the best thing in it. You? Both of you?” Essus dropped a glance at Avo and Draus, conveying the fullness of his despair. “A monster that dreams of flesh. A huntress that chases death. This is the best… the best of us?” Essus sank to his knees. “Why were the chains ever broken then? What was Artad shattered for? What did Jaus even free us from?”

The splash of bare feet wading through blood heralded Chambers as he faced the maltreated form he knew as Mirrorhead. The ex-enforcer stopped, face pale from spewing. “Shit,” he chuckled. His heart wasn’t in the noise. Chambers swallowed. He was fighting the urge to throw up again. “Looks… looks like you fuc–agh!” He failed. Only fluid rushed free from his mouth this time. He emptied himself again, gagging as he tried to stop himself from getting anything on Avo’s talons.

The ghoul frowned. Was it something the man ate? Why was he–

+It’s the blood and the death,+ Draus asked.

Avo didn’t get it. Looking around, he breathed in the clashing aromas born from the slaughter. All the different flavors of blood types and organs and the tang of metal and the redolence of offal. All of it was a joy to inhale.

+For you, consang,+ Draus added, a note of wry amusement. +Some folk ain’t made for the killin’.+

Wiping the bile away with his arm, Chambers was unable to meet Avo eye to eye. Instead, he looked again at Mirrorhead and winced. “So… uh. What… what are we gonna do now? You… you want me to–let’s find some aratnids.” The enforcer brightened, a new thought capturing his focus. “The type that bit me. Let’s pull down his pants and have two of them bite the shit out of his sack. Then, when the eggs from the sides start hatching inside his balls, we can watch the clusters fight and bet imps on–”

WARNING: FOREIGN SOULS DETECTED

UNIDENTIFIED GODCLADS DETECTED

The warning wailed loud in Avo’s mind just as the first spear of light flashed over the blood. From his experiences facing golems, Mirrorhead, and Zein, only direct exposure of a Heaven in use revealed the presence of a Frame and the Soul that burned within it.

Rising on his Echoheads, Avo spun back a second behind Draus as a tide of blinding light enveloped them.

Then came the voice. The voice of a screaming star. The voice of a dawn exploding with ire and hatred, lifted by a chorus of screaming falcons.

“UNDER THE DECREE OF HIGHFLAME! UNDER THE WILL OF THE SERAPHS, THE RULE OF THE AUTHORITIES, AND THE MIGHT OF THE INSTRUMENT, I COMMAND YOU ALL TO STEP AWAY FROM THE WOUNDED, AND FACE DELIVERANCE.”

The weight of two new Godclads pressed down on Avo.

And the thrill and hunger ignited within him anew.