Godclads

Chapter 20-3 Outside the Garden

The lives outside our borders are an untapped resource. I know–I know. We’re not supposed to touch them and Voidwatch is watching per the Articles, but we need to start making special considerations.

They are currently a resource drain on our efforts. All those sanctuaries of subjects, publicly funded, offering nothing but trickles of lives. It’s maddening. Our installations need to be insulated against the Sunderwilds–protected against whatever madhouse these people escaped from, and that we also need to provide education to them? A livable space? Possibilities for community prosperity?

It’s ridiculous. It’s outdated.

The dream is dead, long live the dream, but now we need to think about winning the war.

And war is about numbers.

Do you know how many Souls Highflame has? How many Omnitech has? How many the No-Dragons have? More than us. Sure. Our edge is in information and techno-thaumaturgy but right now–I guarantee you–if we get the ability to see ten years into the future, it’s going to be of Highflame burning our districts and butchering our citizens.

Foresight does not equal power. It can influence it, but we’re not lacking skill or awareness or any of that. We need force and unfortunately, it’s the only thing we still seem to lack. Highflame has eight times more techno-thaumic armor; Omnitech has whatever nightmares they’re cooking up in their nexuses. I don’t even want to count the No-Dragon troop numbers. I’m sure everyone recalls what happened to our martyrs at Irisues Vale when they got overrun by the Breeder-Hawks.

Of course we can level things out by counting on Stormtree to achieve some degree of firepower parity, and counter-thaumic operations through the assistance of Ashthrone and Sanctus, but our alliance is contingent on the Sainists, and I’m sure we’re all under no illusions about what’s going to follow after we win.

Ugly truth’s the truth: we’re not just playing to overcome the Golds and their lackeys. We need to watch our “esteemed” allies as well.

So. Back to my proposition. I think it’s time we do a little exploring of our own in the Sunderwilds. Send out teams to… establish enclaves “allied” to us.

I’m uploading the mem-data for my proposal right now. Technically, we’re not really breaking the rules. We’re just being flexible with its interpretation.

-Elder Iyar Kazahara (Ori-Thaum)

20-3

Outside the Garden

Not even light could escape the defilement of reality, but still, the brightness of dawn fell, lathering all things of solid shape in a thin sheen of radiance.

Merging from the horizontal crevice that was New Vultun lowest level, the outer layers of the Maw crept forth in diminishing detail, no longer the intricate sigils dividing the districts and Sovereignties back within the layered city. Here, there were but vast rings rounding the perimeter of the city itself, pierced through by channels that cleaved into the light splashing down from dawn ascending.

Drawing from the histories of ancient Noloth with a thought, Avo learned and then knew the Maw to be a living construct. Something that was meant to be expanded to fulfill the needs of its ever-growing population, blossoming outward like a flower fed by wither and rot to encompass Idheim evermore.

But with the loss of their Ark–and thereby the history of Noloth and whatever power they had to influence the future–the Maw was cosigned to merely be a great wonder of the world. A nigh-endless reservoir for Rend, but nothing worth any weight in culture or significance.

Another dead dream among the countless.

[And thank Jaus for that,] Abrel scoffed. [Listen, Avo, I know I’m not exactly an unbiased party here, but that primer your “dad-uncle” gave you isn’t exactly what I’d call reliable. Propaganda. Everyone does it. And from what I know about Nolothi history, there’s no way their little “waste disposal expansion project” wasn’t going to cost a few billion more lives.]

Avo regarded her words with a faint note of acknowledgment. A few other templates within his gestalt provided their own insight on matters, but most were gazing forth as he was–peering far into the light.

“Draus,” Avo said, the Soulfire within him stirring, igniting the many deaths cycling his Fardrifter, “going to accelerate our progress. Make myself wind. Expand our progress.“

The Regular acknowledged him with a slight nod. “Mind the light. Been forming reflections all the way behind us while we flew, but the light itself feels damn slippery. And wet.”

“Probably an effect caused by the Sunderwilds.” Avo reached out using his Woundmother’s Domain of Luminosity and found himself in agreement with Draus. There was an uncanny slickness to how light flowed here. Like rain of liquid arrows flung outward by the weight of a rushing monsoon.

He triggered his Fortress of Luminosity out of curiosity, and though spherical oscillations formed of clashing brightness briefly layered the points where Avo expressed his canon, no backlash followed, no paradox laid him low.

“Should be fine,” Avo said. “ Still. Keep being careful. Going to draw the Manta into my Yondergales.”

And with a simple effort of will, he did just that. A gust of sudden wind folded over the stealth ship as it was swallowed. A coiled knot of space, air, and shadow tightened, lacing the Manta in a demiplane of black clouds thundering with torrential gales. Here, these Yondergales formed the yolk that was the Fardrifter’s inner plane while the coiling walls of wind containing its ten-kilometer expanse extended outward as nine galloping steeds.

Beneath the surface of spatial reality they charged.

Four of the steeds snaked across two hundred and fifty kilometers of land. Air currents shivered in the air as if to foretell a hurricane, and empowered by the Horizon Strider canon, Avo and his cadre moved at speeds matching such a calamity.

Then, when another of the Fardrifter’s heads burrowed into the shadows cast by the towering structures of New Vultun, they plunged forward even faster, Shadowrun granting Avo ten times his initial speed.

The Manta itself was a marvel of human ingenuity and technological achievement. Yet, its structures still obeyed laws. Capitulated to rules. Fast though it could accelerate, it would never be able to treat drifting contrails as folds of space to hide within or augment its base velocity by assuming darkness to function as if wind tunnels.

Despite this, Calvino merely sighed.

+You disapprove?+ Avo asked.

{Hardly,} Calvino responded. {I'm merely lamenting the fact that we can't enjoy a nice leisurely flight over the land without wrapping ourselves in reality’s disemboweled entrails because we’re suspicious that the light might kill us. Somehow.}

It probably wouldn’t, but the potential it could was all that mattered.

As the horizon tumbled closer, so emerged the first hints of the refugee sanctuaries. Situated directly beyond the final Maw-ravine wrapped around New Vultun’s perimeter, grand towers made from alloy and vivianite climbing a full kilometer high stabbed at the sky, their tips pulsing with Sprites. Static thoughtstuff lashed from spire to spire, functioning as if a relay.

“A weak force tugs,” the Techplaguer muttered. “I do not wish to be tugged. Administrator, they touch us without permission. Their MAINFRAMES transgress. We should get them sick so they DIEDIEDIE!”

“I still do not think you have repaired this one properly, master,” the Woundmother murmured. “One must be considerate when building their own structures, for faulty sections betray the foundations of the structure, and only when the collapse is imminent does one realize they were too tardy in replacing what they long knew to be ill-suited.”

“Disagreement,” the Techplaguer said. “I am perfect. I am wonderful. Children love me. You will cease these negative assertions against my morale.”

As the two Heavens began to bicker anew, Avo expanded his awareness in all directions and took the face of reality beyond New Vultun for the first time in his life.

He remembered how things were out here–was unsurprised thanks to the memories provided by his templates. The Godsfall had broken Idheim in ways too deep for words to fully convey. This he knew to be the truth.

However, knowledge did not equal experience and theoretical awareness did not match existential gnosis.

Here, nested in the present, he brushed the tattered patterns of reality, felt entire sections torn, twisted, and taken from the tapestry of existence.

Dice let out a gasp of girlish discomfort. Beside her, fused within his own latticed cocoon, Essus clenched his restraints and choked. The uncanny sensations burrowed deep into Avo as well, and where almost all of his templates flinched, Corner, Lip, Osjon, and Draus endured the initial embrace of the Sunderwilds without recoil.

Next to him, Avo heard the Regular chuckle. “Feels like runnin’ my tongue across broken bits of tooth. The numb and hurt mixin’ together. Echoes of where pieces of yourself used to be. But ain’t no more. And that twang in your gut when you find fragments buried deep in your cheek.”

He said nothing in response. Her words were more than apt for what they all just tasted.

Behind them rose the titan that was New Vultun, a behemoth risen from man-made materials. The Layers segmented the base of the structure, with scintillating neon lighting the contours of distant sprawls. Only the Sovereignties of Light’s End were graced with the touch of day, and even then, Avo sensed a faint shimmer intercepting the light, an unseen shroud preventing the moisture present in beyond the borders from leaking into the city itself.

Then, onward, past blocks and streets of glass, plascrete, plastic, and chrome, the Tiers itself rose like a mountain beyond mountains, a titan standing on the shoulders of a giant. The sheer face of the leveled pillar was smooth and perfect, with threads of light zipping up and down, its territories guarded by unseen protections of its own. But higher still stood testament to the triumph of humanity: the Elysiums burrowed up into the firmament, blending light, shape, sound, and power into the flesh of reality itself.

Faintly–almost imperceptibly–Avo thought he could feel the touch of the Guild Arks even here, their presence seemingly not so far away. Gold. Silver. Black. Blue. Grey. Green. Red. And crowning all of them was a beacon of purple projected down from a place located beyond even the sky itself.

The apex of New Vultun was a warring canopy, each hue a Guild clashing, straining, digging into another, the branches of their pantheons spreading, growing, blooming.

Yet, for all its grandeur, New Vultun was but an oasis of magnificence in an ocean of calamity.

Around the curated reinterpretations of reality spread the cracks of desolation.

Sunder. Because the world was broken.

Wilds. Because chaos spilled through the fractures like invasive tendrils, shapes quivering, their flows clashing.

If New Vultun’s heights were a garden, then the world outside its borders was wilderness unfettered. Twisted vines bleeding geometric fractals and lined with oozing cancers curtained entire portions of the sky. Rancid rivulets of filth and mercury flowed higher up still, the composition of the Sunderwilds a myriad of threads, twisting up further and further until currents of blinking darkness made of nothing but eyes and chomping mouths fused the madness below to vaster horrors festering in the great nothingness of the void.

As the wind rustled, Avo felt fingers prying at his Heaven. Whispers brushing his protective labyrinth as beings too alien in shape and comprehension begged for him to allow them in, but not to stare upon them lest they shatter under the weight of his perception.

It was under these skies that the wilders lived. And it was blanketed by such madness that the refugees endured outside New Vultun’s protections.

For as brutal as the city was, consistency still had its reign. You understood when someone shot you, cut you, heard you.

But what could someone do if they simply encountered a note they weren’t supposed to hear? Or a shape their mind couldn’t stand to witness.

As the sun rose further, light settled upon the world’s disfigured visage, and between the necrotized folds of existence, Avo glimpsed things that made thousands of his templates shatter and scream.

[Fuck,] Abrel whimpered. [Stop! Avo… stop! Pull your perception back. Stop looking–not the light! Look away from the–the–sky is… is a lie… is… oh, Jaus, oh, gods…] And then, strong though she was, even Abrel couldn’t help but weep.

Still, Avo couldn’t turn away. To reel his awareness back. Even as multiple of his templates cracked and shattered, costing him ghosts to repair and reform, he found these losses a paltry sacrifice in exchange for taking in the portrait of destruction that was his world.

To view this as apart from Jaus’ legacy was pure delusion, Avo realized. And in this realization, he found himself appreciating it more.

This was ungoverned reality left to fester; the Sunderwilds were, much like the guilds themselves, at war. Though these were at war across every individual strand, every stray pattern, every rogue miracle. They were warring infestations, invading themselves and each other as much as they did stable existence.

Yes, indeed, the Sunderwilds was Jaus’ legacy. Just as New Vultun. Just as the guilds. But horrible and terrifying and dreadful as destruction is, it was also sublime in its symbology, for this, just as much as New Vultun and its Tiers, was man-made.

And, if Avo were to be granted an opinion, a piece of artistry greater than the megacity itself.

[Yeah, yeah,] template-Draus sneered, taking in the sight with indifference. She along among all his templates remained unbothered by what she saw. [If you’re done waxin’ lyric out your ass, maybe we can find a place to settle? Scope out the sanctuaries. Do what we actually came here to do? Gettin’ bored of you just lookin’ at the sky.]

Back in the real, Avo looked to the Regular herself as she spun a shard of glass next to her head. “Well. Are we gonna do somethin’ today, or are we gonna wait till Tavers here finally cracks? I just built a place where we can set down. Got the beginnings of an underground base goin’. Got it linked to the passages leadin’ back into the city already. We can disembark after. Get a lay of the land. See if we start shittin’ new colors out our eyes or somethin’.”

She flicked him locational details regarding her new installation. It was located some twenty kilometers behind the innermost sanctuaries over a relatively lush patch of land.

Within the Manta’s confines old squire glared at the Regular, but Avo noticed Tavers was disconnected from the Manta’s systems, the static lining her cognition directed inward, no longer accessing the vessel’s feeds.

Beside her, Dice and Essus were also withdrawn, but no nervousness accompanied them. They knew where they were, and they walked these broken lands.

“Fine,” Avo said. “Let’s walk the wilds.”

***

Avo deposited the Manta in the vitrified bivouac Draus made using his Nine Streams. Moving things across nine points of space was easy, but he had to admit slight jealousy at how the Regular could step across impossible stretches of distance so long as she had a reflection to work with.

Settled some two hundred feet below ground and with the glass on the topside formed beneath a layering of shrubbery, their presence couldn’t be detected at a glance, and from what Avo understood, the Guilds didn’t tend to waste golems or drones on reckless patrols, trying to sweep every inch of the Sunderwilds for hidden dangers.

Emerging from their temporary operating base, Avo coated his cadre in a protective shell using his blood, channeling his Incog through his Haemokinesis and keeping them veiled from notice.

From there, they observed the surrounding sanctuaries for a moment, taking in the settlements that served as blockades for migrants trying to enter New Vultun.

The first thing to note was that they were domed and that their shells were lined with insulated solar panels. Avo sampled their material composition from afar and frowned. He sensed a few golems present in the area, but few other protective assets beyond them. Some drones patrolled the sanctuaries’ surroundings while others continued to work on new architecture.

A complex network of tunnels between each of the settlements. Much like how each sanctuary had a techno-thaumic communications tower, they all seemed to have something of a maglev station as well, with fast-moving trains constantly shuttling new people in and around per population capacities.

Over rolling hills in the distance, Avo noticed trailing drones projecting light-marked lanes. Expanding both his Woundmother and Fardrifter, he found migration caravans running at least a few hundred kilometers long. Tents, vehicles, beasts of burden, and haggard-looking people were the norm.

Voidwatch’s coldtech drones did what they could, but Avo could feel the strain affecting their machinery, the Sunderwilds wearing them down in moments when such degradation should have naturally taken years.

Strangely, however, the people remained unaffected, and Guilder assets functioned without fail.

“I remember this route,” Essus said, coming to a stand next to Avo, still careful to keep his eyes averted from the sky. “I was far that way. You see? There. Where a patch of light is shining down on those hills.”

Avo saw what the man was pointing at, but only momentarily. In the next moment, a vast city-sized tendril whipped down across the sky and briefly blanketed everything in darkness. With the obfuscation of light, so too faded the hills, the space changing to be a lagoon instead.

“Ah, yes,” Essus muttered, rubbing his chin. “We had to get away from the hills when the light goes away. Many of us drowned the first day. Of course, those of us who went left instead of right were also met with unkind fates.” He sighed. ”Artad protect them. How could they have known the rocks were carnivorous.”

Next to them, Tavers was fully encased in her armor again, face unseen behind inches of protective alloy. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I fucking miss the city already. At least I can take a piss there most days and not wonder if my urine is going to wake up somehow and eat its way back up my cunt.”

“Oh, what’s a matter, Tavers? Too much of a city girl? Country life ain’t to your likin’?” Draus shot the older woman a grin as she swept their surroundings using the scope of her rifle. Tavers flipped her off.

Avo meanwhile pushed his awareness far south. There, a few million migrants were flooding into the protective tunnels that would lead to mass security screenings, and temporary housing, followed by a wait before enough people left or died inside a sanctuary for them to be granted a spot. As fascinating as the process was, Avo was seeking something even further beyond.

In Dice’s memories, she had come from that direction. Followed her master out of a place where pillars of murmuring darkness called to travelers, where beasts shaped of matter and shadow both preyed upon the supple flesh of baseliners. Such was the life Dice knew. And such were the monsters that have almost certainly overrun her enclave in the long absence of her master.

Soon, however, they would be purged. Or least repelled. Avo was interested in knowing which Fallen Heaven they originated from, and if he could staunch the Rend.

If nothing else, the abandoned enclave would serve as a place where they could operate freely without worrying about the Guilds.

After months of scurrying about the dark, Avo found something cathartic about playing the harbinger of light. The more superstitious among his gestalt had taken it as a sign. A changing of the times.

From beast of darkness to the bringer of the bright. An auspicious change, if judged from the sound.

But before Avo could reach any further, a session sounded in the depths of his mind, and saw “Nandu’s” Metamind identification flashing across his cog-feed.

A frown overtook him in an instant. Somehow, Draus knew, and pulled away from her gun, turning to look at him. “What’s wrong? Is it Kae?”

“Don’t know yet,” Avo said. “Hope not. Chambers calling. Has to be important. Costs a death.” As certain templates inside him began to speculate, he connected to the session, and his Conflagration erupted out the other side like fire striking a lake made from napalm.

[Hey!] Chambers said, mind reassembling as Avo overwrote the false Nandu memories. [Whoa! That feels weird. It’s like I didn’t know myself at all a second ago. Why the hells did you need to make me look so godsdamned ugly anyway, you know–]

+Chambers,+ Avo said, tone even, but annoyance evident.

[Right. You’re not gonna like this, consang. Not one bit. You wanna know who just called me? Green River. She wanted to talk to you, and so I played along and spoofed her using some artifacts I assembled on the fly. Chief Paladin Naeko gave the Second Fortune a visit earlier today. Put the squeeze on our least favorite Sang. He’s looking for someone. And it ain’t me.]

A coldness filled Avo from the inside. Tension plucked at his nerves. +Draus? Kae?+

[You.]

Somehow, he expected that answer, though he wished it weren’t so.

[He came around asking about your Bone Demon sheath. Think you’re going to need to change up soon, consang. Switch up your glamor and shit. ]

[Naeko? Working? What the fuck?] Paladin Kassamon was practically at a loss for words. [We… might want to consider an impostor. Maybe burn Kare and have her shadow the boss.]

[Please don’t volunteer me for such a detail, Sergeant Kassamon,] Kare said, her calm tone still ripe with frustration. [It is unbecoming conduct.]

[I know. But honestly, he scares the piss back up my balls.]

A brief pause followed. [Is that where the piss goes?] Chambers asked. [I thought we have like a ballon in there or some shit.]

[A bladder,] Benhata provided.

[There is no reason why one cannot make such a thing possible,] Elegant-Moon said. [The bladder and testicles can be merged.]

Avo looked up at the sky. His templates screamed. He sighed.

“Problem?” Draus asked.

“Yeah,” Avo said. “Problem.”