Godclads

+We need a better way of containing the Conflagration. I don’t care what the theorists back at the Trident say, it’s affecting my Incubi in the field—fucking them up even through their proxies, even past the wards.

I mean, just look at how this shit is designed. We take a [REDACTED] piece of technology meant to simulate a clash between two minds and convert it to a perpetual trauma combustion engine. No shit it’s going to damage sanity. No shit no one can endure its presence. We knew this a full century ago during the Ego-Stacking experiments where we tried to create layered minds.

That didn’t work either! The stack went insane and started hating itself almost immediately across all groups. And we deliberately selected for people that were aligned in sequence and personality. Still didn’t work. Didn’t work at all. The slightest inconsistencies between the stacked egos caused massive tears to open in the overmind, and the thing learned to hate itself in record time.

Meanwhile, the Conflagration is two active hyper-advanced minds designed to null [REDACTED] actively trying to eat each other. No shit it’s radiating trauma through to my Incubi. No shit they need extended sessions at a Mender to put themselves back together.

I’m telling you that this isn’t tenable. I don’t care how effective it is. I tested releasing it on a hostile target myself, and I still have disjointed nightmares sometimes. It just… it imprints itself deep on you. Like the hate stains you deeper than even we can reach. And now we have people proposing that we infuse this into some of our new automata to use as field units? Dead gods, it’s like they want us to get a new incurable mem-con…+

-Decrypted Ori-Thaum Mirror Mem-File

35-3

Self-Loathing

—[The Dyad]—

In a place between places, as a war for existence raged beyond, coiling strings of time snapped and broke as they tore at themselves, digging into their own ontological flesh to pry free strands of ingrown thought. As this happened, Avo hissed in pleasure-pain at Veylis, mocking her for her efforts, laughing as their assimilation grew and grew.

Time accelerated around them. Time slowed. Time jumped. Thoughts broke. Coherence and consciousness oscillated between both the Seraph and the Dreamer with each passing moment, rendering control a thing that waxed and waned between the two as their merging built to its final conclusion.

It was a choice on Avo’s part to meld deeper with Veylis. To compromise her on a fundamental level, even if it mean compromising his own ego in the process. This act paid dividends almost immediately, allowing him to affect her decisions ever so subtly, making her create flawed agents to guard his cadre—allowing him to smuggle in specific Necrotheurgic imperfections in the Ashbringer for White-Rab or Defiance to possibly access.

But all this came at a cost. For the Soulscape that encompassed the Dyad quivered with ever-progressing chronology—a measure of deliberate desperation on Veylis’ part to change the conditions of their struggle once more. As her mind blurred with his, as neither found themselves certain about who they were, and who they would become once this union was completed, the matter of the Ladder would be forced.

Though all the components were not nearly in place, where many shards of the Stillborn still lay scattered, if the grand mechanism of approaching ascension was forced in place, the uneasy peace the Hidden Flame was trying to forge could be shattered. The Guilds would be provoked to claim that grand tower. All alliances would fray and be pushed to the point of breaking. And this was good enough for Veylis, for she trusted the Infacer to see the task done.

“You chose this,” Avo said. His fanged jaws moved, but Veylis’ upper lip sneered. Their bodies were a mangled amalgam, a thing more grotesque than even their churning minds. They were no so much split asunder down the middle as they were a pool of mingled traits. His body and hers were both stretched over each other. The faces clashed and shifted. Their bodies took on shared traits of fungal ceramite and hyper-advanced alloy. A quivering singularity churned while floating Echoheads orbited around their body like planetary asteroid belts.

“I chose to stop you,” Veylis said as their locus of control shifted once more. “I chose sacrifice to deny you an early victory.”

“No. Only delay. Whatever happens… won’t be your victory. You are lost. Twisting. Both of us lost. No longer ourselves.”

“It matters little what happens to us. Only that our visions stand against the other. Only that our dreams will clash, that one will remain thereafter.”

At this, Avo could only offer a bitter sigh. “What difference to me. You will still be here. Won’t give you an easy death. Won’t let you escape education like the Infacer did.”

“Truly, your arrogance knows no bounds. You assume you will be the victor even now, with your original self infested and certain to shatter, with the Infacer reaching for the sun. Tell me, what do you think they can do with the Trinary Melody? What can you do that the Infacer has not experienced a trillion times over in their many wars?”

“I can change,” Avo replied quietly. “I can change. And live. And live. Something they don’t want to do. Something you refuse to do. Infacer is tired. We can both feel it. They will try to finish this war… but they don’t mind if they die. Spent. Weary.” The Dreamer paused as a feeling of sorrow welled inside them. Despite everything, there was a companionship they shared with Veylis, a shared sequence of… something they both felt toward the Infacer.

The ancient mind was an enemy for Avo, but that wasn’t all they were. And that wasn’t the only thing that defined their experiences.

Sometimes, a great enemy was the only person who understood you on a deeper level. Sometimes, they mirrored you deeper than most others.

“Don’t want them to die,” both Veylis and Avo said at once.

“They deserve to see the great work come to a close,” Veylis breathed.

“They deserve to have their own choice. To see an unending time before… before…” Avo’s words trailed off as they felt a question arise from within.

“Will you let them die? Will you let them cease to be? If they ask it of you? If they demand it?” Veylis’ question was piercing and dissonant. Avo dreamed nothing of utopia, but he remained devoted to his goal of true immortality, of the unending change, of the unceasing metamorphosis.

But what if the Infacer asked for death. What if their conclusion was to find an end, to experience a final great nothing? What was the proper way to face that? What was a choice to sever all future choices.

“Don’t know yet,” Avo said. “Yes. I think. I think I will… miss this. Miss facing them. Miss their existence. The experiences. But won’t keep them caged. I only dreamed of being a God of Choice. Not a Tyrant of Fate. Not like you.”

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“I would have them be healed,” Veylis said, resolute. “Healed and rewarded for service beyond service. No one has done more for this existence. My father will be granted his place, his throne, but of the Infacer, he should not judge. No one has the right to judge.”

“No one but us.”

“But us.”

Both of them stopped struggling for a moment. Time trickled to a slowing halt, and Avo’s thoughtstuff receded, his Conflagration grew dimmer. Another emotion followed the sorrow they shared for the Infacer. It was a delicate emotion, as close to human as either of them would ever allow themselves to be.

“Are you afraid?” Avo asked first. One of his eyes blinked, and it swiveled across their shared face to glimpse at Veylis’ optic. “Are you afraid of no longer being yourself. Of ceasing?”

She didn’t reply for a long moment, and when she spoke, her voice was thin and hesitant, like a girl confronting a broken fantasy. “There should be a sense of continuity. For both of us. This is not a death.”

“Continuity. But for us? How is that to be? We were two. Soon just one. Something is lost in the number. Control. Decisions. Only one can make that. Will that be you? Or me? Or neither?”

“I…” Veylis hummed. “I do not know. Yes. Yes, I suppose. I am… afraid. Of losing control. Of not being myself anymore.”

“So. At least there’s something else of us that will remain,” Avo finished.

“I would have still done it. The sacrifice.”

“I know. Don’t need to justify yourself. Know your resolve. Your hubris is more than weakness. Was a weapon. As was your mother’s love. As was your choice to break the Gatekeeper. All we do. All the ones we touch. They mark us back in return. Nothing is forgiven. Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is the same. Not even utopia.”

At his words, the rushing rivers of chronology began to tumble onward once more, and the memory of the Ladder filled Veylis’ with unshakable determination. “No. Perhaps it wasn’t before, but I will see about the creation of a true eternity. A true enduring dream.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps there won’t be anything of you that wants that. Or anything of me either. Perhaps we will be a broken thing. A mad thing. A thing that Hungers only. That can dream no more.”

“And perhaps I will assume the mantle. For mine is will, and strength, and want.”

And once more Veylis mutilated herself, driving bands of history into her flesh, trying to extract which parts of Avo were nesting too deep inside her. At this struggle, Avo responded, seizing her golden strands with tides of flame, twisting her thoughts, but never truly piercing the barrier of history that shrouded her mind. “We are not yet the world, Seraph. You hope too much. Your heart is too desperate.”

“But I will not stray. I will remain. Whatever you try, however you infest me, I will stride, I will burn, for my path is fated, for I have carved my fate in advance.”

“Fine. Burn with me, Veylis Avandaer. Let us see whose cinders remain.”

***

—[Jelene Draus, The Guard-Captain of the Symmetry]—

Draus cut. Draus struck. Draus fought as an army unto herself, the Sage, the Chorus, the Parallelist, the Arsenalist, and the Simulacra moving and striking all as one through the Guard-Captain. Yet, even as an army, the Shell of the Seraph was a foe above foes.

It was like fighting an ocean. An ocean of mastery and skill that almost no other possessed. An ocean of twisted time that could spawn impossible calamities and perfect paradoxes to every miracle that was.

Alone, Draus would have been another casualty. She could see that plainly. She was a good gun. Might’ve been one of the best. But Veylis was legend-born and legend-made, shaped by Zein’s loving and cruel hands, honed against Naeko centuries before. Without the Chief Paladin’s experience, she would have been overloaded times over despite technically being beyond the Seraph in Spherage. Without the Stormsparrow’s mask, she would have been too slow—too weak—to survive the bursting plumes of the Ashbringer the Seraph wielded as a weapon.

And that was the worst of it. She wasn’t just facing Veylis, but the Seraph using a version of Avo as a weapon.

Strings of chronology circulated around the Seraph’s many arms. Time dilated within the boundary, projecting a slowing field that flooded outward toward Draus.

A roar resounded inside her as Naeko unleashed one of his newest canons. The Chief Paladin stretched his hands wide, and imprinted himself on the tapestry. At once, almost every pattern in existence halted. Draus felt the thought, time, space, force, and a few thousand other Domains simply folded under the Sage’s weight.

THE MOUNTAIN FALLS ON ALL – ALLOWS THE USER TO COMPEL ALL DOMAINS UNDER THEIR HEAVEN TO STILL UNTIL THEY WILL IT TO BE OTHERWISE.

It was a staggering canon, monstrous in the Rend it demanded, shooting the Guard-Captain’s Rend Capacity up by 8% in an instant. Draus guessed that it might have half-filled the Sage with entropy if used alone.

But it was more than worth its cost. The bands of time were torn free from Veylis. She tried to flee, trying to open a gap in time to escape. But Draus had prepared for this. A dense cloud-network of reflective shards collapsed around them, allowing the Sage’s power to be channeled through a few million portals.

Veylis might have been legend-born and legend-made, but just because she was among a peerless few killers didn’t make Draus any less a soldier. Zone control was a basic thing to master. War was won on the basics, on logistics, on superior firepower, on jumping a half-strand with more bodies they could put down.

Veylis could have been twice again the warrior, and it wouldn’t have mattered right now. Not with Chambers’ Bond keeping her leashed to them. Not with Naeko parrying and matching her blow for blow. Not with the Sparrow’s masks chasing her, empowering Draus; with her spear threatening absolute oblivion. Not with Shotin changing existence around them.

And not with Draus serving as an unshakable centerpiece, her Guard-Captain conduit for a band of great killers hammered into an army of one.

A metaphysical weight crashed down on the Seraph. She coated herself in a layer of ashen flames, the “Avo” portion of her being becoming as if a cloak to shroud her from harm. A near-feral roar sounded from Naeko as he pulled on Chambers’ Bond, trying to get at her. But Draus was the Guard-Captain, and though Naeko was a titan in the world without, the Regular kept him controlled within.

“Keep it zero, Naeko,” Draus snapped. “Fight ain’t done. We’re snuffin’ her properly. No risks. No chances. Thorough.”

He quivered inside her Heaven like an avalanche, barely able to hold himself back, but he did. That struck her as the greater feat than how he stilled all reality beyond them. The realization filled her with disgust. Being a Godclad was euphoric, but it was also a fuckin’ joke. All of them were broken little things; the gods themselves were dreamed up by fucked civilizations screaming in the dark.

And in the end, they had all the power, but none of the control. All the means, but no real solutions.

The daughter slays the daughter, the warrior cuts down her queen.

Let a poem find its end. Let the soldier see through the falsehood of her long, dead dream.

The mask around the Guard-Captain’s face began to dissolve. At once, her enhanced speed and strength vanished, leaving Draus feeling a bit disoriented. “The fuck just happened? Sparrow?”

The Sang giggled madly. “I do not know. But the Chorus does. Go. Drive your sword through her. See what happens.”

The Stormsparrow’s casual willingness to go along with whatever psycho-bullshit her weird fuckin’ Heaven demanded made Draus grunt with annoyance. “Yeah. Not doing that. I’m just going to shoot her, probably. Hit her with Rend until she pops.”

“Oh. You have no artistry in your Soul.”

“Probably why I’m still alive.”

“You’re still alive because a certain ghoul likes you very much,” the Sang giggled.

A long-suffering sigh escaped Draus as she prepared to vent into the Seraph. Yet, before she could pour her venom into Veylis, the Shell of the Seraph flared with Soulfire and the Heaven dissolved. A form hovered in the space before her. A form of Veylis wearing a flayed version of Avo as a cape of sorts. She regarded the Guard-Captain for a moment, and held out a hand. “Strike me down, if that is your want. But before you do, I wish to see you, Guard-Captain. It is a moment of supreme amusement, don’t you think, that my finest weapon will be the instrument of my execution.”

A moment passed. And Draus snorted in derision. “Nah. Just the way the world is. And I stopped being yours a long time ago. Arsenalist. Shoot the sow.”

And from within her, the Heaven of Guns acknowledged her request by launching a Redaction Round straight at Veylis.