Chapter 15-11 Portrait
POTENTIAL OPERATIVE AVO HAS BEEN CLEARED FOR INTERVIEW.
RECRUITMENT EVALUATION FOR OPERATION REVISIONIST NOW PENDING.
-Aegis
15-11
Portrait
COG-CAP: 99%
SESSION LOST
SESSION LOST
SESSION LOS
SESSION LOST
WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTED
WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTED
WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTED
WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTED
UPDATE: SESSIONS TO ALL MEMBERS OF SQUAD TETON; SQUAD ASGA; SQUAD VENNO LOST
SESSION LOST
Myong woke to the ringing of lost sessions echoing through his Metamind and found his thoughts slippery to grasp. Cold winds lashed like bitter whips striking him to the accompaniment of ceaseless squealing. As his attention wove together from frayed strings, his cog-feed loaded and he found himself beholding a portrait of damnation from within the mangled remains of his golem.
A shallow swamp of gore stretched beyond veils of crimson haze. A layer of dead insects floated upon the still, red waters, and the swarms that remained alive sang their droning tune as they spiraled over unmoving bodies.
S-shit, he breathed. Shifting to loosen himself from his gimbal, he hissed as agony flared around his ribs. Looking down, he found a scab-coated furrow arcing inward along his midsection. Whatever tore through his Sangeist had taken a bite out of him as well. Some of the ribs on his right were missing. Not broken. Not shattered. Gone entirely.
Thank Jaus he had that platelet breeder valve grafted under his heart. Wouldve bled to death otherwise.
He moved and bit back a snarl of pain. His rig sparked and whined from its own damage, but the power grid remained stable and systems were still functioning. With a flex of augmented strength, he tore the warped metal of his hexagonal gimbal and pushed free from the claustrophobic confines of his vehicle.
Another wafting chill washed over him and he felt the unnatural sting of the cold. He felt it even inside his armor. Something was wrong there. Something
Wait, did his Metamind say something about detecting Heavens?
Drawing up the information again with a thought, a spike of sobering fear shook Myong out of his pain-drunk stupor and he found himself blinking out at the hellscape outside his golem. The platform looked like an aluminum can twisted to the point of tearing and cast carelessly aside thereafter. Stranger yet, blood was dripping from the jagged lips of the damage.
Had he cut himself on the edge somehow? No. He was secured in the gimbal. Someone else then?
Swallowing, he studied the ankle-deep pond of red that awaited him outside.
Burning drones and collapsed figures formed distant waypoints in his attention, and through the haze came flashes of gunfire and bladder-softening screams. Remains of Warwights were scattered in shredded pieces. Peeking out cautiously, he checked his rig-mounted weapons and found only his shoulder-mounted KM-20 autogausser operational.
Alright, he winced as he placed a foot on the opening and stepped out. Come on, Myong. Come on. Stepped over, he slammed down upon the pool of gore with a rising splash and tried to wrestle his rising panic under control.
Something terrible happened earliera fragment of memory he was missing right now. The last thing he remembered before coming earlier was scrambling to assist knot two just as knot one came under fire as well.
And then
And then
HEAVEN DETECT
His Metamind went quiet. A spike of emptiness pulsed in the core of his mind. Something was coming back to him. Something
Other Heavens. He remembered getting run down by other Heavens.
He didnt see them. Not directly. But over the sessions, he caught glimpses of what smashed into him immediately after.
An enormous pillar of glass somehow turned the corner of the Exorcist station and slammed down behind his moving knot. Around this time he also realized the new guythe pilot of the Snake-Kinghad their Metamind off or something. He was too busy casting at the half-strand to activate their session to notice the attack himself.
Pain tore from his mind as he felt his memories rattle like loose fragments of shrapnel. His cog-cap only just dipped below ninety-eight percent and the very act of thinking made his brain throb with soreness.
Staggering away from his ruined golem, he cast a final look at his Sangeist and a shiver ran through him. He remembered feeling invincible while he was in its confines. He knew that the Godclads and other golems were beyond his feeble little platform, but so long as he faced nothing but FATELESS and gutter trash a god-king he would remain.
That delusion tasted an awful lot like ash now.
An immense shadow slithered in the periphery of his sight. Myong spun fast and doubled over to clutch his chest. His autogausser fired a burst of flechettes per his instructions regardless. Alloyed darts zipped out into the fog and vanished.
Then the response came, and the particulates in the air rippled as the first embers of fire sparked within each mote. From the very air around him rose an ethereal chorus of hissing laughter. Echoing thoughtstuff bludgeoned his awareness with open scorn and Myong limped backward to support him using the wreck of his golem.
+Horrible sight. Wouldnt you agree?+ The question came from all around him and something about the voice seemed inhuman. Too inhuman. +You are Myong Ateshi. You have been a golem pilot for the Three-Fingers for two years now. Long lifespan for the gutters. Long lifespan for a non-jock.+
Come out. Myong cringed. hHis voice broke and his growl came more as a whimper. Come out and Ill fuck-fucking do you.
+But Im already here. Look around. Im with you. Close. Cant be any closer without cutting my way inside you. Becoming you. Wearing you.+
The things it said made Myong recoil and he commanded his gun to fire into the vaporous haze yet again. This time, he saw it. He saw how his flechettes were caught. He saw how the particulates in the air grasped the needles and unstitched them from reality, drinking them into the fog itself.
Recollection returned to Myong with mind-shearing sharpness. He clawed at his helmet to clutch his temples only to find it unraveling at his touch, spilling down as blood to join the greater pool below.
A shadow formed in the depths of his mind. A shadow the size of a mountain. A snake of fluid redness that rose higher than a block and wider than an avenue.
The wetness beneath him shifted and drew away. A sudden animation took hold of the pool as the waters drew away and something colossal swam toward him through a curtain of obfuscation.
No, Myong whimpered, digging his armored fingers against augmented skin. No.
+Do you think the FATELESS will love me for this?+ The entity asked, sounding genuinely curious. +Do you think your death will grant me their adoration? Human emotions are theyre so easily affected by stimuli. Watching you all has been an education. A pleasure. I hated you once. Not anymore. I understand. I am learning.+
The shadow of the titan approached and Myong heard the ghosts sustaining his wards scream and shatter. He wouldnt survive this. His mind would break this time. He knew. He knew. Please just let me go. Ill leave. Ill drop my rig. Ill give you anything.
+You already will,+ the entity said. But then the approaching behemoth stopped, and between the oscillations of distant fires slashing high into the air, he saw a coiled mass of eight serpents spilling free from the ring-clasped spire. Brilliant patterns flashed between eldritch jaws and currents of lashing lightning coursed through impossible veins.
Myong stared and perception proved to be a mistake of its own.
His body gave before his mind did and he heaved dry spittle in the absence of food. Shivering, shaking, spasming, it took him nearly a full minute before he rose to his feet again, and when he did, the next words came thusly.
+Convince me.+
What?
+About why you should live,+ the entity elaborated. +You were going to massacre the refuges. Kill them all. The feeble. The soft. The children. Good taste for a ghoul. But you arent like me or my brothers. Not really. Why did you choose to live this way?+
There was too much to digest in the question and Myongs mind quailed. What?
+It is not a complicated question. Speak. Or I will approach+
--Respect, he spat. He didnt even think. It was just the first word that came to mind.
+...Respect?+
I lived these streets all my life, he said, breathing hard. Sucking back sourness, he gritted his teeth and willed himself to say composed. Only the ones with the best augsthe biggest guns mattered. Them, the Guilds, the Clads. I wanted that. Everyone wants that. So I took mine. I took mine.
+And how does murdering the small give you this power? I know how it will feed me. I dont understand how it feeds you personally.+
To his surprise, Myong scoffed. I dont know motherfucker, you think I get a say in what were doing? Im just a pilot.
+Golem pilot. Could have done a lot. Chose this instead+
--And what about you? What about you? Myong shouted. He paused, half afraid of certain reprisal, half exhausted from the constant dread that pressed down on him. You got me. Youyou broke me. Broke my knot. Youre threatening merubbing the flat of your knife along the side of my neck for your own thrills. He rubbed a tear from his eye and choked back a sob. Im just doing what I had to do. I got highers, consang! I got masters. Go fucking kill them. Kill them.
Silence passed and the entity seemed to consider his answer.
+Yes. I will. Them. The other Syndicates. And all of you. Replace you with something else. Something of my design. But the answer isnt interesting enough to spare you. Nothing interesting about you. Left you alive as a novelty. Curiosity. Now you join the rest. Burn as something greater.+
Myong shook his head, willing the dreaded thing to go away, to disappear from his presence and release its strain on his wards. Ill do you, he muttered. He commanded his gun to fire, only to realize his armor was melting off his body. No, no, what the fuck, no.
Unseen tendrils erupted from under his skin and he felt himself bound by anothers control from within. His blood bent to anothers will, and from Myong came an anguished shriek as his limbs were folded along the length of his spine before drawing him closer to the towering shape in the fog.
+Do you remember some of your previous victims?+ Avo asked. +Some of your friends do. They showed me how you liked to play with your prey. How you liked to drive the tendrils of your Sangeist through their eyes and pull out the things inside. The way organs unspooled calms you. Im the opposite. That used to excite what I was. Now it remains a hobby, I suppose.+
The ability to speak disappeared from Myongs mind as he was drawn to the spire. Incoherent howls escaped him as his wards broke apart for the second time and the weight of eldritch divinity slammed down upon the softness of his human ego. Things inside his mind broke again, and as they did, bifurcated walls of blood rose like a parted sea, and from within the red protruded other enforcers dangling from ichorous tendrils.
Halos of fire consumed each of their Metas and all the other captive Three-Fingers were clapping for him in a mockery of his deliverance unto the nightmare.
Welcome to the gestalt, Myong.
You deserve this. You deserve to burn.
Think of never seeing your family again, Myong. Think of everything you leave behind.
At least we wont be killing anymore kids, am I right?
With each passing second, more and more bodies emerged to join in on a long deafening laugh track, and in the end, hollowed by strain and stress, Myong heard himself chuckling along with them, hopelessly wanting to be part of his own festivities.
In the mix, one voice sounded louder than all the others. Clearer. That hissing voice. That deep rasp belonging to the entity. It drew closer and closer along with all the other bodies, closer and closer as a shadow drifted over Myong.
WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTED
->[WOUNDSHAPER] - FOURTH SPHERE
->THAUMIC OUTPUT: 2144 THAUM/c
And for the last moment, Myong remained himself, he looked up at the face of his killer and exhaled. He came apart at the sight of the tower. He came apart at the district devouring limbs. He came apart at the searing dawn and erupted from the Conflagration crowning the Heaven itself, and between the folds of the fire did he witness flickers of the purgatory he was destined to languish. Other faces formed and dissolved amidst the fires. They stared out at him like prisoners watching fresh meat. They stared and they leered.
+Be proud,+ the entity said, forming a burning tendril from its center mass. +I will make better use of your life and mind than you ever could.+
***
THAUMIC OUTPUT: 6792 THAUM/c
GHOSTS: [71,935]
OBTAINED: SANGEIST x3, SNAKE-KING x1
+Jaus, rotlick, youre becomin more of a diva by the day,+ Draus sighed as Avo finally finished his act of theater. +The fucks wrong with just killing people? You gonna do this song and dance with all your victims now?+
+Eh, I liked it,+ Chambers said. +The revenge vibe is always a neat sell. I can see this hitting silver in the entertainment category for most downloaded vicarity this week.+
+Not gold?+ Avo asked.
+Well, youre not titillating or a nu-cat, so its an uphill fight for you there, consang.+
This city and its many addictions.
Smashing through the knot took little effort but further emphasized the doctrine of Total Domain Warfare. They struck the knot from whatever direction they so pleased with Draus. Nether superiority was lost to the Three-Fingers, rendering their coordination nearly non-existent as they were forced to act in the physical.
All things culminated as out of the three Sangeists he was to face, only one turned to ward off his assault.
One that was promptly frozen and had its pilot turned into freshly cooked slices of ham.
As the formation of the knot collapsed thereafter, the route turned into a slaughter as they were ridden down by the cadre.
All in all, it wasn't worth much as practice, but it served as ample demonstration of what was most essential in a fight between Godclads.
Awareness.
Knowing what your enemy can do, where they are, what they want, and with what would their assault be conducted.
Deprived of the Nether and without scrying capabilities, the fate of the Three-Fingers was sealed with the arrival of the cadre. Yet, it could be them on the receiving end one day should they be faced with a rival with esoteric canons or eccentric Heavens.
To that end, Abrel spoke her peace. [Use your godsdamned demiplanes. You need to have a place that is absolutely secure and absolutely yours. The Twice-Walker and Galeslither both have something for this, but that should be the anchor for your team. The Porter is in charge of keeping prying eyes out and making sure the cadre as a potion of sanctuary even in the worst of the fighting.]
Suppose that was something to develop further then. He needed to expand on redundancies, and so he bade his capable templates to begin running war games.
+So, thats that then?+ Draus muttered. +Wont lie, I expected more of a fight with them, but this batch is as good as done.+
+Not yet,+ Avo said. +Going to use the minds I just took to burn away the rest of the Three-Fingers. Kill them all. Then were done.+
+Disappearin an entire Syndicates gonna be awfully noisy even for you,+ Draus said.
+Will leave a false trail,+ he replied. But before even that, Avo considered the three additional Souls still burning on the borders of his Frame and remembered another of his wants.
Dismissing his Woundshaper, the block-sized extensions of his spire evaporated into air while he poured the remainder of his gore into the darkness as he took his first steps toward the Exorcist station.
+Avo. Avo! What are you doin now?+ Draus asked.
A small but gleeful grin spread across his face as he considered which Heaven to gift his lucky winner. +Just going to light a candle. Throw the Guilds off. Start a fire under this city.+
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