Chapter 10-18 Then Came the Killing
Abrel, look. The glass
Its Jhred. Hes doing
[Sounds of shattering; collapsing; wetness]
Is is that blood?
Im going. Zenna, hold to a six-mile range and run overwatch. Alphim, I need a loop-style demiplane layered in place a half mile behind Zenna; keep whatevers happening inside sealed. Melt, were going Breaker. Youre with me.
-Abrel Greatling to her Cadre, Instruments of Highflame
10-18
Then Came the Killing
THAUMIC OUTPUT - 987 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [1046]
As locus-laced blood struck the threshold of Mirrorheads skull, lashing tentacles of blood erupted free from the liquefying glass. The Twice-Walker wailed in sudden surprise as the surface it swam beneath became swallowed, crystalline crimson usurping the domain of reflectivity.
From metaphor to truth, the state of the decks changed and a waterfall of red rushed down, showering the Confluxers below. Shouts and cries of alarm rose. A spurt of Soulfire burst out from Mirrorheads core as all things belonging to the Domain of Reflection in the surrounding vicinity pulsed and fissured. Skulls within visors shifted places. People fell through random points as the structure of reality rattled.
Backlash tore free from the Guilderhis Canon of Hyalokinesis driven into hubris by Avos dissolution of his glass. His mind, however, was occupied by other things.
As Draus' gauss fire tore out from the inside of the block, cutting down from a vantage point above, Mirrorheads Metamind resurfaced, its ripple vast and wide, the weight of over ten thousand ghosts groping for the yet-parted Nether.
All these things collapsing together exposed the Syndicate boss to the true assault.
In truth, the battle was lost for him before the Heavens clashed. Jaws of blood bit into the flesh of his thoughtstuff and Avo drew upon the fullness of his Haemokinesis, reflexes screaming as time halted to a near stop. He activated his session thereafter, jumping his ghosts without the need to engage Mirrorheads wards, injecting them directly into the innermost layer of the Guilders palace.
Trauma descended like a thunderstorm, lashing at the structures of Mirrorheads mind. But Avo didnt want his foe nulled, just broken, just devoid of strength, incapable of resisting. The first sequences Avo lanced were the foundations of Mirrorheads strength, the pillars of his confidence.
Moments greeted the ghoul as he shredded into the brittle substance of memory like a nu-dog tearing into supple flesh. Mirrorheads past triumphs unmade, dissolving like dust to the ethereal winds. Every moment of victory, when he overcame his peers; at Axtraxis Academy when he claimed the approval of his betters; in the Trials where he met Godclads from rival families in challenges of mind and might; in each act of defiance he levied against his father, who forbade him from revenge.
The greatest of these memories was the night he left the Tiers. He had challenged his own father to the Trials mere days prior, seeking to pry a confession free from the man for why he abandoned his wife to an undeserved fate. But where Mirrorhead sought a reckoning, Uhtred Greatling desired only to discipline his son.
The subsequent brutalization had been wiped clean from Mirrorheads remembrances, but in its place was a recollection of kneeling before the shattered statue of his mother and swearing the redemption of her name.
From there, Jhred Greatling abandoned his duties and cadre behind him, casting his Heaven down from the Tiers and into the Warrens, into months and years of frenzied but foolhardy plotting, eyeing the stormtree in Nu-Scarrowbur while waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
This too, Avo broke, withering its structure apart with a touch of Lucilles Regret, and forcing trauma shrapnel deeper into the wounds that remained via the installation of other memoriesnamely those from the Incubi and Avo himself.
In an instant, the bones that held up the Guilders self-perception and ego shattered like glass, and in its place the festering plague of truth spread, rotting his sanity further from within. A scream of absolute horror and violation rushed out from within the Guilders mind, and in the real, he let out the beginnings of a roar, the pain in his voice betraying how close he was to madness.
As things within the Godclad broke, and Avo felt the numbness overtake his quarry, when the last sinews of fortitude snapped within his foe, he withdrew his invading constructs and turned his attention to the remainder of the Syndicate.
As Mirrorhead was pulled into the wake of the rushing tides of red, Avo manifested himself, diving into his domain fully as he coursed through the interior of the megablock.
From the blood pooling at the base of the Mall Brawl, spilling and coating the former food court under the Domain of Blood, the Woundshaper ascended, tearing out from the red and into existence proper as the barrier of sound shattered against its spire, as Avo constructed falling hammers and obliterated all the glass he could feel.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 84%
Before him, thousands of bodies twisted and writhed. Some bearing the right implants noticed him, and he felt the fluid of his sovereignty rush through augmented veins. The less chromed, more fortunate majority would not know what came to devour their minds and beings.
There was a certain mercy in being spared the knowledge of ones coming demise.
Draus flechettes had cut down more than three scores of enforcers. She was shooting through the backline of Mirrorheads loyalists to create more chaos, offering opportunities for the herd to break and run rather than fight. Caught by the rush of blood, bodies bounced down from one deck to another; exo-rigged enforcers ripping railings out from the stairs as they tried to arrest their fall.
Expanding a nest of mono-thin threads of blood, Avo accelerated. Blood exploded out from behind him, the sheer force fracturing the faces of the twin glass structures which cupped the midsection of the block.
And while the blood ran as rapids, death flowed in its wake.
The lowest section of the block simply ceased to be as Avo impacted, his velocity climbing past the first Mach. Spearing his threads further ahead, people and matter both became pieces; all of them were parts disentangling from the whole.
Mirrorhead, thrown by a shockwave and sailing free, was seized from the air before an accident could occur. Avo was not done with the Guilder. Not until the man watched the parody he called his Syndicate culled at the rootsannihilated till the last living soulwould come his time to die.
Blood cut, and new blood flowed. Matter broke before melting away into the red. A few guns spat feeble showers of desperation at the coming titan, but what enforcers were equipped with fusion burners found themselves scythed before the others, bodies caking the insides of their rigs and vehicles.
Do you feel it, master? the Woundshaper exhaled as new brambles shot out, shredding clean through bodies, tasting flesh and titanium. This returns me to years of proper worship. The sacrificial farms prepared for us gods; a river of ever-running fuel. Though this is but a moment in timetoo soon to end before the heat of worship peaksI thank you for this. I feel young again.
The beasts reaction was not far off from the Heavens. Within his being, that of Avo which remained a monster screeched in primal ecstasy, the first among ghouls to know a feast so delectable.
Reaching out, Avo seized select bodies and squeezed, counting between the moments of a heartbeat before he closed his constructed fists. The thudding of the heart always pumped just right as the bones folded inward. Skewering matter and mind, he broke armor and wards alike and willed them to burst. Haemokinetic daggers scattered out alongside fragments of broken minds, washing over and flensing a tide of dichotomous agony into the living.
The slaughter continued. The decks turned further into slopes as Avo made his ascent.
THAUMIC OUTPUT - 3670 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [3729]
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 93%
VENT! VENT! VENT!
Like a budding nucleus, Avo formed his ephemeral self at the center of the Woundshaper and withdrew the touch of his Heaven before he could strike the base of the block itself. It wouldnt do to list Draus and the father as collateral damage. Splashing free, into the air, time sped but didnt return to its natural fullnesshis Celerostylus was still active.
Behind him, Mirrorhead was still falling, spiraling in a flop of unraveling memories and tangling limbs. Ahead, gore and viscera ran gushing down as blood-flung rents sheared into the block itself, even mundane blood made lethal from his acceleration. No decks hovered now. In their place was only a sodden hillside of red, the onrush of the fluid quavering as error codes glistened like a translucent haze upon the surface.
Speeding through the air, he dove into the form of his Galeslither and surveyed his great work.
Satisfaction became Avo. Satisfaction and near triumph. What remained of Conflux was now fleeing back into the building, their numbers so thinned and minds so shattered from this nightmarish massacre that they broke, running from anything red they saw.
Avo guessed there might be a few hundred that remained of them. A few hundred he would take the time to enjoy stalking later if Draus didnt finish them off first. He put more stock in her leaving him with nothing after the bloodletting he just enjoyed.
Opening a fissure in his Yondergales, he gathered the existential waste suffusing the structure of his Woundshapers Hell. It took a full ten seconds for the entropy to build, but when he was done, what started as a mote of entropy grew to something near the size of the Woundshaper itself.
Glancing at the already breaking walls of glass damming him in, he expelled the ontological waste heat inside him as a piercing lance. The glass, a thing of non-thaumic matter, offered no resistance. A forty-foot-wide chasm cored through its center mass and the sides began to collapse in glinting sheets, spearing down as if the wall was a collapsing ice shelf.
REND CAPACITY [WOUNDSHAPER]: 0%
REND CAPACITY [GALESLITHER]: 11%
Splashing down into the blood, he bifurcated the rushing crimson with a thought. Turning, he regarded the place where Mirrorhead remained, the Guilder shaking on his knees and elbows, struggling to understand, struggling to even stand.
If Mirrorhead would have been slain without a backlashed Heaven, his Frame would likely resurrect him with a stable mind again, allowing him to pursue the conflict or escape. As things stood now, the lord of the previously extant Syndicate known as Conflux had a lifespan as terminal as any flat.
With how broken the Greatlings mind was, Avo doubted he could muster his will to vent his Rend.
Punching down into whatever matter remained, the ghoul approached his primary victim, chitinous tails chittering as echoes fed details regarding the fullness of the devastation he inflicted. Fangs bared wide in a wild grin, he was mid-step when he felt an Echohead punch into something soft.
Looking down, he saw two hollow and glossy eyes gazing back up at him. The woman had been cleaved clean through just below the waist, while her rig was a half-liquefied husk. Avo paused as her face pulled at his memories. He knew her. From some time ago. He knew her.
Filtering her appearance as best he could through his sequences, memories from over a month ago came back, and his Meta offered him a name.
Ved.
Ah, the person he convinced to serve as his guide, to lead him around the block and spoke to in the cafeteria after murdering Rantula. It was not a surprise she found herself among his victims too. Not that he cared over much.
It was just
She had told him about her life before. About the familial pain. About how her people thought of the ghouls. There had been a full life there, now essence nourishing his soul, another ghost component laid in his mind. It was going to be pain resequencing all their ghosts, but that would be for later.
For now, he let the fleeting sensation of sonder pass through him as he regarded Ved again.
Thank you, Avo said, unsure why he was talking to a corpse. For telling me about your life. Would have killed you all the same. But means more to kill and eat a person than a thing. The taste was indeed better, indeed deeper. Family or not, there she was a part of this choice-taking mechanism, and that made her desired prey by Waltons metric.
And Avos own.
Perhaps that was part of a persons beingthe totality of lifes story pouring the clay needed to create the fullness of a person.
Striking the blood around him with the Canon of Linger, he solidified the sweeping ichor before bringing his Echohead down on Veds skull. Her bones caved and meat oozed. He lifted his tail and continued his stride forward, her existence fading into the recesses of the past.
Arriving at the food court, Avo grunted a laugh as he noticed one final arc pylon still sparking on the opposite end of the course. There once was a wall of those things. Essus had attempted suicide using them. Some things survived no matter how hard you tried.
Where the battle between the Moonblood and Rantula took place was where Jhred Greatling scrambled. No longer was his suit a pristine monochrome. No longer did the protective shell of glass guard his visage.
Hearing the clinking sounds of the ghouls tendrils breaking linoleum, the beaten Guilder shivered as he turned, tears, snot, blood, and drool spilling free from his orifices. A low moan escaped from his throat as his eyes rolled up.
Where once he regarded Avo from the height of his desk, now kneeled below, staring up at an unfathomable being of superior make.
The perfectly sculpted angularity of his face, the sharpness of his nose, and the symmetrical divots dimpling his cheeks did nothing to alleviate his present wretchedness. Hair slickened thickly with viscera and gore, Jhred Greatling nearly slipped as the last fragments of glass broke from his skin.
Y-you? He choked. All this time. It was you?
In the distance, the sound of gauss-fire was thrumming at a second-to-second constancy. Draus was having her time now. She would be done soon. It was almost time.
And Zein had given him an hour.
With how things seemed, he would have time to spare yet.
I gave you the truth, Avo said. Reaching out, the blood below them pierced into the Greatlings tendons. And bounced off. It took deliberate liquefication to unmake the augmentations boosting Jhreds physicality. Nanosuites and gene-mods: Stuff most squires never got to see. The stuff ghouls couldnt even bite through.
It didnt protect him from Avo in the end.
Jhred swallowed, mind too wounded to muster even a glare. W-why? You could have could have left? You had you had Impossibly, a chuckle sounded from Jhred. The Frame. Huh. A ghoul with a Frame?
Incubi were here too, Avo said. They would have seen you broken regardless.
From within the block, the gunshots were trailing off, and through the exit-strewn hull of the block sounded the servos of the Blockcrawler.
Are you ready? Avo asked, curiosity drawing the question from him.
Ready? Jhred repeated. I I still need to I have to my mother.
Are you ready to see what lies beyond the reach of resurrection? To see what waits for us in the nothing after?
To this, the Guilder offered no real answer.
Unable to help himself, Avo had to sink his tongue in the wound. I dont think your mothers going to be there.
Emotional agony disfigured Jhred Greatlings face so beautifully. This moment belonged in a painting.
Or as a sculpture on an island somewhere.
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