12-4 The Frame (I) (Patreon)

Don’t fuck with the voiders.

I’m serious, consangs. Just don’t.

I know most the other Guilds talk about Voidwatch and their “Enjoined Governing Intellects” like they’re the softer, coldtech version of Omnitech, but the truth is they’re better than us. Older than us. Hell. If it weren’t for them, we’d be nothing more than savages and enclaves now. A bunch of broken half-strands living in shit-heap worshiping our new Fallwalker gods.

But that’s just the thing. They won’t touch thaumaturgy or necrotheurgy; they treat it like poison. Anything to do with the gods or the eldritch, I guess. And considering how the rest of the big black yonder is beyond Idheim, I don’t think I can blame ‘em.

I did a run for them once. A simple retrieval job. They lent me this gun–well, it was more battle platform than gun. Best godsdamned weapon I ever got to fire. Doesn’t run out of bullets. Lets you know everything in a two-hundred-kilometer radius. Everything. Aratnid nests, aeros, heartrates, hostile loadouts. I managed to shoot the loci out a bunch of golems using it.

Fifth best day of my life.

I’ll tell you, if they ever decide to end their little restriction on gods, we’re done. It’s their planet by then and they can just do what they want. But the question keeps coming back to that, doesn’t it?

If Souls and Heavens put a bunch of up-jumped savages like us on the same pedestal as the titans of the void, just what the hells made the last surviving power in this Ruptured galaxy choose Idheim as their hiding spot?

-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens

12-4

The Frame (I)

Sunrise was not from Idheim. That was clear to Avo from a glance.

The more he studied the swarm’s thoughtstuff, the more he found himself lost in its phantasmal symphony. Strings of mem-data flowed between each one of its “bodies” like liquid circuitry. As such, its mind did not form so much an accretion as it did a kaleidoscopic lattice. Bathed in his perceptive exhale, the reality behind the swarm’s sapience was never in question, but a curtain of static integers spilled from its hive-link mind.

The sinews of its dreams were ones, zeros, and symbols beyond Avo’s comprehension, the presence of unknown technology and withheld gnosis to the waters that crowned Denton.

“Ms. Denton, could you please tune the frequency for our table,” Sunrise said. Its words came as a buzzing melody, the ball of thickened insects vibrating outward from the core as if a dense cloud rippling from its nucleus.

“Turn it to Hendricks. I want to hear some strings.” The other newcomer said this as he settled in next to Denton, stepping down into the alcove and then suddenly rotating ninety degrees upright.

His invertedness was more than literal. Where Denton and Sunrise had their minds warped by coldtech, the man’s thoughstuff ran as solid and round as any self-aware creature born on Idheim. Even his aesthetic ran counter to the woman he sat beside. A flashing holocoat obscured his body from sight as he hid behind a veil of strobing darkness. Past the disguise, however, Avo could what sounded like a piston hammering away inside the man’s chest, pumping rhythmic beats as his blood surged through his arteries in constant cycles.

Avo’s Auto-Seance activated. Draus cast him a memory. +He’s got a Dynamite Stringsmith Mark Twelve for an arm. Real gutterware stuff. Like having six different instruments packed into a single limb. Listen. You can practically hear the twangs of the strings every time he moves.+

The limb’s models and specifications spilled over Avo’s vision as his curiosity grew. From a brief dip into the public Nether, the appendage was popular amongst anti-Guilder revolutionaries and aficionados of classical-style voider music. Whichever clique this “Cas” fell into, Avo couldn’t tell, but the man’s face looked as rough as mistreated leather.

Three lines of ritualized scarification ran across his face and ridged the bridge of his nose, but he wasn’t nearly large enough to be a born Scaarthian. His features were hardened and rough, with a substantial jawline and poorly shaven beard that resembled a clash between patches of hair upon skin. Dark green eyes glowed from within depressed sockets as he glared back at Avo, moving his jaw from side to side.

“You thinking about taking a bite, ghoul?” he asked.

Avo didn’t look away. Social embarrassment was a human emotion, and he was far too tired to play at pleasantries. “Always. Your eyes don’t look as nice as hers. But eyes are eyes. Flesh is flesh. Still enough taste there.”

The man cocked his head at Avo and narrowed his eyes as he reached into the veil of his holocoat.

Draus’ projectile launcher unfolded with a series of clicking servos. Avo’s Ghostjack surged to activation a moment after.

Chambers’ looked at the two sides and–not wanting to be left out—ignited his index finger. Leaves began to spill out from the heat as he mimed aiming his gun, his expression tight with uncertainty.

“Don’t do it, consang,” Chambers said. “I’ve never shot anyone with my finger before, but I’ll finger you today as a first.” He paused as soon as the words left his mouth. Denton fixed him with an awkward stare.

“Cas,” she said, “mention that you’re going to be pulling out cigarettes next time you do that?”

“Sure, no problem,” he said. He bent in on himself and he clicked his fingers.” Trails of smoke inched upward through the light-formed veils of a holocoat as he drew out a thin-pale stick that stank of petrichor and tobacco. “Val, you’re gonna want to tune that frequency now before a drone comes by to deliver some complaints.”

She did as he requested, but not entirely. Instead of strings or guitars pulsing from nearby speakers, soft chimes from a ringing bell filled the back of Avo’s mind as he inhaled.

And tagged. The smoke from the cigarette tasted as if grains of dirt choking his throat. “Disgusting.”

Cas aimed a broad grin back at him. “Well, if you don’t like that, you’re definitely going to hate biting into my lungs.”

As the musical rhythm rose, the undercurrent of its frequencies changed. Sunrise splayed itself over the table as the entrance to their alcove smeared away, dissolving into a new horizon. No longer did the geodesic structure of the Easy Armistice lay beyond, for in its place stood a tranquil garden dotted with lily pads and croaking creatures. A looming lantern hung in the sky above, its face a mask of illumination, yet its brightness carried nothing of heat.

The smearing of spatial reality continued as a soft breeze slipped been stalks of lengthened stems of jutting green planted in the soil. Looking around, Avo found himself in a small clearing, their dinner table now resting at the center of an open-aired pagoda of stone.

Distant flutes roses in pitch as one led and one trailed.

“I thought I asked for Hendrix,” Cas said, eyeing Denton.

She didn’t even bother giving him a side-eye. “You would’ve gotten Hendrix and Woodstock if you were the one that did the tuning.”

He breathed a sigh of smoke upward into the air as the soft breeze carried the stench away. “Point taken. I’ll do it myself next time.”

“What the hells is this?” Draus asked. “Some kind of spatial pocket?”

“Nah,” Cas replied. “These are actually places. They’re hiding inside different frequencies. The melodies are a delivery point, right? They’re like code–here, watch–” His left arm rose from his coat, and it was as Draus presented. Knobs and tuners clustered his shoulder and upper arms while fourteen copper cords were drawn tight downstream from his wrist like externalized veins.

A dial on the back of his hand spun to a thrumming activation and he began to pluck at the air, each twitch of his multicolored fingers producing clashing notes from different instruments. As his fingers shifted to pull at different angles, a full orchestra cracked out from the man’s chest while his heart grew loud, its percussion forcing order on the song – a thundering spine to the melodic structure.

Space began to smear around them again as frequencies clashed and songs blended together. Flashes of a verdant field and a grand rainbow-painted stage cut over the calm pond beyond the pagoda.

Essus’ eyes were aglow with surprise. For once, the darkness was distant from his expression as his interest was captured. “I… I have heard this song before…”

Cas cut his performance to a halt. The moon and pagoda and the pond slipped back into place.

“Maybe you did,” Cas said, eyeing Essus. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and flicked it over the edge. A dozen or so bees split off from Sunrise’s main swarm to catch the falling narcotic before it could pollute the waters. “You’re new. I see it on your face.” He shook his head. “Who’d you lose climbing the Crucible?”

Silence followed. Essus did not speak. The light of fascination went dim like dying candles. His pain was still raw, but so very obvious.

He was nothing special in New Vultun. Not in the affliction of hurt he suffered nor the symptoms he carried afterward.

There was a nakedness to being so easy to read.

Cas pointed to himself thereafter, tapping his chest. “Well, I’ll start then. Mother. Father. Brother. No, it doesn’t get better on its own. The pain stays, but you can take it out. Hell, the rotlick here could do it for you. But I don’t think you want that, do you? Lose the pain, but lose whoever it is you’re still hurting over? Hmm. Yeah. I see it in you. You got the look of someone that can find some anger in all that–”

“Not now, Cas,” Denton interrupted as a few of Sunrise’s “bodies’ chucked Cas’ cigarette back in his lap. “Do your cult pitch later. We have other superseding matters. Sunrise?”

On cue, one bee broke from the swarm and–to Avo’s surprise–flew into Denton’s mouth. Who promptly started chewing on the insect.

“The fuck?” Chambers muttered.

He promptly blinked as a few of the bees landed on Avo’s shoulder. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the glinting matter lining their bodies. From within his subreality, he heard the Woundshaper adulation.

“This one is made of metal and silicon and more. A creature of alloy in more ways than one. Truly, if this is the work of those who dwell beyond, then mine is admiration earned. Beautiful be the nature of their craft–why, if I was the be bound to talent like a mortal artist, envy would boil me. But alas, this presents a new option for our hunger–find cause to devour one from the void. We must ingrain in ourselves the sinews of their supremacy.”

“You surprise me,” the swarm sang. “We expected you to lose control by now.”

Avo grunted. “How?”

“Your biometric readings indicate a high state of arousal. Your eyes are narrowed and your blood is running fast. From all the data we have compiled, any other being sheathed in your morphology would be experiencing hyper-violent psychosis by this point. You are an extreme outlier.”

He didn’t quite know how to take that. “Saying I’m a faulty ghoul.”

“We don’t have enough information to make a judgment based on that. Only that you are different.”

“Made that way,” Avo replied. A long-suppressed thought moored in his mind as the urge to seek out his home up in the Tiers returned. Walton had done something to create him. Build his mind.

The extent of his true nature was psychopathy and choice both, the traits gifted by determined design. Or so it seemed. If such were to be the case, then he wondered as to the memories he possessed of the Undercroft and his upbringing, of the past he supposedly lived and the life he led.

How much of it was real in totality? How much was just patchwork mem-data taken and perfected into a thinking construct by a father yearning to atone for immortal sins?

“We are all made to be a certain way. By the chaos of evolution and natural birth. Or the focus and sculpture of genetic engineering. But beyond our hardware, there is the totality of our reactions to the things we face. And the lives we lead. You lead a very interesting life, Avo. Very interesting.”

He caught sight of Draus smirk in his periphery. “Well, shit, rotlick. Look at you charmin’ our little bug-consangs with all that self-control. Not havin’ flesh dangling between your fangs has gone and done wonders for that monstrous charisma of yours.”

An Echohead slithered around and snapped out to pierce her from the other side. She caught it without looking.

“Download’s done,” Denton said. Her eyes were cycling now, thoughtstuff rising and cresting in active waves of restructuring sequences. The effects of eating the bee were like a phantasmal seed allowed to sprout at the center of her mind. The static of her thoughts intensified as her accretion swelled. Saving each and every detail using his Metamind, Avo studied the occurrences before him as he tried to puzzle out what was happening to Denton’s mind.

From the roiling substance of thoughstuff emerged phantoms. The ghosts supporting their architecture were likewise mechanical in nature, their forms more circuitry than wisp-like, numbers running up from the roots of their flowing strands.

“If you’re curious about how banned mem-data gets smuggled around, this is the way it's usually done.” Cas shot Denton a look as her eyes began to cycle. “With how many eyes there are in the city, it Guilder Necros long to null you with a desist once they mem-lock to the banned memories. So they parted and parceled and hidden behind cyberized brains. Pure coldtech logic enhancers and the like. Doesn’t work perfectly either though. The Silvers got plenty of Incubi specialized in ‘void-based affairs.’”

“Which is why all confidential and unsanctioned memories are to be assembled here in a thinkeasy,” Denton said, as she began molding her phantoms into shape. “If what I’m about to show you leak over into the public–”

“Yeah,” Avo said. “Hunters.”

“Guild-response knot’s more my guess,” Draus added. “Doubt you just got a couple of sequences of trade secrets rattlin’ around in that mind of yours.”

Denton shrugged coyly. “A bit more, perhaps.”

Her phantoms melded forming multiple interfaces containing specific FATE Skeins and personnel profiles. Slowly, the profiles began to expand into a wider web of intrigue under the header “Project Godshaper.”

By the end, there were a hundred and thirteen dossiers to expand, with each separated into major columns of involvement based on profession. Guilder Godclads, freelance Fallwalkers, commissioned Agnosi, and suspected spies were highlighted with specific labels when looked upon.

Surprise followed as he noticed there were redacted profiles connected to members from Voidwatch. He hadn’t known the voiders to ever assist in thaumaturgically related endeavors, and with the details withheld, his curiosity only grew.

“Voidwatch,” Avo said. “Why are they censored?”

“Because we couldn’t intercept the details from the suspected admins to confirm our suspicions,” Sunrise said, almost mournfully.

“Genesis?” Draus asked.

The swarm hummed melodiously. “Voidwatch isn’t nearly as united as you might assume, Captain Draus.”

Draus sneered. “Yeah, ain’t so different from the others, right?”

“Quite different, I’m afraid,” Sunrise said. “Our union was one held by the dichotomy between extremes. But even between our various governing intellects, there are preferences in lifestyle and–”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Chambers said, interrupting Sunrise. Squinting his eyes, he leaned close to the Agnosi column as he pointed to a profile at the very top. “Bring–bring that one up, I think–” He licked his lips and shot a look at Avo and Draus. “Isn’t she… Isn’t that?”

The profile expanded. The face of the Agnosi bloomed into prominence as her simulated form came into shape above the conspiracy map.

Avo felt his mind reel as Kae Kusanade’s face finally loaded in her entirety. “Kae?”