Chapter 8-20 A Testament of "Skill"
Is this a joke, Oyaje? I challenge youI bring you the best of my Glaives and you offer me your daughter? Shes barely past her first bleeding! Look at her! And how does she have a Glaive? This this is an insult. For all the kikigo between us, I still hoped that our shared blood would
No, brother. When this day is done, your sons will be buried, and you will receive my champion as a worthy compliment. You have one more chance to withdraw your veto against my sons ascent to First Annalist. Do so. Or be made lacking by my daughter.
[Whispering] Can we just start the killing now, father?
[Sighing] Zein, no. Im trying to save your uncles sons. Theyre your cousins.
They wont be if theyre dead. I could kill their father too if you want.
Zein, no.
-Mem-log of Zein Oyaje, THE RITE OF KIKIGO
8-20
A Testament of Skill
From the stillness of his former corpse, Avo rose a screaming gale, his return to baseline existence carving an invisible dome into the air as the Galeslither formed, bullets spilling along its sides like waterfalls.
He spread his being wide for a moment, feeling the rising groves of sprouting metal and plantstuff, the countless weapons spreading like branches from ever-growing trees. Zein had not lied when she said this place was garden and armory both, and with its cyclical nature, any battle here would twist back unto itself like dueling in a wide plain and a narrow chamber both.
Twenty feet across from him Zein stood, yawning as she waggled a single finger, ushering for something invisible to come. She seemed in no hurry to begin, her eyes following him with a wry stare even as he dove in and out of the Yondergales.
You may begin your attempts on my life when youre ready, Zein said. I will take such as the beginning of our game.
Avo took the time to experiment.
Shifting between Heavens was an instantaneous thing, like twisting his Soul. It wasnt so much as running both Heavens at once as he could transform the currently active Heaven he had into anothersometimes at a near-constant pace. When done fast, splashes of eldritch fire spewed free from his changing form, reshaping Galeslither down to the blood in Avos veins.
The improvements he made to the Woundshaper were made obvious from the moment he began to convert the matter around him into blood. When last in the gutters he had to vent several times before he even managed ten tons. Now, his spreading arteries bloomed out from his being, leeching away all physical substance as he fused into the greater embodiment of the Woundshaper.
His Rend climbed at a trickle instead of a spike.
Ten tons came. Then twenty. By the time he was at the full eighty, he dwarfed Zein utterly and felt himself peer out from the clouds. Strangely, he could feel parts of the plant mass tickling his mind, and his haemokinesis greeted the light like fingers sliding down the strings of a violin.
Time lurched as if seized in a chokehold thanks to his increased mass also multiplying his attributes. When combined with his Celerostylus, his Phys-Sim estimated he would be capable of fighting past mach 4.
Such a realization came bound with new considerations. He tested his Domain of Biology. Hydrapedes molded free from matter as his insectoid limbs touched columns and soil. His Rend grew by a few points more as he increased his spread and tested both the hydrapede creation and Hive (II) canons. Neither seemed that useful as of present.
Luminosity, however, proved to be an ability most different.
It took him more than one attempt to figure out how the Canon of Harmonize (II) functioned. From the antlers growing protruding from his Woundshaper, he felt a ringing resonance between him and all nearby pieces of matter, their structures each bearing a different pitch, like radio wavelengths awaiting connection.
With a thought, he used his Canon of Linger to deploy a chunk of blood-tungsten and infuse a mote of light into it from one horn. Operating more off of instinct than understanding, Avo infused another connected mote from the opposite horn into himself, and a shivering string of brightness formed.
He took a step back and, joined to his motion by the light-made link, the chunk copied his motion shooting backward as an excess of force and momentum acted on it. So aligned were the vectors of force and momentum that Avo understood the nature of his new ability. The chunk was paired to him, the canon using light to connect their forms.
Such a thing held much promise. Alas, it did jump his Rend by five percent.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] - 28%
REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER] - 1%
Splendid, master, splendid,his Woundshaper cackled with glee. I am no longer starved of endurance. I stand greater than I have ever been! She sighed. If I could but return to my beginning now. The world would have been mine to shape.
Using the Canon of Linger on his greater structure, Avo stepped out from the frozen tower of blood as his Hell filled just a bit more. Activating the Barrage of the Withered, a static needle of Rend began to build, taking a second to pour from his vessel before it tore free. A new menu flashed into his cog-feed as he felt the entropic construct connect with his mind. It swam through the air and left a crackle of gray in its wake, its speed and dexterity sharing a kinship with his Heaven at baseline.
With a mental command, he had its impact against a pillar. It struck the rising groove and burst into a rippling tide of raw entropy, carving a wide wound into the garden some eighty feet wide and high.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] - 0%
He worked up his Rend and tested the shot several more times. When his Rend was at sub-twenty, the missile was smaller but quicker, taking less than a second to launch when measured at the pace of his perception. Past that, the time it took to generate grew, as did the devastation at the end.
You might also be able to burn away the Rend accumulated by your Galeslither, Zein said, her back turned to him.
The beast itched under Avos skin, tempted by the moment of vulnerability. Avo thought better.
She said she wasnt going to invoke her Heaven of Time, but such a thing remained uncertain. He would need to study her more before he made his move.
In the meantime, he did as she said as the flickered back over to using the Galeslither, all his amassed blood briefly slipping from control. Forming a sphere of stasis, he drew upon the Domains of his Woundshaper and shaped a single strand of blood into the sphere. There, as the winds clasped his new limb, leeching all momentum from it, Avo made the limb spin fast, while taking care to not exceed the capacity of his bubble.
The Rend of his Galeslither cleared almost immediately.
REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER] - 0%
Satisfaction played within him as an orchestra.
He turned to Zein again, who was comparing two frequency blades; one was shorter but faster, the other longer but slower. Helping me a lot, he said. Why?
She hummed. Why? I claimed you as an apprentice, did I not?
Didnt say I accepted yet.
A lack of rejection is acceptance in my time.
He cast out his Whisper then, using it to watch her from another angle. She showed no hints of awareness. Really dont want my Frame?
She frowned. I have the Frame. I have you. I just see no need to trade my own. Her gaze flattened. Besides. I suspect that your Soul would be ill-fitting for my constitution.
Whats that
He felt his midsection burst before everything went white.
Avo tried to blink but found himself bereft of eyelids or limbs or anything to control.
It was only when the rippling flames of his Soul rose that he realized he was dead again.
RESURRECTION - 1%
He found himself nested within his Galeslither, seeing that his Woundshaper had a spec of Rend staining his Hell. Seconds later, Zein descended on her blade, tutting in disappointment.
What happened? Avo asked.
You started asking questions instead of attempting to kill me, Zein said. This is bad. Very bad. We have already had these conversations in other futures.
Im trying to talk with you now, Avo growled.
She ignored him. Making your master bored is a fatal thing, little dagger. Keep that in mind.
She then promptly left.
He took her words to heart.
When his resurrection ended, he came back to life with a plan, approaching his engagement with Zein more in the style of an assassination than a brawl. With Phys-Sim active, he devised an attack from three sides.
The first would come from the Nether: Lucilles Torment. He would use his Ghostjack to launch the lightest of phantasmal weapons like a jab, drain her focus and then distract her.
Then, back in the real, he would perform a Luminosity-aided pincer. Subtly moving the chunk of blood behind Zein, he used his Phys-Sim to calculate impact trajectories directed at the back of her head, using the looping nature of his environment to his advantage. This killing stroke would be hidden by a wide scything blow from his Woundshaper itself.
And should all else fail, he could let his Woundshaper Rend build before capturing her in his Yondergales and use it to detonate her while she was tumbling in his wake.
With a plan in mind, he immediately reconstructed the Woundshaper around himself and began his assault.
A discharge of synaptic lightning flowed free from his Celerostylus. The world slowed, and unlike before, time did not attune itself to match him. The falling rain of bullets barely moved, so fast was he with all eighty tons of his Woundshaper. His might swelled. His presence rose. Zein shrank.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] - 8%
And immediately, Avo worked his attack.
The offense came from three directions at once: His Whisper shot high, acting as a spotter for his Ghostjack; out from his body, a whip of scything blood crackled through the air, shearing through the metallic trees in a wide sweep, delivered with deliberate sloppiness; a tendril of blood slowly moved behind him, nudging the chunk in place as he prepared to tether it to himself with a link of light.
Zein, meanwhile, prepared by using a knife to prune a brush spewing out seeds bearing smaller knives.
His Ghostjack crackled. A current of ghosts plumed out from his Whisper, screaming out with Lucilles Regret. A single blade from her wards shot out, her thoughtstuff tethered to it, a blade on a string twisting out the cleave a river of howling shades.
Two things happened then, both of them unexpected by Avo.
The first was Zein suddenly bursting into motion, uprooting the planet entirely to reveal the massive launch port at its end holding some manner of a warhead. The second blade from her wards lashed out to parry the tsunami that was his trauma, her speed at resequencing her defenses incredible, Metamind reweaving memories to achieve near-symmetry with his attack.
Even as his Woundshaper lashed toward her midriff, he watched in disbelief as her launcher fired out, its electromagnetic railing sparking as it ejected the warhead at him.
Unfettered, he shaped another limb out from his already slashing tendril to knock it aside.
A warning flashed in his cog-feed. A sudden flood of dread filled Avos veins before he even fully conceptualized what had happened.
WARNING: RADIOACTIVE
The warhead promptly exploded, cracking like an expanding eggshell, and with it the world. Blinding whiteness swallowed all. Even Avos thoughts werent spared.
RESURRECTION - 1%
Again, Avo found himself loading into his Galeslither.
Plunging back into his Soul blinked as he wondered how he just died. He knew the probable cause to be Zein, yet, aside from the sudden impact he knew not of what killed him.
He realized he was nested in his Galeslither by default, unable to shift. Twisting his perception to check his Woundshaper, he found it bleeding static grayness out into its reflection in the Third Circle, the Hell fissuring as it spewed Soulfire out as literal error codes into reality.
The reflections blood was twitching as matter dolloped from dripping strands of ichor. Inverting upward, the Woundshaper stared down, curious as to the sensation. All my debt, paid by another. What convenience.
Avo watched the former god turned Heaven. He allowed the Woundshaper to prod at itself, comparing its current shape to where tears of instability appeared on the Hell.
Did you know that we used ephemerals as effigies for our entropic maladies? the Woundshaper said. In my time, us gods made these Hells to counter the sicknesses spewed upon the land. Such is was lingers in the long shadows of my memory.
He didnt respond to the Heaven, so consumed by stunned blankness from what just happened.
Did Zein just use a missile on him? Her plants were growing missiles as well? When was this? How did she even manage to curate this place? Was she just using playing him for a fool, killing him over and over using the instruments of this place to to do what?
Thoughts reeled through his mind as everything that happened throughout the last few days caught up with him. His new enhancements; sparring with Draus; the Hungers and the nigh-incomprehensible madness they sprouted about his past.
All of it felt like a haze, but Zein pushed it all over the edge into a fever dream.
He still had no idea what possessed her to kidnap into this pocket of space, to take him under her wing for training, or why she didnt just take his Frame from him with all that she possessed.
Of only one thing was he certain: the old woman was absolutely, utterly, mind-bendingly mad, and it was everyone elses problem to face.
I have discovered faults in your approach to conflict, Zein said upon entering his Soul. She was shaking her head. You are too trusting. And you rely too much on planning. Plans are good. Chaos is better. You must seek to master the totality of all things. Attack me constantly from all angles. You think too much and improvise too little. But my advice here is paradoxical: You must plan so well and so frequently beforehand that the knowledge comes to you. Like a fugue state, where every action you take is both sublime and a mystery to even yourself.
For a beat, he tried to process what she was staying. He failed. It was like experiencing a vicarity of someone having a stroke. What was that? Avo asked, his mind still fixated on death. What did you kill me with?
It's just a high-yield nuclear device, Zein said.
A nuke? You shot us with a nuke?
I shot you with a nuke, Zein said. Im fine.
How? You were right there. It went off next to you.
Ah, but unlike you, I was clever enough to dodge.
It was like aggravating him was one of her tactics. From the way she acted, it very well might have been. What?
Fine. Fine. I will refrain from using the launcher on you, Zein looked down at him with judging eyes. It is clear that you are not ready for such a lesson. Too surprising for you. I apologize.
The fires of his Soul twitched. Im going to kill you. Eat your eyes. Wear your head.
Zein nodded sagely. It speaks greatly of my talent that I inspire such dedication in you already.
Her words came without hint nor shadow of arrogance. She meant every syllable she spat. Experience and training grew to be secondary reasons why he wanted Zein dead. Spite, then, claimed its new throne above its rivals.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] - 10%
REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER] - 1%
As he returned this time, he wasted no more time, seeking to deprive Zein of all her advantages and strip her from her demiplanewhich was now rapidly regrowing into an arsenal of a garden after being turned into a blasted wasteland.
Spreading the reach of his Galeslither as wide as he could, he adapted his previous plan but added more complexity. He pulled objects into his Yondergale first, converting them to reform his Woundshaper. Then, finding Zein just standing at the epicenter of the blast crater staring at a new bush beginning to sprout from the rapidly refilling soil, he pulled her through his Yondergales and began his attack.
With his form flashing between the braying steed that was the Galeslither and the titanic tower of his Woundshaper, he attacked her from both Nether and physical vectors again.
He anticipated the defection of his trauma this time but compensated by committing less of his cog-feed. At the same time, he ejected a piece of blood from his Woundshaper, keeping it intact with linger as he tied it to his form using Harmonize.
Zein, for her part, extended her arms as a lattice of wings expanded from her back.
Avo stared. What was that? Was that nanotech? Didnt Voidwatch reserve all licenses for combat nanotechnology?
Shaking off the stupor, he used his Phys-Sim to calculate the trajectory of his haemokinetic shrapnel. He swung at her using shaped tendrils, his pace fast enough to shatter the barrier of sound. Zein responded to the blast waves by punching and somehow grappling the vibrations of another.
+The kimura can be applied in a variety of situations,+ Zein said. +Including against sound if you have the means to grab it.+
Avo snarled. Lashed out cutting down at her using hundreds of tendrils, striking from all directions while using the ripples of his body to pilot the stray piece of shrapnel, the impact lane slowly turning red as he guided the path it was circling.
Pulses of blue-organ light lanced out from her nanocarbide armor as she accelerated forward, greeting his spearing limb with a bladeless hilt raised, a faint look of enjoyment, bemused about a freefall sword fight against an eighty-ton god controlling alchemized blood.
He fell upon her then, his speed faster than most non-fusion aerovecs, each strike fast enough to burst the shroud of sound. But her refutation of his power as a thing of beauty. This he could not deny. She deflected his blows into each other, every sweep of her blade-hilt ringing in perfect tandem with the bursts of her thrust pack.
The economy of her movement was supreme. Nothing was wasted. Every shift of motion threw him off course and forced him to direct the shard for another spin. And against every blow she couldnt block she rode, bouncing herself away using the force directed from the block.
Annoyed, Avo sought to end things. He quelled the Galeslither as his shrapnel missed the fiftieth time, his dissatisfaction a wildfire in his veins. As they tumbled through the open air of her garden, he saw columns beginning to rise, and the bullets falling again.
Calculating her movement vectors using his Phys-Sim, he activated his Galeslithers Hell just as she twisted and fired her thrusters, returning to face him.
Zein lurched to a sudden halt.
At the speed she was going, the stasis bubble shuddered as his Galeslithers Rend began to empty at blinding speed.
Without a moment to waste, Avo did something he had never done before: He used both his Hells at once.
Diving free from a cascade of blood, entropy poured out from him as he hurled a lance of pure grayness toward Zein. A window popped up in his head. He accelerated the construct toward her all full speed.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER] -0%
Across the distance, she had the audacity to yawn. Wait, she wasnt yawning. As the light danced off her visor, he realized she was poking at one of her teeth using her tongue
Brightness consumed everything again.
RESURRECTION - 1%
As Avo fell back into his own Soul, he, again, wondered what killed him this time. He found himself in the Woundshaper, with the Galeslither still stained with a trickle of Rend.
However, his attention on his own Heavens and Hells did not last. Across his boundary, through a vast expanse of seeming nothingness, he saw another fire in the distance. Another Soul. Zein. It was too far for him to reach, but as his resurrection played its pace to the end, he watched it lance upward around the same time as he did.
Flicking back into realitythe area around him bereft of blood to spawn fromAvo stared at Zein, who popped in much the same way.
Much of the garden was gone. They stood upon a rumbling surfacea machine intricate and complex beyond his comprehension. Translucent gears danced and spun like the inner workings of a clock between the clawed digits of his feet. Through it all, mirages of miasmic plant stuff and weapons spilled between the gears like ink.
With the first crunching spin, a trickle of bullets fell while a carpet of soil shivered back into existence, materializing like a glitch in the real, not unlike his most recent resurrection. As the garden poured itself back into shape, he found himself staring back at Zein, who was now kneeling, digging through a patch of dirt, her blade held high.
What happened, he asked.
Zein folded her arms and nodded sagely. Sometimes, my apprentice, suicide is an act of tactical brilliance.
He narrowed his eyes. Thought you said you werent going to use a nuke. What was that? Chest bomb? Internally planted fusion core?
It was not a nuke, Zein said proudly. I have an antimatter bomb in one of my hearts.
A twisting feeling knotted painfully in his gut. Avo wanted to say something, but words wouldnt form, his psyche beyond dumbfounded by the raw absurdity of this battle.
It was a gift from Voidwatch, Zein said. I asked them to give me a smaller engine for a heart. Like one of their ships. She smiled. They obliged. She thrust the hilt of her blade down into the earth. He felt a click as the gears suddenly halted. Youre not very good at dodging, you know that?
I
Around him, the garden began to flicker in and out of existence with the light, the demiplane flickering as if coming on and off to the flick of a light switch.
When one blows themselves up, you should dive back into your demiplane. We must work on your adaptability. She nodded to herself. You show promise. No fear of death; a taste for pain; a mind flavored for complexity. But we need more. We need to instill in you the rules of Total Domain Warfare. Nothing must be outside the bounds of your consideration. Nothing.
He heard a crackling sound in the back of his mind thenhis ghost stuttering between the freedom of the real and the entrapment of this plane between flashes.
You, Zein said, twisting her sword are too sane.
Never in his life did Avo expect someone utter such words to him.
With a final click, the demiplane turned off entirely, and he found himself back in the front entrance to the Second Fortune.
Avo blinked.
Beside him, Zeins once bladeless hilt now held a new edge. It looked as if a crystalline saber of bright mercury, and beneath the structure, the outlined shape of her garden danced, the shadows of the demiplane intermittently interrupted by the swirl of a self-eating creature circling along the edge.
Shh, Akunsande, shh, she said, brushing the blade as if a mother coaxing a child. A ripple in time twisted, ebbing from the edge of the weapon as Zein twisted the hilt. A new sigil flashed out, phantoms bleeding from the hilt to manifest a shrouded holographic icon.
And Avo felt his focus come apart. When his thoughts returned, he wondered why he was looking at Zein shake out a sword-lengthed umbrella.
Come now, little dagger, she said, grasping him by the cook of his wrist, the sheer disparity in height between them not stopping her from having him guide her through the establishment like guardian bioform would a child. Show me to your friends. We have much to discuss. Death is always waiting for us later.
Just then, a session crackled on in his mind.
+Avo? Avo?+ Draus wary thought struck him like the tension of a hammer sinking beneath the tumbling waves of an ocean. +You dropped out of the world for a bit there. What the hells happened.+
Avo considered sending her a simple reply, but again, he felt Zein tugging his arm, pulling him away from the path to the apartments.
But before that, I wish to play the slots, Zein said. I need some imps for my drugs.
+Tell you when I figure it out myself,+ Avo said.
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