Chapter 15-10 Grounding
CRITICAL TERMS: MISSING; NECROTHEURGY; THANATECH; THREE FINGERS; CRUCIBLE; EMPTY GOLEMS
GENERATING REPORT SUMMARY
SUMMARY: At an undetermined time during the last day, the Three-Fingers Syndicate (an unofficial subsidiary of Sanctus) vanished along with all associated assets across the real and the Nether.
Their last known operation was a Crucible scheduled to conclude with the cycling of the Daystar, yet when tadpoles were dispatched, only trafficked FATELESS were discovered. Having fortified a gutters security checkpoint, evidence suggests that the FATELESS were engaged in defensive action against the Syndicate as part of the events itinerary when the vanishment occurred.
Rounds of thoughtscans and Deep Nether interviews were conducted thereafter. However, despite their proximity during the event, the details they provided were sparse at best. What we have determined is that the Three-Fingers Nether lobby was suddenly decommissioned near the beginning of the Crucibles commencement and Syndicate ghosts dissolved with a spark.
Furthermore, those who manned the blocks defenses all exhibit signs of severe ego damage congruous to gazing upon a fully manifested Heaven with an unwarded mind.
Even less can be said for the material the Syndicate should have amassed for this siege event. No traces of any golems, drones, Warwights, or any other Syndicate-based assets. The disappearance of all units has been judged to be near synchronous and total.
As of the present, no definite theories or judgments have been cemented but it is the field teams strongest suggestion that the eradication can be attributed to a high Spherage Godcladlike past the Fifth threshold of apotheosisaided by elite Necrotheurgic support.
Ultimately, the abnormalities and scope of the incident have been deemed far too severe for a mundane explanation. We submit that this report should be shared with the Paladins after secondary confirmation.
-Exorcist Report
15-10
Grounding
+Firing.+
A reflective scab cycled over Draus rifle. She squeezed the trigger. Her shot emerged from a window located over a mile away and punched clean through the rear of a burning golem. Two accretions winked out at once.
+Kill,+ she said. Avo grunted +Mark next target when ready.+
They played their game from within the shattered top of an office floor. Cracked loci remained embedded in workstations and a water fountain projecting a glitchy hologram of an anthropomorphic raindrop continuously chirped at them to mind their hydration. Though no working lights shone overhead, distant columns of rising flame cast brightness across the horizon as a plague of insects bore down upon the broken and retreating.
Chambers acquitted himself comfortably against his former ilk. It took a requisite amount of cruelty to function as an enforcer, but there was something to be said about the ease he took to butchering his former tradesmen compared to the frustrations he struggled as a Necro.
Perhaps it was easier to dissociate from ones acts when you rested in the confine of one mind alone.
Such was no longer the case with Avo. Insight was now an inescapable blessing.
Instead of casting his mind out and mem-locking the pilot of the next Sangeist, Avo waited for the coming retaliation. He watched the enforcers of the knot scramble through a cracked window touched by the Twice-Walker and chuckled with dry amusement.
The poor fools didnt even know they were being studied from twenty feet away. Half manifested as the junction was, Draus Heaven granted them a live audience to a theatre of terror and incompetence as enforcers fought to get in their rigs while the already armored triggered their Phys-Sims in search of the sniper.
Though the enforcers were deprived of drone-jocks, their heavies were still granted tactical-range firepower suppression by the Voz-II linear-artillery launchers festooned to their backs. From their chrome rails sparked lightning, and streaks of screaming payloads whistled high.
Draus snorted at their attempt. Look at em. Clumped up. Some firin, some doin whatever-the-shit Its like they all wanna die. Her disappointment only grew as ghosts threaded out from frantic minds casting snaking commands through once-dormant Warwights to sally forth.
Artillery speared down and columns of fire rose from the disintegrating bridge where they traced Draus shot via Phys-Sims. Mobs of armored corpses began their charge. Hundreds of bodies poured outward in search of their elusive adversary in a disorganized swarm. Gauss fire and crude kinetics erupted from their first wave in a messy display of suppressive fire, even slicing apart a portion of their vanguard as thoughtcasts clashed and formations collided.
Intercepted, disorganized, broken, and hunted, the knot was coming apart at the seams in record time. All it took was the death of their commanding personnel followed by the most senior golem pilot. Their lines were collapsed and atop the open palm of Avos Sanguinity, he felt his newest victims scurry like shrieking aratnids, fleeing in circles as they clawed to find a refugee of shadows.
Voices derived from the fires within Avo sang with mockery, scorn, and fascination. The tacticians and strategies among his templates howled insults and slurred demurs at unmoving golems. The pilots were clenched by indecision and governed by hesitation.
A mistake Abrel wouldnt brook. [You keep your Heaven active, always active when a fights on. Even a child knows that. And wheres their Porter? If they had an active Porter with a demiplanar bivouac they wouldnt be getting cut down like this. Gods, are all FATELESS this worthless?]
[Some of us didnt get to go to fancy Guilder school,] Corner spat.
+Next target,+ Draus repeated as a new pane of glass widened along the wall. Avo shaped a haemokinetic sheet with the Regulars request and she bound the two alchemized surfaces with a single passage.
+Loose,+ Avo said, flinging the sheet outward with a pulse of Haemokinesis. The darting construct bore a twofold purpose as both firing loophole and scouting locus. With a session fused into its structure, Avo cast out his Whisper as the horizon came spilling toward him and marked a new between the two remaining Sangeists.
Heavy exo, Avo said. Looks like theyre charging up a fusion burner. Think you can hit it? The distance to interception zipped closer but all the Regular offered was a scoff.
Aint gonna need a flechette for that. She spat disdainfully to the side and the temperature around them plummeted. Reaching for her new power with contemptuous ease, an ursine presencebarely visible from the breath-steamed fogstaggered into existence as its weight pressed down around reality. A sheen of frost began to coat their surroundings, and as the cold only grew, the shape of the Heaven grew clearer.
The visage of a skeletal bear with shimmering bones carved from the shine of glaciers greeted Avos notice and it funneled itself through the newest passage with jaws open. Between the animal and primal cold came a union, and the jagged fangs of winter everlasting clamped down upon the Sangeists and the dozen or so enforcers caught in the canons radius clenching the heavy with a special compression.
Thing about fusion burners theyre supposed to be stable, Draus began, an anticipatory smirk painted over her face, but theres a fault in the design. Somethin about how the energy regulation system goes right to hell when the power cell gets hyper-cooled. It starts gettin to the machine, makin it think that theres isnt enough power goin out to heat things up. Then
She collapsed the passage and Avo drew back his Conflagration just as a small warhead mushroomed out in an expanding ball of fire. The Sangeists faded from view. More lives vanished in the light.
Useful trick, Avo said. Still have the pattern from a mini-nuke. Think it can work with that?
Probably not, Draus said. You can try lobbing them over, though. Alright. I think were done messing with these ones. Best cut through the chaff and get in place for our final charge. See this done. She snorted beneath her helmet. A note of disappointment lingered on her voice. Miss the days where they had a chance of killin me.
Find those days when we hunt bigger game again, Avo said. Going to be hunting Guilder Clads soon. Savor soft food one last time.
She spat inside her helmet again. Fuck the soft food.
Shaping thread-thin lattices using his Heaven, Avo cast a final look at the remaining enforcers and spread his consciousness wide. Infusing himself in his new haemokinetic proxies, he Boltstrode using his blood-made monowire as a proxy, and bodies peeled beneath in a rising torrent of death. His cut turned. Ruined blocks came apart in liquefying pieces and the ones that hid within shared a similar fate. Those spared of his touch fell to his Conflagration as his onslaught continued across the Nether itself.
Cruel curiosity concocted new mental maladies for his victims to inherit and the minds that burned dreamed of the beast.
He spared some and afflicted them with the memory of his hunger and just watched. In the blood-scythed wasteland lingered ragged stragglers stripped clean of their rigs with a tug from his Sanguinity. Howling with sudden need, the enforcers fell to their knees as his mind overlapped with theirs. The last of their coherence fizzled away as starvation and brutality took their place. From the rising red that flowed at their ankles, they cupped mouthfuls of blood to stem the ache of their addiction. But they knewas he once didit would not be enough.
And he hadnt imbued them with the will or practice to resist as he once did.
The gulf between man and monster, ultimately and practically, lay in the realm of behavior. Cut free from morality and baseline instinct and grafted with new desires, it took but a whispered suggestion as the survivors rose from their brief succor and made for the only flesh they could see.
There was something ineffable about feeling your puppets devour each other while nested in their minds. The experience wasfor lack of a better wordkarmically sublime.
Ghouls were monsters. Ghouls were vermin. Ghouls were nightmarish carrion.
But what of the Syndicates?
What of those who fed off the small and claimed they were still men regardless? What of those who claimed boons from the detritus of the Guilds to choke the helpless?
Should he disregard them as kin? Should he delude himself into thinking them truly differently?
Cannibalism and torture were but flavors of the grand atrocity of exploitation and eradication. Beyond the niche of his favored taboos, he thought their faults to be greater.
Born without the butchers urge, they chose this life nonetheless. Perhaps some were forced here systemically, but still, they choose.
Choice needed to be rewarded somehow.
As a theatre of horror played on, he drank all that he severed into his Sanguinity, indulging in a final act of pleasure as his thaums and ghosts climbed anew. Tendrils crept through the environment like a sickness spreading through the infrastructure itself. Veins of unnatural red chasmed the ground and burrowed into the husks of ruined golems and from their destruction did Avo pluck the fruits of his thaumic labor.
[ONTOLOGICS OBTAINED: SANGEIST X6; SNAKE-KING X2]
As all that was physically spilled away into a pond of gore, he heard the Woundshaper laughing from within at the casualness of his massacre. One of his Echoheads swept empty air and he willed tons of blood to flow down into the dark.
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 5,122
GHOSTS: [66,344]
Not a question of if, but when, Draus muttered.
Hm? Avo asked.
Losin yourself, she said. Her Soulfire flared briefly, and the frost-made bear manifested around her like a vaporous spirit. We think and a block dies. We think it and lives are given over to us by the thousands. She regarded him in a new light and stared out at the last figures in the distance. They were wrestling each other, ripping, gouging, tearing fistfuls of meat from each others bodies. I think thats why your pa wanted you to be the way you are. There wasnt ever any anchor for you like, to begin with. You live a life being adrift from the world and there aint no trouble gettin lost in these changes.
Saying ghouls make good Godclads? Avo asked, half-mockingly.
Nah. Ghouls dont make good anythin sides target practice. You, though? Thats something else. She grunted and shook her head. Enough philosophizin. Last knot. A sheen of glass and ice formed over her in equal measure. Lets find the others and get messy.
This isnt enough of a mess yet? Avo asked.
Never got to do a charge, Draus said wistfully, and he could feel the feral grin widening beneath her helmet. Always wanted to reenact one of them calvary moments from the historicals.
Avo was more than happy to oblige such a request.
It is time, master, the Woundshaper said.Let our presences be released from Purgatory. Let the sacrificed witness what ascensions their lives will be spent toward.
The Galeslither offered no follow-up, choosing instead to blast its winds through one of the few blocks still standing.
Small splashing lanes of perception pointed out from the Exorcist station. The FATELESS were watching their remaining hunters mutilate one another.
How perfect.
Weaving himself into the very concepts of his domains, his Sanguinity bloomed like the corona of a star on the verge of supernova. Crimson rapids flowed from all that could be unraveled into his body as rivers sought a delta.
The Woundshaper drank its way back into existence, growing like a rising spire that pulsed out broadcasts of burning blood. This time, however, additional branches sprouted free from its being as new superstructures began to cocoon its exterior.
Broken from the tight yoke of its former hubris, Avo left his manifested Heaven festooned at the core of a gargantuan construct. It reached up to touch the very thresholds he drew across the Crucible to curtain this slaughter from notice. Droplets of falling red filled the air. The central self of the Woundshaper remained at eighty tons but sewn into the vastness of its greatcoat, Avo felt his thaumic mass and eldritch influence rise.
His new form took the shape of a leviathana hydra of countless heads and layered in teeth.
WARNING: HEAVEN THAUMIC MASS GROWING
WOUNDSHAPERTHAUMIC REQUIREMENTS: 1540 THAUM/C
CURRENT PHYSICAL TONNAGE: 2455
He moved through matter like liquid lightning. Reality quivered at his presence while Draus sank her Twice-Walker into his confines to lurk.
The ground beneath him turned to glass as a pathway opened and he slithered through an inversion point across spaces, arriving a full mile and a half away from where he once was with a dip of his body.
Builds collapsed into his ontology and he absorbed the devastation as food for growth. Soon he found himself flanked in the air by a crucified phoenix gliding in the air and a rushing fortress molded from water.
Chambers was alight with glee at being cut freea far cry from the shaken Necrojack he made. The familiar playground of direct murders granted him ample room for old habits of dissociation when he only had to exist within his own mind. Kae, meanwhile, was a mental wound sore with distaste and unease.
+Alright, thats one knot for the both of us,+ Chambers said. +We gonna make a run at them or what?+
+Something like that,+ Avo replied. Charging into the Sangeists was easy. The Snake-King would require some handling so they wouldnt be anchored at a permanent relative position. Hence, he reached out through his broadcast and touched the pilot of the golem using his Sanguinity.
After that, it took but a thought to burst all the blood vessels in the womans mind. Snake-heads the size of barges lurched and faded as the steel egg of a golems core bounced free. The fourth golem went dormant as the rest of its knot carried on, unknowing of the end they were soon to court.
Slipping out from Avos blood, the Twice-Walker came together in an assembly of jagged shards as their cadre circled the Exorcist station to collide with the Sangeists. A series of six hylaokinetically sharpened stakes of glass spun over Draus like the bullets in a revolver and her thrill began to rise.
The Agnos, for her part, clutched part of a wall in front of her raging torrents as she mustered her courage and pushed ahead. +I still dont like how they pop and break inside me.+ She explained.
The justification was unneeded. This was leisure, after all, but her sensibilities offered him greater insight into his companion as well. The Agnos lacked the critical qualities to be a proper killer, but her ability to kill was beyond question.
Such was all that was needed for the coming clash.
As they rounded the corner, a wave of Warwights and field drones came into view, and behind them followed the Sangeists.
But where Avo and his cadre pressed onward, their opposition froze. Their opposition broke. Their opposition shattered.
Beholding four Heavens of Third Sphere and above, multiple wards collapsed among the Three-Fingers and brittle minds shattered within. The same fate befell those FATELESS foolish enough to be gazing out in the wrong direction as the charge drew to its start.
Poor fools. Collateral damage was hard to prevent when all it took was a glance.
+Holy hells,+ Chambers marveled, his pleasure ignited by the immensity of his passive harm. +Were nulling these shits just by being.+
+Not an uncommon case with lacking wards,+ Kae said. +A standard golem is already disturbing enough for a baseline mindfour mid-sphere Heavens? No one really appreciates how much that is until they have to face it! The way it harms the mind is really quite fascinating too, Ioh, Im chitting arent I.+
The Sangeists broke and turned, the pilots attempting too run.
Was I so small, so slow once? What disgrace it is to behold my other selves, The Woundshaper sneered.
+Keep talking,+Chambers said. +We could use some education with the snuffing.+
Avo grunted in agreement.
Through the discomfort came a spark of relief from Kae. Perhaps it was acceptance. Or camaraderie. Or any of those social emotions Avo couldnt be bothered to manifest right now using his templates. Either way, a flicker of belonging followed, and that was what counted.
+Alright,+ Kae said. Lets start the lesson, then.+
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