12-3 The Easy Armistice (II) (Patreon)

Heavens are comprised of a unified retelling of a story. This is what makes them so hard to counter–they don’t need to make exact sense in the broad scheme of things, but as long as enough people repeat the same rituals and mutter the same prayers and worship the same scripture, a sort of pattern forms in existence.

Something that lets the Heaven embed itself into a few central concepts.

Where hubris and Rend come in are curious as well. From the accounts we’ve collected, hubris seems to be born of illogical pitfalls or hard limitations as stated in their mythology.

Take the Sangeist for example. How blood works around that thing is absolute nonsense, right? But we know this: It can use its blood and mimic the general qualities of solid matter while still maintaining its own. Two things about this. One is that solid matter means literally anything that seems “solid” from the perspective of the worshippers that defined it. This means structures like fissile material or adamantine can be adapted to their structures.

The expression of said materials can get… strange, though.

But not antimatter. And not a hydrogen cell. Magma is… more of a variable thing depending on if it's flowing or not. They can do it if it's not moving but the effects are… confusing for the Heaven to say the least.

The Daemon, however. That’s something else. From our current suspicious, our best guess is that the Heavens still have some latent memories of the entities that they once housed, allowing their users to wield them with almost no learning curve on the mechanical end, but even so, there seems to be enough left behind that when something blatantly blasphemous or… “out of character” occurs, so to speak, it risks awakening inside the user as well–the connection between the forming a metacognitive link.

All this is to say operate with caution. The Ruptured function on a few shared restrictions, but most of their rules vary wildly.

When there are Heavens for everything from dogs to soundwaves, your best chances of staying safe are staying away and staying aware.

-Orientation on Frames and Heavens for Planetside Assets, Node “Aegis”, Voidwatch

12-3

The Easy Armistice (II)

The first layer of the Easy Armistice unveiled itself with the aero’s slow rotation. With each inch they turned, the foreground unzipped, revealing a bright new horizon through a blurred cleft of space.

Looking back to gaze upon the sprawling shanties below, Avo found them wobbling before its sight, their geometric outlines jiggling like vibrating strings.

“We’re transitioning,” Denton explained. A low frequency followed her words, the pitch light but constant, rising and falling in a repetition of patterns. “The turning’s for aligning ourselves with the signal. Too fast and we miss the frequency. Too slow and the curtain doesn’t lift.”

“Heaven of Pitches?” Avo said. “Or geometry?”

The Glaive shook her head. “The Easy Armistice is special-made. Heaven of Signals.” World around them brightened as the interior of the voidship dulled away into the background. It was like all other than the Easy Armistice was losing focus, dissolving into faint clashes and dappled light and muted sound.

The pitch spiked. The glass of the wielded squealed momentarily before the Twice-Walker passed beneath its translucence and pinched it still.

“It wasn’t going to break,” Denton said, reassuring Draus.

The Regular didn’t reply.

Enshadowed within the light, the Armistice resembled something in the shape of a hanging acorn at the heart of the radiance. Light spread out, enveloping the aero as the frequency rose to its apex.

Avo hissed as he felt a spike of pain pulse throughout his cochlea. The violence of his reaction made Chambers jerk back in his seat.

“Uh, you alright, consang?” the man asked.

The light began to settle. Casting his gaze out through the vehicle’s sensors, he found himself in a place shrouded by a canopy of titanic brambles and spilling leaves. Through crevices offered by wrestling branches fell the first spills of miracle-infused light.

Bathed in the rays, Avo felt his injury promptly dissolve.

“I feel a nearness to this place,” his Woundshaper said. “Something that once belonged to our Domain of Biology shares an origin to the mythos that covers this realm within a realm.”

“Must we stay,” the Galeslither said. ‘Must we linger? This is a cage… This is a trap. We must be free. We must—”

“Calm yourself, mule. This eventuality has been prepared. Let the huntress serve her purpose. You just be prepared to serve yours.”

A low note of discontentment mantled the Galeslither’s emotions. “I rode free once. Now I am debased. Mine is not shadow. Mine was storm and sky and message. Mine was–”

“Past and lost!” The Woundshaper cut it off. “We are all past and lost! Struck down by the children–struck down by the ephemerals and partlings. Hewn from our foundations. What shame, I ask? Let us fall, I say. If the tower cannot stand upon the base that was built, then it was never a tower to be.”

The Heavens argued on thereafter, sparring within the gilded cage that was his Frame. He himself found more interest in examining the establishment that was the Armistice.

“Acorn” was no longer an apt enough descriptor for its general shape–the word “beehive” had to be added as well. Crenulations lined with uncounted aerodocks dotted the underside of the structure’s emerald composition and from its base spilled ran an endless thread that expanded into the plane around him, weaving into the boundless awning that enwreathed them so.

Three miles long and two wide, the upper second of the thinkeasy emerged as a geodesic dome painted with flowing ghosts peddling products and memories. A spiral of advertisements and banned sequences flowed across its polarized exterior offering inventories of cutting-edge weaponry, Tier-category implants, Incubi-specific phantasmics, expert-rating vicarities, banned Pre-Godsfall literature, squadrons of grid-linked assault drones, and most surprisingly of all, discounted golems burning a similar Heaven to that which Chambers’ new Soul enkindled.

New Vultun was a city of vultures as much as it was a city of predation. Opportunity was endless. The only question was if you had the mettle to take before others could seize.

As they approached, a pair of triple-jointed leg transplants turned into sight–SkuldRunner parkour prosthesis. Allowed for rapid omnidirectional movement. This was purely a sports model–for leisure instead of combat from the lack of armoring. The only thing that might have appealed to his group was the free GTG Particle Cutter that came with it. Customarily, the Particle Cutter came with five Woundhound injectables to deal with the inevitable bouts of resulting cancer.

“Whoa,” Chambers breathed as he scanned the ads. “Avo–Avo, they got full sheathe conversion. Avo check this shit out! Wait, Avo we can sell our organs over and over–We can’t die. Holy shit, we’re gonna be swimming in imps. Fuck, I’m gonna buy so much shit…”

Avo studied the man as he brushed over mem-con after mem-con, accepting unverified ghost-link after ghost-link. It grew obvious how his mind turned into the festering midden that it was, but as nothing assailed him, Avo found himself impressed.

Whoever ran N-Sec for the Easy Armistice held their stray Necros on a strict regimen. Usually, it took Guild-level infrastructure to enforce lobbies this clean, private though they might be.

As they drew closer, one of the aerodocks on the underside flashed twice and mem-data booted through the aero’s locus.

AEROVEC: SVLR-FTD-G9998 INBOUND

“Got a special parkin’ spot for your lonesome?” Draus asked.

“Something like that,” Denton replied. She shot Chambers’ exposed skin a look and her expression flinched, a frown threatening to come over her. “We’re also going to need to fix that.”

Chambers turned around to look at her. “Hm?”

Pulling up on the sofa pads, she slid open a storage compartment and ruffled through the contents for a moment. Frowning slightly, her hand emerged with a diamond-studded pair of pale leather pants.

Avo sniffed. One of his Echoheads crackled. He knew that scent.

Ghoul-leather.

He saw Draus staring at him from the corner of his eye. She knew as well. A byproduct of her ghoul slaughtering days, no doubt.

“I don’t have anything larger than this,” Denton said. “Thankfully, your morphology isn’t overly modified so–”

Hands blurred. Chambers snatched the pants out from her grasp. Denton blinked, caught off guard by how fast he accepted the item. “I love it.” He pulled it close and took a sniff before running the diamonds down the sides of his face. His mop of hair bounced as he bobbed in his seat with giddy delight, humming about his new pants.

“Thanks a bunch, consang.” He drew his knees up at the same time and kicked out, fully exposing himself once more before sliding his legs down into the pants. “Al-right. No more Rash-risk. For now.” He mimed gun noises with his fingers as he swept them across everyone. “Ah. Thanks a bunch, Silver. I gotta say, I used think all you Ori-fuckers were a bunch of mind-jumping perverts, but you know what? You’re different. I wouldn’t mind if you’re a pervert.”

“I… yes,” Denton said. The nod she gave was as slow as a snail swimming through molasses. In her other hand were a pair of clean boxers. She put them back, seeing as Chambers had neither noticed nor asked for any additional coverings. “Glad to be of service.”

A vibration shuddered through the air, a steady percussive beat resembling the sound of old artillery being fired.

Essus blinked and rubbed at his eyes. “But we’re inside the ship?”

When they landed, Draus removed thin sheets from each of the aero’s windowpanes and wrapped them around her arms to preserve their escape options. Behind the translucent, he could sense the Twice-Walker trailing them, Draus’ anchored in all nearby reflections.

“Just in case,” she said.

Denton frowned. “Just make sure you don’t hurt anyone. There’s one way into the Easy Armistice but many, many ways out. They just need to tune you out from the frequency.”

That offered more than a little detail as to how the demiplane comprised itself. Frequency. Wavelengths perhaps? Or just sounds marking different individuals or spaces? Either way, it made protecting this place easy. Preventing unwanted entry or removing unruly guests might just require a slight tuning and nothing more.

The aero’s doors slid open and a cherry-sweet aroma filled the air as a quarter of floating drones latched onto the vehicle to begin necessary maintenance. While the drones worked, the light outside dimmed as blast doors closed around the exterior, masking the canopy beyond from sight.

Here was another thing that the Spine didn’t have much of–automated services and logistical functionality. Things were maintained up here.

Walton had said something about this phenomenon. The closer one was to the Maw, the more actively their lives took on the traits of entropy and decay. The further away, however, toward the sky, the Tiers, and the void itself, humanity began a courtship with immortality by means of alloy or apotheosis.

“Come on,” Denton said, guiding them toward a closed entry that looked like a gnarled bark clasped in a mockery of interlocking ribs.“Time to get you all connected.” Her Metamind pulsed and a static lance carried her thoughtstuff through walls and across miles. Low sequences of shrieking notes sounded, and in that instant followed amber-hued light and the soft song of a muted horn.

The wood from the bark slide back into the emerald superstructure and the path before them cleared.

“That a Heaven too?” Draus asked.

Denton entered the passage. “Everything here is part of a Heaven. You’ll get used to it.”

“Don’t reckon this place is Rend-cheap.”

“Privacy begets a premium price in this urban panopticon, Captain Draus.”

Convenience was another hallmark of the city’s heights. Here, the structures of existence could be remolded to suit the needs of the individual, with distances shrunk and verticalities altered through the whims of the basest canons.

After a month of being a Godclad, Avo felt a deeper kinship forming between him and New Vultun.

A city of predation.

A city of vultures.

A city of technology and mythology entwined.

But ultimately, a city of presiding stories.

That was what a Heaven was in the end: Overriding narratives told in place of what was.

“Whoa,” Chambers said as they arrived at the heart of the thinkeasy. “It’s gonna take me a while to get used to this.”

A single tree-like pillar spun in place before them, a vast structure that stretched vertically for three miles. Its entire expanse was parted into five different platforms, and impossibly, there were people sitting and walking on both ends, be they upright or upside down.

The constant buzz of shuttling service drones deepened the hive-like theme presented by the Armistice. Holocoated bodies with heavily warded Metas formed the bulk of the clientele and as Avo took in his surroundings, he found them walking across every flat surface.

“Gravity adheres to different rules here,” Denton said, waving at the pillar before them. “That’s the center. Force comes out from that and presses down on everything with an edge. Don’t jump off the sides or you’ll be falling at terminal velocity in endless loops. The drones will have to catch you, but they won’t be gentle about it.”

“You speakin’ from experience?” Draus asked, eyes darting from point to point as she took in her surroundings. Doubtless, she was considering her exposure, her potential angles of attack or defense.

He couldn’t fault her – his own preoccupation in the present was not so different as he scried at the Necrotheurgic talent present.

From the wards alone, he wasn’t in milk-run territory anymore. They weren’t Incubi, but judging from most of the accretions around him, competence was the expected baseline. These were seasoned street squires and snuffers at the very least. A few offered hints of potential above that.

A link shot out from Denton’s mind, hooking out to capture a passing drone as it flashed red and then green. “I got us a booth. If any of you are hungry or thirsty, there’s a scan-in menu in place. Two of my associates will be joining us shortly. We can talk in-depth then.”

“Might we know one of them,” Draus said, her voice edged with thin disdain.

“I doubt it,” Denton replied. “As I said before, the old woman will probably be occupied for a while.”

The supposed booth she procured was a small alcove that sunk inward from the side of the cylinder surrounding the central pillar. The sensation of stepping over the threshold and expecting to fall before gravity adjusted to their sense of verticality was uncanny, but in moments, they found themselves situated around a risen marble table lit by a hovering locus.

Soft frequencies continued to play from speakers embedded into the walls, their notes masked by the somber melody of a strange wind-based instrument. There was sourness in the music. A certain feeling of longing and nostalgia he couldn’t quite place.

“You like it?” Denton said. Avo turned to regard her.

“Don’t know the instrument.”

“It’s called a saxophone. The player’s name was Osjon Coldtrain, I think. He was a Vodiwatch musician. Old. Very old.” She smiled faintly as the notes continued to flow. “You know this song is banned, right? This, along with its entire genre? Supposedly, there was an attempt to make a Heaven out of them. It went wrong. It went bad.”

“New rhyme same as the fuckin’ first,” Draus said. “Now. Where’re your consangs? We’ll hear what you got to say but you gotta forgive us if we ain’t feelin’ all that patient after today.”

“Of course,” the Glaive said. “They should be–”

A shadow fell over the alcove. “Sorry, Denton. Got caught up putting her in the corner. So. Is this our little band? A victim, some half-strand, a Color-Puppet, and a rotlick.” He laughed. There was an unnaturally silken quality to his voice, with the way he spoke almost alluring to the ears. “Godsdamned do the fates frown on us.”

“Just sit down, Cas,” Denton said.

Their answer came in with a low humming chorus of bees that flooded in over the edge.

To Avo’s disbelief, the faintness wove between them, like their interconnected minds were generated a cloud of cognition from phermones and hive-like synchronicity alone.

“Sorry,” the swarm buzzed as they fused into a ball. “We had some delays. The Paladins nearly looped half of us off.”

Chambers blinked. “Are these fat-fleas talking to us?”

The swarm formed the vague approximation of a frowning face. “I’m more like a collection of bees.”

Essus’ leaned over the table and frowned. “And what is a… bee?”

Somehow, the collection of insects managed to sigh.