Godclads

The Stormtree forces I have been embedded with in Tafalis have… turned on each other. Everything is collapsing. All cohesion has been lost. The Bloodthanes are trying to respond, but I think they’re getting affected as well. I suspect that there might be a lingering memetic contagion—maybe something deployed by Noloth.

Or the Burning Dr—

[Sound of metal tearing]

Oh, oh, gods. No! Get away! Stop! Please, don’t—I—

Oh… oh,see now…

Hm. Interesting miracle. Disguised as a phantasmic. Purely informational. Fascinating. Hello. Inner Council. Must be listening. Can feel you. Know you’re there. You are… very interesting. Surprised me. Was wondering why you made so many of those proxies. Try to create new bodies. New citizens? To broaden your democracy’s population? Make yourself more powerful.

Will find out. Will find out when I claim a few more of your Sleepers. Understand why you didn’t to talk with me now. So much risk for you while I was whole. Could have infected your democracy. But now—

-Last Cognisoft broadcast received from Sleeper “Wolfkin”

32-1

Flame Beneath Flames

—[Ancar Two-Claw]—

Ancar Two-Claw, First Fang of Stormtree and the de facto head of all Massist forces in Tallstrings, was called back from slumber by a rising scream of mind-rending torment.

Exhausted from twelve consecutive combat engagements, clearing most of the remaining Golds from their defensive planes, she relieved herself of command and allotted her cadre a scarce moment of respite before they had to resume their miserable campaign. She hadn’t even cleaned herself when she returned to her quarters. The world dimmed around the corners of her cog-feed as she approached her stasis pod.

Darkness claimed her before she even finished falling forward, the upper lid of her pod left open, the rejuvenation process denied before it could even begin.

She sank like a stone into heavy rest. The weight of her exhaustion felt like soil cast upon her chest, burying her deep. She was lost to the world, lost to even herself, and her mind dissolved in the stygian nothingness, spent from strain and stress.

But not even a cozy den of nothingness could shield her from the howls that came. The howls that drifted through matter, riding on tides of thought.

Ancar stumbled toward her door, cog-feed flickering, her body sluggish from interrupted sleep. Her very being ached at the deprivation of her rest, but an attack couldn’t be ignored. Much as part of her wanted to just lay there and accept death if it could be a silver bullet for her exhaustion, she had a duty to Guild and her fellow sons, sisters, and cousins. Ṟ

Good thing she collapsed in her combat-skin. A mental command was sent and Ancar’s blood came aflame as a penultimate dose of battle-stims flooded her biochemistry. Suddenly, the weariness burst like a bubble, and she was a whirlwind nested in the flesh of a Scaarthian. She stormed out from her quarters, made to assemble her cadre—

And another chorus of wails hit her. The sheer terror contained within the thoughtcast made Ancar’s wards ring. “Blind… fates,” the First Fang growled.

+Please! No! Mercy, please!+

+Veril! Where are you! Where are you, Veril!+

+Longeyes guard our fates! Storms deliver us from… from… destruction be our cloak—-+

Whispers licked at the back of Ancar’s mind, and she could taste the lingering emotions that came with them. Her gut tightened evermore. This wasn’t just some Nether-based attack—Nether was down anyhow—this was something else. Something more. There was a weight pressing against her mind that she couldn’t describe.

A series of hisses sounded from down the hall. Three new pressures greeted her Frame, and Ancar took in her cadre. They all looked like how she felt—seemed like the lot of her war sisters collapsed in their armor as well.

“Fuck’s happening,” Dagad False-Tongue muttered. A layer of frost was building around her armor, clasping her in slabs of ice already. “Keep hearing these screams.”

“Raid,” Leaf-of-Barren-Trees said simply. A whistle of wind twirled around the taciturn Bloodthane. She was the newest of their group—a replacement for Jackal Boy. Poor, poor fucking Jackal Boy: Who knows what the No-Dragons did after they snatched him.

“Ancar. Orders.” A heavy cloak taken from a warg adorned Ancar’s second. Dog-Daughter and Ancar had served in two Guild Wars, 3,241 battles, and across 63 years. She was the only reason Ancar wasn’t dead by now, and Ancar was hers. But though she seemed resolute, Ancar detected something in her voice. You didn’t spend that long with someone and attune yourself to them on some level.

Fear. Worry. She knew something was very wrong, too.

“Standard hunt,” Ancar spat. “Scout. Spot. Strike. Identify the target. Gather our forces. Cut the danger at its root. We rally our forces. We do our duty. Though the Storms Fall.”

“Though the Storms Fall!” her cadre replied in a unified bellow.

Destruction was the world’s final fate. Everyone knew that. Everyone lived it. Even if ruin was coming, however, it wasn’t the end. Winter turned to summer, and sprouts would rise from ash. It was their duty to face the calamity, to survive it, to wrestle into submission, and by the balancing of the Great Seasons would all be preserved by destruction beyond oblivion.

They moved as a unit, with Leaf on point. The winds shivered around her, and her combat-skin, lightest of their group, lent to her ephemeral fleetness. As they prepared to leave their barracks, however, Leaf froze and held up a hand. “There is… a fire?”

“What?” Dagad said. “What are you talking about, pup?”

“It’s like the world is burning…” Leaf muttered. “All of it. I…” She extended a Ghost-Link from her Meta and a second cog-feed flashed into Dagad’s mind. True to the rookie’s words, there was a great flame that licked at the sky. Might’ve been the biggest flame Ancar had ever seen. It spread fast through the Stormtree special encampment, washing over from prisoner processing and liquidations. But it didn’t burn like most flames. No, there was a dance to the way it flickered, a phantasmal shine to the fiery crackle, ghosts circulating between the shivering bright.

Worse, there were faces sliding across the outside of the fire. Thousands upon thousands of screaming faces, crying out in a symphony of madness.

“Ruin be our fate,” Ancar muttered.

“The fuck is that?” Dagad grunted.

“I don’t know,” Ancar replied. “Never seen anything like it. Some kind of Necro-attack. Memetic contagion.”

“What? But the Nether’s fucked.”

“Viruses might still work,” Dog-Daughter answered.

Ancar hesitated for but a moment. “Right. Leaf. Bring us in. We keep our distance. Deploy Thoughtwaves to disrup—”

A wave of force tore clean through the walls of their barracks. Ancar found herself tumbled, flung through multiple walls made from reinforced metal and thaumically enchanted bone. Runic blessings flared and failed as Ancar continued toppling along her path, and it was only through the fourth wall as her armor flashed with WARNING: ARMOR INTEGRITY COMPROMISED that the First Fang finally responded.

Ancar usually avoided manifesting her Heaven near allied units. Her power was a thing of terror as much as it was a harbinger of destruction and withering calamity. But whatever attacked her knew exactly where she was—where her cadre was, and to hesitate was to die. Rational thoughts were discarded as combat-honed instinct took hold.

The Beast of the Starved emerged from within Ancar’s Frame, swelling into existence as jagged peaks of mountain-sized teeth and rotting and rippling tissue. The Heaven of Hunger expanded for a full kilometer before it stopped, crashing through the surrounding architecture and toppling an already destabilized megablock outright. It resembled a mess of different beast-like heads snapping out from a withered, ursine body. Everything it touched grew brittle, every breath the heads breathed released locusts and knew only a needle to eat and die.

The First Fang turned to seek out her enemy, but found no obvious foe. All around her were the desecrated bones of the Highflame Elysium—formerly luxurious megablocks reduced to ruins beneath the husk of burned trees that once shone with scintillating gold. She remembered leading her forces to seize the heart of the city first, preventing what few local defenders there were from waging an active defense. Surrounding the city was a massive hurricane that pushed ever outward, its winds grinding over the world in spatial and physical patterns. It served as the back most line for their offensive forces and expanded forth to swallow the areas they secured.

As of now, over eighty percent of the district was theirs, but there were still pockets.

Highflame had many flaws, but resolve wasn’t one of them. Every affair against the Golds demanded attrition. Demanded blood. Just their misfortune Ancar had blood and attrition to spare.

But now, it seemed that they were learning new strategies, attacking her from places unseen. Frankly, this was more like Ori-Thaum.

+Not quite.+

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The voice washed in from all around her, echoing forth from… from the fire?

Their operating base co-opted the local Highflame administrative capital as a command center. From there, the rest of their facilities expanded in all directions, mostly utilizing existing infrastructure as well. Prisoner processing occupied the far southeast of the district, taking up a good twenty-kilometer stretch, and that was where the flames had been.

But to her rising horror, it was rushing toward her, traveling like an accelerating wildfire. Worse, she felt a conscious intent approaching—a nostalgic, vicious glee paired with a hunger that could rival her Heaven.

+To me!+ She broadcast publicly, calling her cadre.

But it wasn’t them that replied to her. Rather, it was the voices. The voices and faces formed upon the surface of the flame. +Hm. First Fang. Be with you shortly. Just finishing a conversation. Quite a few Sleepers with your forces.”

Ancar moved. But even as she acted, she noticed streaks of fire trailing through the skies above, expanding like a web… or strings. Strings connected to thousands of drones, of golems, and… people?

Ancar felt their metaphysical presences then—recognized a few of them. They were also Bloodthanes. Godclads like her. And they were just hanging there in the air above, their halos ablaze. Connected by chains of fire. Chains that streamed back to the approaching flame.

A sharp cry sounded through the air. An enormous stag sculpted from raging winds drifted to a halt next to Ancar, and from within the current fell a 900-meter serpent formed by slabs of cracking ice, and a mutilated wolf with Woundhounds leaking from its wounds. The rest of her cadre had assembled with her.

But meanwhile, the fire was expanding, spreading wider, sweeping through entire districts at a pace Ancar couldn’t even perceive. Then, suddenly, the flames were closed around them, and slowly began to trickle inward, advance a few hundred meters at a time.

This close, Ancar also saw spearing links shooting out from within the flame, threading through drone after drone, vehicle after vehicle, person after person. Within her cog-feed, millions of accretions were punctured and ignited across the horizon, and from them poured more fire, it coming an infection that grew exponentially with each mind consumed.

“Fuck! What the fuck!” Dadag was gasping. From her Wyrm of Broken Wind manifested a cascading avalanche—unleashed without the First Fang’s permission.

“Dagad!” Ancar cried. There were other people in the surrounding space—their people!

But before the rising wave of ice could inflict any harm, a pocket of space collapsed around it, and Ancar felt a few hundred new metaphysical presences emerge from within the approaching conflagration. They slipped out from the flames unburned of matter but consumed of loci, and each of them were manifested.

More followed thereafter. Countless more.

Golems. Godclads. Drones expanded from the flames, and the sky above them was more akin to a burning net by this point.

“First Fang!” Dog-Daughter called out. “First Fang! Orders! Orders!”

“I…” Ancar didn’t know what to do. Her mind was empty. Her instincts told her to run. But even the path behind them was barred. Consumed. She still didn’t know why no one else was trying to resist the coming flame—looking at the streets below her, barren of people aside from patrolling skuld-beasts biohorrors and their handlers managing the lockdown, she found them staring up at her as well, with a faint trail of incandescence lining their minds.

“No point in the fight. No point anymore. Couldn’t have saved yourself. Couldn’t have saved your people. Take solace in inevitability. You couldn’t have imagined my coming. Couldn’t have stopped me even if you knew.”

The faces coating the fires merged together, and the flames coalesced and formed a bestial visage—pale white of flesh, black of eyes, and sharp of fangs. She knew that face—that was the look of that monster… the Pale Spider. And a second thereafter, the face shifted once more, becoming a winged beast with void-black plumage, jutting tendrils of flame seeping from the black, and a single cyclopean eye that stared upon her with inhuman curiosity.

And finally, Ancar knew who she was facing, who had attacked her.

“Oh, fuck,” Dagad moaned, her morale dissolving. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, it’s him! It’s the Strix!”

“The Strix,” Leaf breathed, fear gripping her.

“Ancar!” Dog-Daughter cried.

“Run,” Ancar said. Destruction might be her fate. But it didn’t need to be the others. Past the point of disbelief and horror, Ancar was who she always had been: a huntress standing before a falling tide of snow, of lightning, of plague, of soil, of wind, of life. Perhaps that final ruin-joined flowering of her people would never be hers to witness, but even so, she could give herself for her sisters.

Because someone must live to see the light of summer.

“I will clear a path!” Ancar cried, turning to charge the flames behind them. From her many mouths poured a swarm of hunger, and the world before her turned black, even the approaching flames blotted out. “Charge through me. Charge past me. Prepare dis—”

A dozen pulses of metaphysical power circulated around the surrounding tapestry. A chain of errant miracles crashed into her and her cadre—each one a surgical attack, striking them at their hubris and inflicting crippling backlashes. Ancar cried out as her Rend spiked, as she herself went beyond backlash and faced paradox. She felt a counter-impact rush through the weave of surrounding fire and in the distance, a dozen golems shattered apart in sprays of Soulfire.

But Ancar fell. Her cadre fell.

And the flames tore through her locusts, extending clawed hands to claim her.

In the end, there was fire. Fire, and falling. Ancar descended into a new place. A new realm not entirely unlike the one in which she existed. A replica of her forward operating base came into view below her, but the streets were infused with phantasmal fire, and battles were taking place—unceasing battles raging across every street, within every building, between two factions.

“Are you proud of what you have done?” a sibilant voice asked.

Ancar shuddered and tried to reach out for her reserve Heaven. But nothing answered her. She could still feel her Frame—her sheath but—

“I have use for that right now. Need it. Need everything from all of you to free a friend. But I asked you a question.”

The First Fang clenched her teeth. “Why? Why did you do this? Why are you attacking us? How are you still alive?”

The Strix chuffed as if amused. “Why did you butcher the people of this district. Few were true soldiers. Most were families. Citizens. Non-military personnel. “

“I did my duty,” Ancar cried. “They were the enemy—I was—”

“Your people left children in cages. In cages with your war beasts. They fed on the young. Your comrades made some parents watch. Recorded the memories. But some of them grew nauseous afterward. When they were alone. Some cried. Others pleasured themselves to the vicarities. All pointless. Entertaining for the ghoul in me… but pointless. You were the master of the forces here. The one everyone answered to. Why? Why did you allow this?”

She didn’t know what to say. “I… they were the enemy. They would have done the same.”

The Strix grunted. There was no recrimination in their voice. Just casual acceptance. “And that was good enough for you?”

Ancar didn’t know what to say.

“It’s fine. I don’t condemn you. Nothing to condemn. I accept you. I accept everyone. Everything. You should live more. Live. Die. Do wrong. Suffer consequence. Return. But live. Might give you some perspective.”

“Wait!” Ancar cried out. The ground was rapidly approaching. “Wait! What about my cadre! What about—”

She splattered against the marble-paved pavement—felt excruciating pain as she came apart. But death never came. Rather. The world went dark for a few seconds. And she felt her jolt back into being where she died—just like a resurrection.

“Now you live,” the Strix declared, speaking through existence itself. All around her, people were fighting. A Scaathian tore a Kosgan in half along the waist—only for the bifurcated woman to shoot her through the eye using a hidden wrist-installed fusion-beamer. A dozen men, women, children—all of them Highflame locals—held another Stormtree soldier down as a Sang wearing a scorpion bio-rig stung their body repeatedly. “Now you live. And die. And live. And learn. Just like everyone else.”

And then, Ancar heard the barring of an aervec and glimpsed the rageful face of a well-dress man speeding toward her through the cracked windshield. Her battle reflexes flared. She planted her feet back—her combat-skin’s exo-muscle fibers triggered, amplifying her Scaarthian strength a hundredfold while also locking her boots to the ground.

The civilian craft hit her and folded down the middle. The angry man turned white with surprise as he shot out from where he sat and splattered into a lump of ruined meat against Ancar’s broad torso. The aerovec then bounced and splashed against his puddle of gore. The First Fang blinked as she tried to process what just happened.

A beat later, the man suddenly returned, blinking back into place right next to her.

Silence followed. They just stared at each other, wordless.

“Is this… what hell is like?”

The Kosgan studied her for a moment longer before a sneer returned across his face. He spat on her and threw a punch. A punch that never landed, as his head vanished in a smear of red before Ancar’s backhand—just as her own skull vanished in a beam of light as a distant particle cannon sounded.

And more killing followed. And more dying followed. And this place wasn’t paradise or hell.

But it was a perfectly unhealthy forum for a group of people who hated each other to settle their grievances without the intervention of a final death.

***

—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—

“Taking stock of what we’ve obtained: Have 100,000 ground forces; 75% bioforms; 25% human clades. 400,000 support personnel. 4 Sleepers. 2 million heavy ground combat platforms. 8 million light ground combat platforms. 10 million heavy air assault craft. 20 light air assault craft. 55,524 golems. 121 Godclads worth 100,000 thaums in total; three Godclads Highflame Authorities.”

Ignorance continued taking stock of their logistical situation as Avo watched the world inside himself grow while organize his host of new bodies. There was a great deal of work to be done. Stormtree made a mess of this place, but Highflame made them bleed—even if this was a relatively undefended Elysium. Seemed like the forces took about 20% attrition, seizing the city.

Annoying. Thankfully, he had enough golems and Godclads left to do what he wanted.

Tallstrings used to have a lightrail going toward Scale. With the Substance in the way, it would be hard to get through, but if he could create a large enough rupture…

Yes. The thing is creating a scenario in which that would be believable. A mutiny, perhaps. Veylis and his original self was watching from within the Substance. The hurricane Stormtree put up to secure their positions helped blunt some attention, but even so, Avo couldn’t risk giving himself any weight—or creating a familiar Heaven.

Rather, he needed to fight like a puppet master. Unseen. Wielding other Godclads and armies to his ends. With that in mind, he hid his phantasmal fires with Ignorance and returned to his stealthier posture. It was fun watching some of the Scaarthians feel. It would be enlightening to see what becomes of them and the Highflamers after they grow weary of killing each other…. But in the meantime…

He had an army to compel. This was why he infected the Tiers: Influence. Symmetry wasn’t meant to just be the gutters against the Tiers. It was everyone he could reach against the Guilds. Avo’s touch would be the only dividing line of battle. He still had haemokinetic loci fused in places. And with the recent “donations” made by Stormtree, he didn’t need to start over completely, but still, this was annoying without a template of Draus. He would have to fashion something useful out of all the Greens. Create an optimized ego-template from all their collective virtues.

GENERATING TEMPLATE: [THE ADVISOR]

And while he was working on that… Avo reached into the golem pilots operating along the periphery of the hurricane. There were still Stormtree forces in combat. Highflame defenders too. More for him to claim. His first focus, though, was expanding the storm toward the Substance—toward where the lightrail was supposed to pass through.

Veylis had done what she could to keep Naeko contained. But Avo thought the Chief Paladin had enough recovery. That was the point of dispatching Jaus to his side in the first place, after all.

Finally. The true war was upon him. Time to get to work.