Godclads

Chapter 20-8 A Playground for Tyrants (I)

Approaching, infiltrating, and overthrowing an enclave is built on information.

Information regarding what we know about the governing Fallwalker–or Fallwalkers.

Information regarding the environment, the localized anomalies, the factions at play, the key holders of power, and the general socio-structural aspects of such homesteads.

So, today is going to be a special day, boys and girls. Today, you’re getting your sequences updated free of charge. You’ll be getting the latest phantasmics and memory updates our Necrojacks can provide, and Omnitrech and the No-Dragons have also graciously provided some of their implant-based neurosofts to keep both Meta and meat extra aligned.

You all will also have three hundred hours of vicarities to draw from. Memories so thoughtfully provided by certain FATELESS refugees. Ain’t they kind? You’ll be able deep-sim yourself in their sequences. Learn about the routes they took. What the Scar Charts for the Sunderwilds look like. What kind of fucky-wuckies you might run into. That kind of stuff.

Oh, and when you’re done, you will be planning the route. Not us. Don’t look at me like that. We already did most of the hard thinking for you–you have to be tested on something.

Honestly, you juvs have no idea how nice you had it. Back in my day, DRTIO [Deep Rupture Tactics and Infiltration Operations] had us do our graduation ceremony by detonating a Rendbomb over a Syndicate and having us storm-jump into that mad house. You’re getting to raid an Enclave. Hells, you’re getting to assassinate a Godclad.

Just think about that. Ain’t that fun.

Anyway. Here’s your capstone operation to show that we didn’t waste all those phylacteries and bodies on you half-strands.

Look through the mem-data. Figure your approach. Topple that regime. Snuff that ‘Clad. Come home alive.

The host that kills the ‘Clad gets preferential deferment for their initial theater of deployment. The ones that make it back graduate and just jack and shit else.

Remember kids, dyin’ doesn’t make you a Reg. Snuffing the other fucker does. So don’t die.

Anyway. Happy flying.

Dismissed.

-Drill-Master Millenau Daanouriks, Regular

20-8

A Playground for Tyrants (I)

The light from the distant watchtowers speared through the miasma. Lanes were paved in the darkness, and the shadows were held at bay by a constant stream of radiance.

Casting his Skimmer high into the air with an eruption of thought-fire, Avo surveyed the emerging route.

It was as if a constellation had been carved out from within an ocean of darkness, the interconnected paths running from lighthouse to lighthouse, beams of radiance relayed from lens to lens.

The grand architecture of this place was still in the process of unveiling itself, a clear shape was beginning to form via each installation of illumination

The nearest watchtowers came righter in something of a V-shape before the cadre, but by the third tower at approximately twenty-four kilometers away, the trail of the light grew unnaturally curved, spiraling inward along a wall of arcing lens that unveiled themselves with the receding dark.

Condensation clung to the glass, and Avo sampled its material structure using his Woundmother.

There was a touch of the unnatural upon it—some kind of amplifying resonance to its shine that only triggered when graced by light.

This was beyond Dice’s memories. Avo had followed her recollections thus far to chart their travels back to her home, but she was entrapped in the bowels of her master’s vessel along with the other lesser members of his retinue.

She knew not the design of the world beyond her walls, only that demons lurked in the absence of light, that the master was the pillar of the divine, and that only he could keep them safe from harm.

“Yeah, that's a reflection, but there’s somethin’ up with the light…” A frown adorned Draus’ face as she vitrified some of the ground at their feet and levitated it up before the cadre. The glass cracked slightly, and Avo glimpsed the armored form of the Regular’s Simulacrae Replica with its blade raised, shield forward, and wings flexed. A flash of resplendence resonated from the shard and the shine of the lighthouses quivered. “Somethin’ giving anything that shines here more kick. I can feel it boostin’ my Domain.”

“Then master’s blessings must remain,” Dice said. Her perception was cast outward, pointed down the path. The road ahead presented itself as a steep ramp made of sand, and tides of roiling dark became akin to valley walls, jaws threatening to slam shut around them at any time.

The girl was close now, and Avo was able to taste the apprehension and the excitement at finally returning home. But there was also fear and uncertainty. An ineffable worry that boiled from within.

Unseen forces pulled at her from all directions.

She wanted to return, but she also stood afraid of the manner of her homecoming.

Her egress was made at the whims of her master, her station his favorite fighting dog, her worth aligned only with his whims. Now, she returns a prodigal Godclad many times his power, and with new benefactors that eclipsed her fallen owner in the order of magnitudes.

Before, Dice was more creature than person.

Now, she didn't know what she was.

Returning, uncertainty awaited.

Discomfort was to be found at the end of each path. But such strangulations are a part of life.

“I'm connecting the reflections,” Draus said. “Make it easy for us to skip the maze or whatever the hell this is.” Her thoughtstuff flowed slowly with suspicion. “I gotta say, for some backwater hellhole Fallwalker, the half-strand sure had a pretty complex system goin’ for him. Infrastructure hidden in the dark. Lighthouses are perfectly aligned with lenses that boost light. Hells, the shadows make this place a fortress. It’ll take Guild support to raid this place.” A grin spread across Avo’s face following her words. “Or three Godclads supported by a ghoul with a flame fetish. Yeah, suck that smug down your throat before I shoot it off you.”

Avo declined to oblige out of spite alone, but the expression melted a second as he directed his Skimmer even higher and glimpsed something entirely unexpected. Waves of perception pulsed out from his Phantasmic. Boosted by all the ghosts fused to his Conflagration, his awareness coated the world in the span of kilometers. Initially, he thought the path leading to the enclave as if a constellation.

That analog required an amendment. As more lighthouses flashed to activation, a new design took shape–one undeniably formed by human hands.

When circumstances aligned, nature sometimes created faint semblances of other things; a mirage of likelinesses. To create the image of a kraken from an interplay of light and shadow, on the other, spoke of artistry–and more importantly culture.

The light-paved lands the cadre stood before was but one “arm” connected to the painted beast. Eight other limbs continued burning out into the black, extending to places beyond where Sanguinity and perception could follow. Some of his templates guessed that they were stretching far and away, extending forth to other landmasses or even distant continents.

Each route of radiance ended along the curve of a sphere forming at the center of the darkness. Spirals of light flicked and broke into different shapes, the pockets of bright and dark becoming a painting composed by contrast alone.

There, at the heart of this Fallen Heaven, where a coming weight pressed against Avo’s Frame the strongest, the shadows melted away to unveil a grand structure nearly the size of a smaller district. It was perhaps six hundred kilometers in length and width, but its mass was the least interesting about it. More fascinating was how the darkness–now transmuted back to water upon being touched by light–spilled through a complex series of ducts, running up along the edifice’s exterior.

Cracks of blood-made lightning expanded around the structure, and the materials of its make exploded into Avo’s mind. But as his Woundmother began to complain about the structure’s dilapidation and instability, Avo realized the countless panes of glass comprising the top of the structure were beginning to gleam with color as light and water danced to a final interplay, completing the portrait.

A breath escaped from Avo. Calvino chimed with fascination. He projected a phantom, detailing what he perceived and both Draus and Dice turned to study his discovery.

Solid lines of radiance warred against quivering shadows, the light forming an outline of an image while the dark offered the shading of texture. The glass lining the roof of the enclave formed the visage of an eight-eyed beast, with old Scaarthian runes gleaming inside the iris of each eye, and thousands of ships following its round, jagged maw. Final dappled flickers of light connected the lanes cast by the lighthouses to the materializing enclave itself.

Four hundred kilometers away from the cadre, the home thought lost to Dice came into view. Still standing. Still shining.

“Like outcroppings of rock…” the Fardrifter muttered, attention fixed to the painted teeth presented in the glass.

Dice reached out, trying to touch the image, but her hand just phased through the phantoms. “Is this what… home looks like?”

“From above,” Avo said.

Dice was silent for a beat. “I never… I didn’t ever get to see the outside. It was always dark. Nothing there. Just rocks. Even when the master’s light sang out.” An ache swelled inside her. It was irrational, but it strained her to realize how little she knew of her own enclave, and how much Avo had discovered in an instant.

Draus snorted. “Beginning to have a feelin’ our Fallwalker’s more of a squatter than a determined homesteader. Any idea how long your home’s been around, Dice?” The girl offered no response. “Yeah. Doubt he would’ve told you the honest truth anyway. Or if he even knew himself.” The glass shard hovering near Draus sparked again. “I’m getting into the ceiling. Think we can skip the front doors and jump through the roof. Scope the place. Decide how we want to make our entrance after that.”

Heeding Draus’ words, Avo wrapped his haemokinetic storm tighter around the enclave. Veins and arteries surged through the building’s architecture, matter itself a superconductor where the Woundmother was concerned.

There was only one major entrance, and the structure had a layer of vacuum that parted the exterior walls from the interior habitat. There were five levels to this place, with the highest built along the walls like a halo while each level descended level closing the gap at their cores a bit more. A system of hydraulically powered aqueducts stood as the basis of inner-enclave transportation, with specified platforms allowed to move between the levels.

He mapped the layout of the structure in less than a heartbeat, it took but a second more for him to generate a DeepNav simulation of the enclave. Other patterns came alight in his notice. Biological patterns. Many human if judged by their physical shapes and organic traits, but many more struck Avo as cattle in accordance with their morphologies and the pens they lived in.

Avo expended a full percent of his cog-cap adding the lifeforms into his simulated map. There weren’t many people here. Only [538,331] living entities; far less than what was even held in the smallest of the districts. But they were there. And they were diminishing. Fast. In rapid increments.

Metal slugs sailed slowly through the air. Fangs gnashed at parting flesh. Bone-made shivs opened throats and ended lives.

Thaums began to flow over into Avo, unbeknownst to the inhabitants of the enclave.

Avo channeled Skimmer through his Sanguinity and burned these details into his phantoms as well. “Draus…”

“Yeah,” the Regular said, her mind focused as if she was the one locked in battle. “I’m inside too. I see ‘em. Looks like we came back just in time for a civil war.”

“Civil war?” Dice said, taken entirely aback by the situation.

Pockets of moving bodies battled each other. It took scant effort from Avo to distinguish the factions. One side was fewer but formed in orderly lines, holding key junctions and chokepoints. The others were a swelling mass, pushing hard to break through fortifications.

And then, in the distance, Avo noticed a series of flickers pulsing from each of the lighthouses. A repeating series of winks traveling through the shadows from afar.

{Hm. Some kind of crude code,} Calvino said. {Would you like me to attempt an extrapolation?}

The ghoul grunted. +No. Have another way of understanding the situation.+

Calvino understood in an instant. {Ah.}

+Don’t worry. Will burn only the ones engaged in active violence.+

Avo tried not to laugh as the EGI formed a frowning face at the heart of its nanomolecular avatar. {Do be restrained.}

+Yes. Going to be important moment for Dice’s self-shaping as well.+

{Why can’t you just say “growth.”}

+Because that entails something that just happens. The world inflicts on you sometimes. This is. This time she moves first. Matters more.+ Rising back to the real after his inner monologue, Avo checked his Rend and prepared himself. “Draus. We enter through the ceiling. Incogs active. Going to subsume a mind before we engage.”

“Synced,” Draus said. Her shard expanded outward into a sheet, forming a wide passageway into the enclave. “Reckon the flickerin’ just now was a signal. Like how they’re under attack. They might be assumin’ their Fallwalker’s come back to save them.”

Avo gave a bemused chuff. “Godclads coming. Yes. Fallwalker? No.” He gave Dice a final look. “Are you ready?”

Both the girl herself and her template shivered. “No.”

“Good,” Avo replied. “Awareness of uncertainty is better than blind certitude. This could be good for you. It could be painful. I can mend whatever damage it might inflict. But that will be up to you.” He paused, considered his words, and let out a breath. “Our pasts are rarely what we think they are. Our owners often lie to us. Our purposes are poorly conceived. The past hurts. Always. Because we know what was lost. The past is lost. But you are now present in motion. Future still definable. Do you want to see what you might become?”

A moment’s hesitation followed. Then, a soft whir sounded from the Railjumper’s triangular sensor module. “Yes.”

“Good,” Avo said. “Me too. So. Take your step. We will follow.”

The girl was done lingering now. Strings of apprehension still pried at her insides, but her route was chosen–and pointed not the one offered by her master’s lighthouses. Peering past the light, Avo sneered into the brightness, hoping strangely that there was something after, that the now-dead Fallwalker could see what was being done to his favorite “dog.”

+Taken her from you,+ Avo taunted, casting his ghosts out down into the lanes of light. +Not yours anymore. You thought you knew power. You thought you had control? This is power. This is control. Is. Is not. Absolute. I am the more impressive god. Such cannot be denied.+

Pockets of disbelief exploded across Avo’s many templates. Corner laughed. Abrel gawked. Template-Draus snorted with derision. [Jaus. We’ve finally reached terminal shit-talk. Told you to stop tauntin’ and torturin’ half-strands and now you’re mocking them in the Big Nothing. Fuckin’ incredible.]

Avo cast the template's words over into real-Draus’ Neurodeck and she gave a low guffaw. Dice stepped through the glass, not noticing the moment shared by ghoul and Regular, the twosome holding a moment longer.

{Oh, look, Captain Draus. Character development.} Soft sarcasm clung to Calvino’s every word and Draus just shook her head.

“Frankly, if this stops him from doin’ stupid shit in the middle of a firefight, I’ll take it. Way things are going, though, I think Dice’s old master got lucky: if Avo’d snuffed him, he’d probably be gettin’ these speeches on the daily inside the Conflagration.”

Bitterness metastasized inside Abrel. [Yeah. Fate-fucking-worse than death.]