Chapter 6-7 Target Practice
"They're renewable. It's efficient"
-The official No-Dragon response regarding their continued use of ghouls after the damage inflicted upon public welfare after the Uprising
6-7
Target Practice
"Well... this brings back old times, don't it, Avo?" Draus said.
Avo didn't respond with words, instead granting the Regular only a low growl, the noise only earning a soft laugh from her.
Before them was "target practice." A wide-open room located in the back of a rarely frequented arcade in Xin Yunsha. With their bodies caged by the grasp of shifting gravity platforms that ran circuits across the fifty-by-fifty room, Avo watched as his brothers were shuttled in one after another, each looking more cancerous than the last. Judging from the half-healed surgical scars on their bodies, they were likely of use to the local grafters once. Until the tumorification occurred. Then, it proved to be cheaper to get another ghoul instead of attempting surgery to preserve the previous ones.
From behind a protective phase shield, Avo, Draus, and Kae listened as a rock-heavy jingle played and the ghouls twisted in pirouettes to the whims of a force unseen.
"MEGA-DEFENSE ULTIMATE! THE ROTLICKS HAVE COME TO FEED ON YOUR FAMILY! YOU GLEAM ENOUGH TO FEED ON THEIR DEATHS?"
The grating tone of the announcer made Kae wince with displeasure. "How... how awful. Avo, a-are you fine with this?"
"Yeah," Avo said, his tone flat. "More convenient this way." He turned to Draus. "How much stock? One hundred and twenty?
"Two hundred and twelve. On discount." She snorted. "Didn't think River would actually make this target practice themed, but I figure that ghouls bound for the pastures gotta go somewhere." She paused. "And frankly, I don't much recall doin' much gallery shootin' with your kind. Fusion burners were my bread and butter for ghouls."
At the mention of fusion burners, Avo's skin prickled. Memories of his idiot brothers charging into an expanding chasm of blinding brightness assailed him. Still, they kept spilling down death-choked hallways, their bodies whole, then shadows, swallowed by an overwhelming tide of light.
Quietly, he watched the writhing forms of his brothers, their movements strained with impotence as they wrestled against their suspension. There was poetry here, morbid as it was. To die as impotent as they had lived. To die as mockeries of their purpose rather than fulfilling the grand design for which they were molded.
Kae had suggested that they see his thaums and ghosts good and fueled before the next steps. Draus concurred. Hence, they found themselves here, beholding the targets their benefactor offered them.
Avo sighed. It was not the insult to his kind that bothered him. No. Ghouls were little more than insults, to begin with; too vicious to be a part of society, too weak to cause actual harm.
With a thought, his Metamind pulsed, and at its crown, the Ghostjack sang out to the Nether, a stratocumulus of sequences breaking from being constellations behind his wards and gathering to form a trauma-infused lance tip. He coated his weapon first with the Secondhand Fatality.
Phantasmal matter surged. A crackle formed over its path as viewed from his cog-feed. As easy as driving a toothpick through a bug, Avo plunged his trauma down through two of his brothers, one in front of the other. Their thoughtstuff shattered, fragmenting like bone. Their memories followed, uncupped from the accretion, spilling free like viscera.
Upon their nulling, he tasted the contents of their mind and found them wanting. They bore within them violence and bloodlust, but little more. Still, they understood the nature of death. Feared it all the same. Perhaps not enough to parse themselves from the pursuit of hunger, but enough to struggle for survival if demanded.
A rueful grin graced Avo's face beneath the helmet. Kae stared on in transfixed horror, wincing as both spasmed and went limp. Their bodies continued to pump breath, but the vacancy in their gaze told of their true destination along the twists of the mortal coil.
"You're right Draus. Does bring back old times," Avo said, unlatching the Secondhand Fatality pattern from his ghosts. It was a devastating instrument, though immensely heavy on his thoughtstuff. When he channeled its design, his cog-cap spiked upward of seventy percent. If he didn't siphon Aseleri's Metamind clean, he doubted he would even have enough ghosts to run it. "Low Masters used things like this to 'encourage our bravery.'" He chuffed a light laugh. "Part of the reason we were so easy to burn. Ahead was death. Finality. Behind was torment. Continual."
As the minds of his two brothers came apart into motes, he regarded them with faint annoyance. He wouldn't be getting ghosts from them, but that was part of the reason he picked them. They looked young. Barely more than ghoullings. If any amongst the stock below suffered from an insufficiency of self-awareness, it would be those two.
The quiet ebbing forth from Draus, meanwhile, also pleased him. At least in some capacity. He couldn't blame her for taking pleasure in the slaughter of his kind. Such a thing was ordained by causes virtuous and axiomatic. Concurrently, she could not cast accusations of him wielding the mind-rending arts of her greatest rivals--of Ori-Thaum--despite what wounds they may have inflicted upon her. Not without staining her tongue in the waters of hypocrisy.
"So you say?" she replied, swallowing. "That the pattern you planning to lace our three esteemed volunteers with?"
"No. Will take too many ghosts to support in their minds. Easy found. Unleash that through them as gateways with an Auto-Seance maybe. Have something else for them."
He collapsed the pattern and cycled in Lucille's Agony. A less damaging instrument. More modest in its demand of his capacity, however, and it left the mind intact if traumatized. Deactivating all his presently unneeded phantasmics, he unleashed his new pattern as an eruption of jagged threads, like animated branches in motion, missing only the perched presence of a nu-shrike to complete the invocation of his intent.
The agony tore through his brothers, and grew exponentially, each rooted to each as if they were joined into a central tree of pain. Naked as their thoughtstuff was, his ghosts slithered through thin thresholds of thought into their innermost depths like blades slipping between the ribs.
"This one. Lucille's Agony. This is what I can plant. Can make do with twenty-five ghosts for each of them. Have them infect the block's loci if they can get to it."
Draus nodded. Beside her, Kae had already turned away. She came to watch and study the flow of thaums into his body, seized from his brothers by way of killing. The infliction of trauma, however, spat oil into the fires that fed from her thoughts.
"Keeps them alive too," Avo said, gesturing at his brothers. "Can reclaim the ghosts after if minds are still intact."
"Sounds mighty efficient," Draus said. "How long do you reckon this will take you?"
"Depends on how well hidden. Can have them scattered across memories. Avoid notice. Will take a day each at least. Mirrorhead has a Metamind. Uncertain how skilled he is. Not sure if he can even be considered a Necro. But didn't manage to scry me out when I sequenced at night. Amateur is my guess."
"Best not to guess with 'Clads."
Avo grunted in agreement. "Hide them well. You should talk to the prisoners first. Might cause a bit of memory bleed-over after diving. Common problem. Don't hit them this time. I'll dive into minds afterward to confirm truthfulness."
"Alright," Draus said. "It'll be interestin' to see if that Chambers half-strand is spittin' air about Mirrorhead bein' a Greatling. Their family fell after the Big Fourth, but... that's a hell of a fall, even for them."
"Find out, one way or another. He can't hide from me."
The Regular laughed. "Reckon not. Way you sling sequences is sure as shit a lot slicker than most our Necros. I'd say if Highflame knew you could make a proper Necrojack from a ghoul, we might be ordered to start bringing your type back in."
Avo turned his gaze on the growling, hissing forms of his brothers. From them, an emanation of emotion flowed, and its scent offered naught but fury and death. Was he different by chance? Was his father truly that capable of a man? Of a Necro? "Doubt it."
"Uh... A-Avo?" Kae said. Her tone was perked with something that strode on the borders between curiosity and insight. "Ghosts. They need a cognitive construct to anchor them, yes?"
Avo grunted. "Minds. Biological. Like ours. Or artificial. Like a locus. Or a Voidwatch mind." Another reason why the voiders tended to stay huddled aboard their grand ships in the sheathe of the vacuum. A lesson they learned tragically from the first time the Low Masters took offense to the spacer's humanitarian operations.
Turns out, an oligarchic death cult really didn't like it when you evacuated their stock of sacrifices due to reasons of "unignorable atrocities" and "transgressions beyond all metrics of humanity."
"I... I was thinking--uh--I think if you use your Heaven, you might... might be able to replicate the matter of a locus... a locus. Maybe... maybe not yet because of the complexity of the material... matter... uh... maybe, but if y-you deconstruct a few more Sangeists and add to your Canon of Alchemization..."
The suggestion hit him like a hammer. He had been thinking too limited again with what had been provided to him, shuttling himself down narrow paths of improvement. Should he be able to create loci from his blood--and keep them in reality long enough--it would allow him to avert one of the greatest dilemmas that a Necro suffered: power versus subtly. Through the segmentation of his mind, perhaps he could have both.
The Agnos was proving quite useful despite her fragility. "Will look at your mind when I finish with primary matters," Avo said. He offered his words as both a reward and out of genuine interest. More suggestions like that would expand his avenues of growth immensely.
Kae on her part, beamed, before her face collapsed into confusion, unable to remember why she was smiling in the first place.
"Hells, if you can do that and get a Heaven of Force or... somethin' that applies population and fuse it with your Heaven of Blood--" She turned to look at Kae who nodded, wordlessly telling her that such an act was possible, "--then you might just got some strategic assets goin' there. Drones and a full spectrum of missiles. That like."
Avo hummed. "Now I'm glad Vicious didn't kill you."
"Shit, Avo," Draus said, her grin flickering, "This is what it takes for you to express some affection?"
"Two more good ideas gets you a shoulder pat. Five more and maybe I'll try a hug."
Draus bit her lip and leaned owner. "Hug me and your arms are mine."
"They'll grow back. Use haemokinetic arms in the meantime." Avo sighed. "Life is hard as a mundane."
The Regular shook her head and turned to look at Kae. "Take a peek at this one. 'Clad for just about a week and already he's got the ego to match. Even makin' me kind of agree with Ori-Thaum's no single-use Liminal Frames policy. 'Course, their problem is a lack of Souls than anything ethical."
Kae pursued her lips. "There... there is a psychol-psychological phenomenon called the false apotheosis. Makes Godclads... develop... develop an extremely solipsist bent to... to their perception. See the world as something that should be rightfully shaped in their image."
"Yeah," Draus said, face darkening. "Haven't met a whole lotta half-strands like that. Hey, Avo? Didn't you say you had a third pattern? Lucille's Regret."
"That's for my Morality Injector. Useless on my brothers. Too distant to register as proper trauma. Good to choke beast though." A fact that he had to thank Walton for. If there was one thing he regretted, it was being unable to prevent his father's death by the rash.
Of course, with Walton manifesting in the depths of his mind and lecturing him about the Ninth Column and going to the Easy Armistice, new suspicions arose in Avo. New suspicious he dared not water. Not until later. There were possible truths he didn't want to face right now. He would finish with Conflux, build and claim what memories he needed to cross over past Layers Two and One, and greet the objective granted to him on his terms.
He had enough of being on the back foot.
"Alright," Avo said. "Wasted enough time." He made to deactivate the phase shielding parting them from the ghouls. Draus reached out to stop him.
"Hey--hey. Target practice usually entails guns," Draus said.
"Guns won't get me thaums. Need to get closer to drink. Sovereignty active here. Kae."
"Ye-yes," Kae said. "Un--he doesn't... doesn't have the thaumic mass to contest." She shrugged. "It's... it's like a greater center of gravity."
Draus sighed. "Well, I'm putting up the shield after you go in. Don't need any of them gettin' out and ambushing some juv on their way home."
That made Avo laugh. "Be a miracle if they can walk right now."
"I've seen those miracles."
He breathed. Fair enough.
Descending into the gamified firing range, Avo flexed his claws and shifted the sharpened strands of his Heaven. Twitching his Celerostylus, he felt the reflex booster responding more promptly than it had before. Rest had done his body well. His nerves had healed since his encounter with the Scalpers.
From conveyor docks built into the corners of the range, more ghouls were shuttled in one after another. Flashing holograms ran past him, a father clutching his newborn screaming for someone to save him. Through simulated gaps lining the walls, distant explosions flashed as a river of ghosts dueled like a clash of whips. That part was accurate, at least.
The Low Masters had pitted their esteemed art--their supposed crowns that all the topsiders called a Metamind--against their foes. They battled, and much like the bastard creatures they built to serve as shock infantry, they were found wanting.
Casting a splash of ghosts over one of his brothers, Avo sampled the other ghoul's mind and swept his scrying gaze across the others. Green River had again either proven true to honor or was far superior a Necro that he could not notice her subterfuge. Something told him it was the former.
Striding up to the swaying ghoul, Avo greeted his brother with a mix of scorn and pity. They shamed him. For their inability to rise above their instincts, he loathed them. The architecture of his hate was a varied one. The question of if he was unique by nature or nurture had flared within him like bouts of inflammation from time to time. Not enough to truly trouble him, but enough to make him wonder.
Reaching into the mind of his brothers, he caressed their memories and sampled the moments they spent hatching from corpses and mounds of biomass before being plucked by strong hands. From there followed nothing but gladiatorial fights and surgery. Yet, through it all, there was no trauma for him to derive, no reward for him to claim. It was a pleasure to hurt, to kill for them. And the act being inflicted on them, meanwhile, remained but fleeting wounds upon the uneasy waters of their psyche.
In time, it was like they would even grow used to Lucille's Agony. Perhaps it was their state of weakness that allowed it to affect them in the first place. Regardless of the case, he found himself looking up at one of his brothers, its body splayed out, rail-thin arms spread wide, a cluster of tumors bubbling out around its right eye.
Sniffingly, the other ghoul weakly bit at him. "Hunger... give blood. Give feed."
REND CAPACITY: 1%
Avo manifested a thin blade of purest crimson. At his brother's words, he bit back a snarl. "Why did you even make us?" He asked, his words offered uselessly to old owners no longer present. "Why are they... lacking?"
The ghoul, suspended as it was, bit at him.
Avo grunted in acknowledgment. "Don't worry. Put an end to this farce. Put an end to ours. No need for you. No point in you."
His blade lashed out. With a flick, his blade punched through flesh and greeted ichor. Avo dranked deep then. From the stock of his brothers, Avo made put these creatures most worthless toward nobler cause.
THAUMIC CYCLER: 61 THAUM/c... 102 THAUM/c... 150 THAUM/c... 211 THAUM/c... 272 THAUM/c
Ghosts: [290]
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