Chapter 10-16 Interrupted Deception
Do you have any idea how close you came to dying now, girl? Do you? When I say Zero-Burn, I mean go Zero-Burn! Zero-fucking-Burn!
Y-yes, Instrument
[Echo of a slap; a yelp]
No. Not yes, instructor. Stupid. Stupid fucking half-strand. You wanna know why you arent dead? Because it cant find you at Zero-Burn. Because that thing that you made? That was an Anathema of Anchoring. A Daemon. Trying to pocket it with your Heaven wont do anything because it is the literal antithesis of your Heavenof your fuckin being! Did you pay any godsdamned attention to anything I was trying to teach you? Did any of you?
[Silence]
What? Are you all mute now? Did you?
[Chorus of negatives; Mondelles sighs]
Class dismissed. This is going on your Merits. All your merits. Her for this mistake. The rest of you for failing to adhere to protocol. Assist your allies. Dont just stand there and gawk. Osjane.
... Yes, Instrument?
Im sorry I hit you. My control over my temper... slipped. It was unbecoming. Include that in your report too while waiting for the Daemon to rupture. Small failings go next to the big ones. My Merits need to be docked as well. Dont forget.
I yes, Instrument Mondelles. Blessed be the worthy.
Blessed be the worthy. Class dismissed. Learn from her, do not mock her. I saw how the rest of you were performing. She just made the mistake first. See that the rest of you dont do this.
-Exchange between Aspirant Osjane Callawanies and Instructor Santanado Mondelles, Axtraxis Academy of Highflame
10-16
Interrupted Deception
An infection was spreading through the plascrete, and its name was Avo.
Like parasitic growths sinking past the depth of flesh and entwining themselves within bone, threads of blood expanded outward, branches slithering between the walls and floors of the megablock. Reclaiming the loci he formerly subverted was a paltry task, the three major lobbies falling back under his control within an instant.
Guided by blurred accretions and rooting along the spines of the structure, Avo infused a nervous system of his own making, its design one of solidified blood and phantasmal circuitry. Using the shaft of a long abandoned elevator, he inflicted his changes, Echoheads holding him in place while the Blockcrawler scanned and revealed the nature of Confluxs troop compositions.
When his Rend was full, he assisted in its ascent creating new points of access, his entropic expulsion shearing with an efficiency superior to that of the vehicle.
Even with his perception accelerated, wrapping the entirety of the structure in the grip of his network consumed precious time. Twenty-five minutes passed before he completed his act of subversion. Leaving the outer walls mostly untouched, he regardless left four haemokinetic spikes jutting out, each pointed in a different direction to allow him nigh-instant awareness of the surrounding area beyond the block should something unexpected follow.
Scrying at Nu-Scarrowbur from their tips, he tried to gauge his time. Zeins obfuscation blanketed the district still, but he could see mottled gaps from along the outer layer of darkness. Faint flashes and volume-twisting quivers slipped through like drips leaking out from a faucet. Whatever thaumaturgy at play was still in effect.
Time was still on their side, for now, but the culmination was fast approaching from all ends.
Spinning the final strands of his influence to form a roof over the topmost floor still filled with Syndicate presence, Avo invoked the Canon of Linger and left them embedded before withdrawing his Heaven. Speed shot back to normalcy. Quelling his reflexes, he took a moment to take in his work.
Across two hundred floors ran his fibrous reach, blood accessible to blood, requiring only the breach of a wall. Ghosts and phantasmics could be channeled through this skein, like hyper-accelerated train tracks for his perception.
A lesser substitute to the working Nether though it might be, Avos network revealed enough for his Metamind to estimate over four thousand active minds clustered together, enforcers, technicians, and other personnel now all packed together.
Mirrorheads loyalists watched the others with open belligerence and poorly hidden dread. Mirrorheads prior actions hung over them like a shroud; the bodies of those he butchered became known to Avo shortly thereafter in small mountains of dismemberment. The dead occupied space on each floor, and were stacked messily from floor to ceiling. Placed somewhere the living could not avoid, like totems of butchery and fear to keep the others under control, the atmosphere of Conflux festered as the fever of fear fell upon the ones that remained.
Sipping mem-data out from the thoughtstuff of a few slumbering enforcers, the estimated death toll of Mirrorheads rampage revealed itself to Avo: two thousand three hundred and ninety-five slaughtered.
Flashes of gauss fire disappearing into the reflective shell of the Twice-Walker drifted through Avos Metamind. With the twitch of a wing, tides of jagged shards rose and flensed entire rooms clean of flesh. This continued over and over, with Mirrorhead jumping from room to room in rapid succession, killing and torturing in a maniacal haze, roaring challenges to the Incubi he thought to still be hidden within his walls and among his people.
Paranoia had a weight, and soon, Avo would add to it. A direct physical engagement benefitted the Guilder with his sheer influence over reflections, but the mans mind was already subverted.
All Avo needed was the most optimal cage to entrap him in. To pull him out from hiding.
Shuttling the mem-data over to Draus, they studied the layout of the block together. Here, she proved of far greater mastery, eliminating the upper floors entirely from observations. Engagement between the cliques would result in another slaughter, bodies vitrifying and shattering before Mirrorheads will.
What they needed was something he couldnt break easily. Something he needed to fight and face, to ground him long enough for Avo to claim his mind.
The answer came in the lowest floorsplaces that Avo remembered to be the medical wings and the sealed Underways where Draus had escaped nearly a month ago.
There, over three hundred more trusted Confluxers were stationed, as shown by the rigs they wore, weapons they wielded, and drones they piloted. Directing the angle of his Whispers gaze, she pinpointed a specific accretion through the wall, while others stared on in confusion.
Surprisingly, Chambers was the first person to realize what Draus was planning. +Shit, Reg, the golems,+ he said, nodding with understanding. +Yeah. If the ghoulie can do his weird blood shit and take them I mean, theyll be loud enough for the boss to notice. No doubt. Weuh, theyThey! Should still have one Shadowcrawler. And that half-working Galeslither, but Avo already knows that things engine is fucked. The crawler might-coulda still help us deal somefuck!+
Chambers terror spiked. Draus and Avo surged their reflexes. The ghoul cast out tendrils of blood, preparing to access his hidden roots when
A bulbous arantid skittered past the Blockcrawler along the other side of the shaft. It had emerged from a hollowed power junction and a column of young trailed in its wake.
+Fucking aratanids, consangs,+ the former enforcer muttered. Primal fear settled in him. He did his best to stay ignorant of Draus glare. +Blocks trying to keep us all alert. Never know what might be crawling about here.+ He made a gesture for widening his eyes and Essus exhaled, catching onto the state of things a good beat behind everyone else.
Our. They. We. The ex-enforcer continued to do his best to nudge himself into whatever dynamic he perceived the group to have.
It was an absurd thing. The only true factors at play were Draus, Avo, and the Blockcrawler. Chambers was here for his familiarity with the environment and his fascinating traumatic durability, but his possible death was no great loss to the plan. Essus, meanwhile, was needed for vengeance despite offering little tactical insight. His metallic hands shivered against the Blockcrawler each second longer they spent in the inner folds of the block.
+I say you take the Shadowcrawler for a spin,+ Draus said, pinpointing the accretion. +Meanwhile, the rest of us in the Crawler will take firing positions here.+ Using her Meta, she marked another spot in the coverage of his blood-locus network. It was approximately two-hundred feet away within a quarantined section of the block.
The colorful sticks and paintings along the walls told Avo that it used to be a nursery. The claw marks of ghouls and the smears of blood breathed hints to a story the Warrens knew all too well. From this room, Drauscould fire down through the walls at a forty-five-degree angle so long as she remained part of his network.
+Wish I had the time to fab a couple more explosives,+ Draus said, going over her equipment one final time. +Hells. Wish things didnt always go to shit.+ That was a lie. She enjoyed this. Enjoy being forced into the fray, everything collapsing around them, driving them to fight or flee. There was a purity to the situation, the siren call of violence pulling you toward it as chaos offered an opening, beckoning the daring and the foolish to risk it all.
Avo knew the thrill. +Should work. Going to increase blood density around area. Swallow away matter as Mirrorhead gets drawn in.+ Activating his Ghostjack, he reviewed a specific sequence of memories he took from Mirrorhead. His time spent observing his prey offered him special insight into the Guilders psychology.
Even if the disturbance he was about to trigger failed, he thought he had good odds of holding Mirrorheads interest via a psychological wound.
Avo broke off from the group thereafter, staying connected through extended threads of blood. Conserving his current Rend, he fired his Celerostylus and rushed through the labyrinth of shifting wires, moving vents, and wall-bolted generators comprising the blocks internal energy system.
Concurrently, he directed his blood to snake into the room. The loyalists were gathered in patrols and checkpoints, forming aimless pockets of paranoia and hostility. Mutterings of there being Incubi Sleepers among themor that Ori-Thaum had specifically destabilized the Nether around the district for a forthcoming assault were voiced beneath breaths. Their owners mental instability was bleeding over into them, it seemed.
Just as well. It would make the resulting internecine easier to spark.
He found the Shadowcrawler placed along the tracks leading out into the Underways. Directing his ichor to trail past the edge of the medical floor down across its exposed overlook, Avo stretched his reach through cracks and crenulations running along the plascrete. Enforcers passed his presence, ignorant to the thin lines of red gliding toward the crab-like form of the eighteen-foot-tall golem.
With six legs connected to a vantablack dome, strips of lighting basked the ground beneath it in a focused shower of light.
A tinge of annoyance crossed Avos mind as he realized with everything that had happened, he forgot to ask Kae about the golems he encountered.
+Shadowcrawlers simple,+ Draus said, sensing his wariness. +It makes the dark like water, and can jump into shadows and shit; swimming in the black. It can drown half-strands, but more often than not its used as a delivery mechanism for nukes, explosives, or other nasty shit past defensive lines. Pretty sneaky golemSyndicates like to use it for the smugglin. Got a pretty vulnerable hubris though, seein as theyre old models. If the darkness theyre swimming in gets completely parted by light, things start fryin right-quick.+
The functions and limitations made sense, all things considered. Diverting his Whisper into his seeking trickles of blood, he splashed through the room with his perception and counted forty enforcers stationed around the Underways along with three drone jocks lingering within the vehicle.
Beneath his flesh, he felt the urge of the beast awaken. It wanted him to shred and tear all those present using his own Heaven, to forgo all subtly and close his weave of blood throughout the floor and scythe through all who were present.
It was an appealing desire, to express his power with vulgarity and absolute annihilation. There was a time when fighting just one of them was beyond him. Now, with but a thought
Every article of glass and symmetry in the room rattled. Avos blood, much like all who were present in the room, went still. He sensed Mirorrhead thena felt presence through the tightening of postures and the inflammation of dread spreading through the Confluxers like wildfire. Shards of glass broke free from various surfaces, the fractals snapping into place over the railings of the Underway and melding into a portal.
A rush of light peeled all unevenness from the assembled pieces of glass, and when the shine faded, a portal of gleaming polish remained, forming a gateway into Mirrorheads personal sanctum.
Seated behind his table, an empty bottle was the first thing to catch Avos attention. The next were the amber stains marring the Syndicate boss suit. There was as a shiver to the mans motion now, a lashing rage as their expressionless face jumped from person to person, regarding all who were present with a stare of distrust.
My soldiers, Mirrorhead began, his baritone as deep as the suspicion lining his tone, I have a use for you. A chance to properly convey your loyalty to me. Silence followed. Mirrorhead clasped his fingers together, but unclasped them a moment after as if he couldnt decide on the state of his own posture. Go. Go up. Ascend my block and gather the others. Bring them bring them outside. To the decks overlooking the the circuit. My circuit. My district. There there I will share with you your final tasks in person. I speak to you. And then freedom. You can be free. All can have what they want. Allall we want
The light vanished from the portal, and with it returned all the blemishes. Shards of glass fell, shattering against the enforcers below.
Coldness settled within Avos mind. The Guilder was close to the precipice of losing control, despite how he presented himself. The Mirrorhead Avo knew during his tenure at Conflux would have never allowed himself to be seen in such a disheveled state. Power was being projected still, but there was a pleading nature to itsomething Mirrorhead would have never abided by.
But Jhred Greatling begged quite well.
+Fuck,+ Chambers said, chuckling with surprise. +Boss doesnt look so good. Looks like you really did a number on his mind, eh, ghoulie?+
Avo frowned. He could still jack into the golem, still begin his assault and draw Mirrohead out the way they planned.
But if the Guilder was going to expose himself willingly, then perhaps an adjustment was in order. If Mirrorhead was going to speak to all those present in person, he would be exposing his throat Avos hidden fangs. And through that, the beast might just get the slaughter it desired after all.
Besides, if things came down to it, triggering another surge of civil conflict using puppeteered Confluxers and the golem under the guise of Ori-Thaum Sleepers was still an option.
+Yeah,+ Draus said, agreement coming with no shortage of apprehension. +If he wants to put his head through our guillotine, let em. But youre right: Snuff the techs and jack into the golem anyway. Itll make things easier when we start the killin.+
Avo concurred.
And so, spurring his blood to leap from floor to golem, he threaded his presence inside, and there, drew the thinness of his blood taut into a wire. He pulled it across the necks of three unsuspecting jocks.
THAUMIC OUTPUT - 986 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [1045]
ACCESSING: [SHADOWCRAWLER]
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