16-9 On the Trail (I) (Patreon)

{Mayflower-3288-B}: So, I got an idea…

{Terror-3285}: Oh, god

{Mayflower-3288-B}: Hear me out…

{Terror-3285}: Oh, god

{Mayflower-3288-B}: What if…

{Terror-3285}: I’m not making you one of your walking atrocities

{Mayflower-3288-B}: …we combine…

{Terror-3285}: No. We’re not doing that.

{Mayflower-3288-B}: …some design concepts from a Japanese giant hornet, a badger, an orca, and a dog to create—

{Terror-3285}: WHAT… we are going to do when our new “vendor” asks for our help, is create an easily transmissible vector to deal with his kind. We will need to think of a way to bypass the haemophage.

{Mayflower-3288-B}: Well, it’s a good time to ping your Sang contacts. Hell, the admins probably knew we were breaking quarantine for a while. They just need some of us to play the fools for them.

{Terror-3285}: Then why didn’t they cut us off?

{Mayflower-3288-B}: Oh, Janie, Janie, Jane. You never understood our suzerains, did you? They’re not like our bosses or anything. We’re not slaves. They’re more like zookeepers, and we’re the trophy-pets. Everything we feel, believe, do… They can shape without even twisting our personalities. Trust me, they want us to run wild. Letting us work with the ghoul is practically a kick in the ass instead of a slap on the wrist.

{Terror-3285}: …I suppose so. But there’s one thing I never understood.

{Mayflower-3288-B}: Yeah? What’s that?

{Terror-3285}: If they wish to preserve humanity… if they know what the Guilds are doing, and how the terrestrials live… how can they just… accept it.

{Mayflower-3288-B}: I told you, Jane: We’re the trophies. If there’s war between us and the grounders, it’s going to get bad real quick. They’re savages, sure. But if you let a savage dictate how friction or heat works, things are going to stop working for us very quickly, and we’re going to see a spike of RDs across the polities. Don’t ever think this is going to be a one-sided little brawl, and believe you me that we don’t want to meet any of those “Godclads” in person.

-Ansible quick-chat between Mayflower-3288-B “John/Osjohn” and Terror-3285 “Jane/Osjane”

16-9

On the Trail (I)

Shotin Kazahara pitied the Paladins.

Atrophy was an indignity few deserved to suffer. A fall always hurt more when one once stood amongst the clouds.

Once disciples of Jaus Avandaer and his praetorians for a lasting peace now lingers as a rusted mechanism, castrated by the Guilds to stem their replenishments, crippled by the High Seraph when last they stood against her.

In truth, they had been bleeding out since the Second Great War, where they declared Highflame’s act of burning the northwestern portion of the Skuldvast to be unjust, and the sinking of Tallo’Vi an act of debased genocide.

The blades of the Godbreaker, sworn to his principles, took a stand against his blood–his only blood–and won her respect in the epitomization of their oaths.

But Veylis’ Avandaer’s respect was a brutal thing, and so the Paladins fought, and so they were culled, Souls torn from flaying egos, and the survivors bent to the terms of a disgraceful peace.

Perhaps she spared them with the hopes of honoring her father’s legacy. There was no other instance where she dispensed such mercy anyhow.

As an Exorcist’s Specter dove past him, blind to his very presence, he involuntarily cringed at the defilement he inflicted upon his art. It would have been better to see the job done. A good death made for its own immortality in tale and song, and anyone who treasured their life knew that a proper end stood above living as a dog in a kennel.

Shaking his head, he stepped forward and past the phantasmal barrier caging the area within an imperceptible cage of ghosts. With their lobbies compromised, he slipped in like wind through a crevice, the trespass made, but none truly aware. Past the veil, he laid eyes on the scene and found himself frowning.

The report claimed a Crucible was hosted here, but never had he seen one so neat, so ordered in the aftermath.

Wings of ghosts ran the winds alongside their drone counterparts, sweeping the landscape for additional details. With enough memories collected and evidence gathered a partial restoration should be possible via a Cipher.

Alas, as Shotin ventured forth, he doubted they would be granted such an allowance today, and with every step he took toward the lone Exorcist outpost still standing among blocks toppled and torn, devastated from battle, he felt a tickle of excitement run up his spine.

This could be it. A trail to follow. A mystery to solve. A connection to make.

It would have made his descent from the Tiers down these gutters worth it.

Deeming the Exorcists unworthy of the Incog, he walked out in the open and focused, his Meta layers of spinning silver, ghosts readied to thread his truth into any mind. He was bound for the outpost itself, for the hundreds of accretions gathered at its base. There, he would find the Paladins in charge and the FATELESS themselves.

There, he would discover if this expedition would bear fruit.

As the rest of his Guild collapsed into inter-clan machinations brought out by the Trident’s sacrilegious breach, he excused himself from the delightful carnival of paranoia and factional warfare. Despite the evidence, they gained from the travesty at Oversec-C1 mere days prior, some still clung to the belief that this was an internal operation–an act of self-directed violence.

Shotin knew they were fools, using this opportunity to jockey; wielding the Incubi towards unjust means.

With Highflame and Stormtree glaring at each other with their hands wrapped around their guns but fingers not yet resting on the trigger, only a mad traitor would play such games at this moment. Weakness incensed the Golds regardless of how close to internecine they were, or how much shame the Greatling incident inflicted upon them.

No. The most likely suspect still remained Aedon Chambers. But if he had anything to do with this… anomaly remained to be seen.

Casting a Skimmer out, he directed toward the encampment of FATELESS, and as the ripples of his perception spread, he found his mind laden with haggard faces and shaking bodies.

A twist of anger tightened in his stomach. Disgraceful. Disgraceful.

Just because they were born without fortune gracing their lives didn’t mean they should be subject to such depravity. Wretched as they were, they barely appeared human to him–barely were human if he and they were to be compared. His flesh and mind were elevated by superior imbuements, while the presence of his Soul positioned him beyond anything they could muster altogether. And it was that same mantle of power that filled him with a quiet shame as he faced them.

Many among them had to die. This was not surprising. It was just the way of things–a contract to ensure the coming of better days. But these Syndicates–these snakes and serpents poisoning the bedrock of the city with their venom, this damnable war that wouldn’t end and now the return of the Nolothi…

The overclan didn’t vote his ascension to Godclad to see him fail this city–fail this world.

He would make all this suffering worth it someday, no matter the cost.

Right now, however, it meant diving into their minds and sifting through their pain.

A brief wail of a Tadpole security drone pulled his attention. A pulse of neon red-on-blue oscillated its colors and assailed his senses as his reflexes surged and every nerve ignited. The world around him slowed, and as he dipped a single inch into his subreality, it all but stopped.

Geometry around him fissured as he divided himself into two, then four, then sixteen, with each fracturing instance of himself stacking as a single unified ego and further slowing the flow of time.

The manifestation of his Heaven’s miracles would have consumed forty-two thousand lives per average use, and damage it would leave on the tapestry was certain to inflict a lasting rupture. With his Throneseeker-Pattern Frame, he could sustain its powers at the cost of cycling a flat fifty-five thousand deaths instead.

A small price to pay in the grand scheme.

Sixteen minds governed by a single ego drowned the perceptive drone in a flood of ghosts, his reaction arriving like a river of phantasms, his minds rushing through every sequence within the machine’s locus, bleeding over to twist the memory of its jock and further beyond.

In an instant, the truth was rewritten and Shotin’s stacks collapsed back together.

The Tadpole, on the other hand, hovered for a moment as its pilot struggled to recall what just happened, and moved on thereafter, announcing the false alarm it caused through the Nether, ignorant to the man standing less than ten meters away.

Sweeping the perimeter again, Shotin found himself frowning at the details loading into his mind. From a top-down perspective, the damage was evident. Small pockmarks of artillery damage dotted several places between the blocks. Some of the collapsed blocks looked like they had been melted and the rubble and impact depressions in their courtyard hinted at heavy fighting.

So where were the bodies? Where were the Wights, or the broken drones, or ruined golems? Where were the liking impulses and memories chipped free from nulled ghosts?

Wars were messy things, and it took a unique combination of Necrotheurgy and thaumaturgy to leave a battlefield so clean. That, and overwhelming amounts of logistical power.

Shotin accessed his evidence board again with a thought, an interface with all the necessary mem-data on Aedon Chambers and recent happenings compiled into organized sections. The suspect had been a former Syndicate enforcer. Could he have the pull to have them cancel a Crucible? Or maybe this was an ambush of some kind?

None of these theories sat right. There were still too many loose pieces–questions that didn’t come together. The physical space around him held wounds leftover from a battle, so he posited the occurrence of a fight. Considering the absolute banishment of Syndicate forces here along with the subsequent and rapid collapse of the Three-Fingers, his instincts told him that an eradication happened here, not subterfuge.

He had uncovered similar acts committed by the Sang before, after all. The No-Dragons had unleashed their flesh-eating plagues on more than one occasion.

More details were needed. He fissured into twins again and accessed the Exorcists he compromised earlier as he began to pluck memories from the refugees.

Of the few hundred the Crucible began with, only approximately ninety-eight remained among the living. A good portion was euthanized after a brief investigation and classified as nulled beyond mending–the damage to their mind symmetrical the wounds gained when witnessing the presence of a naked god with an unshielded psyche.

Shotin frowned at that information. Golems were painful to look upon, but considering most were grown of a lower Sphere to avoid taxing the Frame from which their Heavens were loaned, they couldn’t shatter a mind outright. At least, no without a good duration of concentrated attention.

With Paladin reports stating that most of them were performing a fighting defense from within the outpost, the moment of their nulling must’ve been instantaneous; a single blow to shatter their sanity.

Something he or the Paladins could inflict on the remaining survivors if he manifested his full Heaven right now.

Maybe Aedon Chambers belonged on that list too, but nothing on the man’s personal file indicated any hints of contact with the Agnosi. And to think of the Low Masters managing to infiltrate the Tiers and ensure the empowerment of one of their acolytes was…

It wasn’t unthinkable. Nothing was unthinkable. Merely unpalatable. Shotin dove deeper, searching for other incongruities as he walked across each of the running blocks surrounding the outpost, using his personal Cipher phantasmic to reconstruct the scenes using the memories of the FATELESS.

Ghosts spilled out of his Meta and wove themselves into active Knots. He counted Sangeists and Snake-Kings among the golems, as well as rigged enforcers supported by an immense number of Omnitech Warwights, outdated though their builds might have been. With all those forces gathered in place, they really should have left something–anything.

But he found rubble along the way.

A session rang in his mind, the mem-data pulling his face into a wry smile.

INCOMING SYNC REQUEST FROM KARE KITZUHADA

He accepted the link. +Hello, Turnip.+

+Uncle. What are you doing?+

He paused and looked around. The drones and Specters were passing by, none of them paid him any notice, but still, his niece–sharp little thing that she was–always seemed to know. +I have no idea what you’re talking about, dear girl.+

+You’re in an active crime scene. This is Paladin jurisdiction. You know they can charge and detain you by right of the charter.+

He yawned and sighed. +No, Kare, they can try. But we both know they’ll remember as much as I decide to leave in their skulls. How’d you notice.+

+It was a guess,+ she said, frustration bubbling over. +When one of the jocks signaled an alert and then went idle for a moment, I recalled a few other moments when such things happened in my life. Other moments that all had you in them.+

He couldn’t help but laugh, the sound of his mirth echoing across crumbled walls of plascrete and toward distant blockades of neon sealing the scene of the mystery. +Oh, you’re here. What a coincidence.+

Silence followed, but he could feel her pouting–see it in his mind’s eye.

+Listen,+ he said, sighing quietly. +Can you keep a secret?+

+I keeping on right now under my supervisor’s nose! You need to get out of here right now! Go!+

He hummed. +I will. When I’m done. I looking for something. Something connected to someone. Tell me, did the name “Aedon Chambers” pop up in the initial thoughtscans of the refugees? It’s not there in your lobby.+

+It’s not–uncle! This is an outright breach of…+ A strangled growl slipped out from her, and she sounded exactly like her mother.

And the thought of his sister, a void of emptiness filled Shotin’s mind, the numbness lingering after he sequenced the grief out from himself.

Damn the wars. He would make this worth it. It had to be worth it.

+Kare. Do you have a suspect for the incident at Oversec-C1?+

He felt her surprise spike as her thoughts accelerated. +Did you have something to do with that?+

+No,+ he said firmly. +And that’s the iron-hard truth of it. I won’t lie to you. Not about this. Not to my only blood.+

+...Alright.+

He knew more than a few members within Ori-Thaum suspected him as well. The privilege of being viewed as such a threat was both flattering and annoying. The number of Ensouled Necros was few, and the elite among them even fewer. Sub-thousand if he was to be lenient with what he considered to be elite.

Still, he had nothing to gain from doing such a thing. Besides mocking D’Rongo.

He paused.

Shit. He might’ve had something to gain after all.

+There is a man I’m seeking. He is an enigma to me right now. A mystery I have to solve. I think you might’ve saw him a few days ago. Memories of his escape should be scattered all over the Nether. He’s the one–+

+With his privates out,+ she finished. +Yeah. We saw him. The Chief said they managed to escape from him and that there was nothing he could do.+

Shotin laughed. +Yes. That must’ve been quite the feat. Getting him to notice they already escaped, that is. Few people have the power to force Naeko into doing his job–or pretending anyway.+

Kare said nothing, and that spoke of agreement enough. +So, this Chambers… you think he’s the one who hit us?+

+I cannot be certain, but strangeness seems to follow our wayward consang. His background is plain enough. Street Squire father… family slaughtered during the Uprising, gets into gang activity then joins a Syndicate a few years later. But suddenly, he manages to come out of Conflux’s collapse and the Greatling’s death unscathed. And days after, the Oversec holding his sister is penetrated and attacked–along with one of our elders.+ A beat passed as he considered telling his niece the final detail. +The Trident was raided, and we have no trace of our suspect. Pair this with the Incubi we lost and the missing Glaive… these are interesting times.+

Her thoughtstuff hitched. She understood. +Worse than I thought…+

+It always is, Kare,+ he said. +That’s what makes this a thrill. Now, instead of having me dig through your office’s mem-data, how about you tell me if there’s anything I’m missing here, or if I’ve wasted a perfectly fine day of avoid clan politics.+

A few seconds passed. She was thinking. Deliberating. Succumbing to their bond. +There’s nothing about a “Chambers” that the refugees remember. But they do recall heavy fighting and a feeling that the world was “wrong.”+

+Probable Godclad presence.+

+Yes,+ Kare said. +We think Fallwalker, considering how high tensions are between the Guilds.+

+Anything else?+

Another few seconds. +There… there is one more missing detail. A person, actually. We managed to recover most of the dead FATELESS. Whoever was attacking didn’t want them at all. But there is someone in their collective memories that remains unaccounted for. A girl that no one remembers dying, and whose body hasn’t been located.+

The mem-data flowed over from her mind to his and a chain of tension tightened inside his gut.

There was something here.

A new scent.

A new mystery to unravel.

+She’s the only one missing,+ he asked, as the mem-data continued to load.

+Yes. No one can recall her dying. Only that she went out alone and never came back.+

It could just be a dead end. This could be nothing. But he felt… he a strange gravity around her.

He couldn’t explain it.

These feelings served him well before.

+Alright, then,+ Shotin said. +I’m going to make you a happy girl, Turnip: I’m going to get out of your crime scene. I’ll keep you posted. See if I can find this… “Dice.”+