Chapter 7-8 Feed the Beast (I)
We are made whole by the mother, gifted steel by the mother, blessed with victory by the mother
Of us, she asks nothing of feeble prayer like the air-sick lowlanders. She asks of no gold or song or temples.
All she asks is the way of things. The true way. The natural way.
The blood must flow. Lives must cycle. The huntress dies. The hunt remains.
Praise be Saathwu! Praise be the mother of blood!
-[Redacted], In Praise of Saathwu, the Red Mother
7-8
Feed the Beast (I)
A moment passed. A wavering quiver ran through the metaphysical matter comprising Kaes dais. Avo was was that you?
The naked worry of her thoughts sang through the Sangeist within Avo, and he felt its pleasure at inflicting such a response.
It was as if the emotion was twinned to his being. Within him. But within another as well. A new dichotomy arose within him; a subtle bifurcation spreading across the stretch of his ontology as another being awoke within him, a being within a being, like a doll containing another doll, yet with both dolls still bound to his control.
The connection came awake as the Sangeist did, a flood of thoughts and feelings that emanated out into Avo. In a sense, it reminded him of how a medical implant might inject necessary chemicals into the larger body architecture.
No. I spoke. I thought. I woke. Not the master.
The words sang free from oceans of shivering blood. Soulfire licked and carved new grooves into existence.
The Sangeist, smaller once, but never feeble, took on new ridges as vascular valleys rose through its slats, endowing its once flat surfaces with cords of muscle akin to those within Avo. A length of thickening support emerged from behind like the tower was molting an exoskeletal spine into position. A second dawn ignited above, the patterns of the alchemy expanding just as the wolf-like jaws were caged by a lattice of crimson.
As the evolution flowed to a finish, a note of keening joy rose from the Heaven itself, the notes of its mind loud and primal, a war cry from an age lost and bygone.
Whole. WHOLE! Silence fell. Avo felt a tug on his will, the act more request than struggle. The Sangeist wanted arms. Hands. Something to feel itself with. Something to touch. Thoughtless, he acquiesced, and from his surrendered control came two arms.
They were thick and roped with muscle. In a manner of build and shape, they resembled Rantulas arms, more than any others. The haemokinetic constructs displayed little in the way of augmentations. None that could be discerned, anyhow.
Like someone feeling their face after a blow or a smear, the Sangeist began to map its new body.
I am not how I remember. This is no longer me.
Distracted, Avo barely noticed Kaes quiet retreat away from his Heaven. She said nothing to make armor from distance and silence. Still, she was within him, and he felt the deafening shock reverberating within her, stretched across her gawking face.
Sangeist, Avo said, his voice coming from the Heaven as well. It belonged to him before it belonged to itself. This new development twisted at him. Did this make him an involuntary sovereign, now? Was this being more subject or slave in nature? Talk. What are you.
At his words, the blood around him bristled. The Sangeists reflexive ire had bled over into him. He reacted. He. Not it. But with the state of his ego, there existed a difficulty in compelling himself to maintain control.
SANGEIST? I WAS NEVER ANY SANGEIST. OF MY NAMES, I HAVE BEEN CALLED They called me Saathwu, the Giver. Seethwuld, the Bloodforge. Seethran, the Devourer. All these names, I am no longer. Here, within you, I am but an echo; the lesser to your greater divinity. A forgery, at worst. A copy, at best. Through blood, matter and Essence, you have roused me. Reforged me. And nourished from your flame, I am given presence anew.
You are a god?
To his question, she wailed with laughter, the pitch deep and mocking.
Once perhaps, but no longer. For what is a god that burns using the flame of another? A serf? A divine serf? Free to till the lands of its domain at the behest of a benefactor?
Another laugh. No sadness greeted Avo. No strain to break free. No horror or dismay. It did not feel as person did. Instead, it remembered. Channeled distant recollections of mixed emotions. Avo had done enough dives that he could taste the humanity with them, but he felt the strangeness of their joining.
It was as if the Sangeist had the lingering remnants of ghosts long forgotten, meshed together without care nor concern.
No. You are the only god here. If that is how you regard yourself. I am merely a shadow. A voice. An expression of purer design.
What expression?
The Sangeists arms opened, palms upward as if releasing the chains of a long-held truth. A desire we both share! To bleed the tapestry empty! To make proper shape of the ichor that flows!
Gazing at the tower, a living portrait of the past formed along its slats like shadow theatre, the shapes of a world made from animated blood. Heed, the final dreams of priors, master. Heed, and know that what is joined may be broken, and what is broken can be reforged.
Surging memories boiled into existence through Avos mind. Flashing histories and ancient vistas burned into his senses as he sank into a living dream, more vivid and material than any vicarity.
A small tribe of ten fled down a gleaming valley of glass. Tumbling storms sang a discordant song, the siren tones accompanied by lightning strumming on the currents. Flashing brightness cast distant shadows of slavering predators in pursuit.
Deeper into the valley, the tribe fled. Away from the darkness. Toward the flicker of a lonesome light.
No. Not a valley. A fallen voidship. A colossal husk that dwarfed mountains and shadowed hills. Impossibly, something had split the colossus in twain, the cut a clean wound.
They ran toward a light then, arriving before a dormant flame.
This was not the beginning, but that which came before is lost to me; my last wholeness shed without anything to linger. Yet, I do remember this. Of my first resurrection, restored form by my faithful. My huntresses. My red daughters.
As all gods, I began a seed beyond the touch of the material waiting to bloom. By chance or fate, I woke to existence by the kindred of the Hightomb. I remember them faintly, gaunt starved forms of a single tribe fleeing from creatures unseen.
Burning rain fell. The children of the tribe wept, all of them male, all of them broad and thick of stature. Leading them on, the matriarchs of their tribe numbered nine. Nine giantesses pulled across the stretch of eons for Avo to behold. Crude animal bones and vulgar skins clung to their bodies, shielding little, revealing much.
Scaarthians. The earliest of their make, it seemed.
Avo was gazing across the vastness of history.
I think I was a fragment, then as well. Broken from a mother -- from a grander Heaven of a grander age. There are flashes still. Flashes of war above wars, of the void disemboweled. But flashes, and no more. I am not the Heaven that came before then. Nothing remains of her. Nothing but the echoes of me.
Massive beasts of molting furs tore out from the storm, their bodies an inhuman union between serpent and wolf in body, pulsing cancers across their body illuminating the shapes of their young, their heads a vertical jaw of snapping fangs and little more.
Unchained weapons of a colder age, the Sangeist explained. Gene-carved bioweapons that survived the fall of their wielders. It chuckled. Kin to you in spirit, I suppose, arent they, master?
Wielders?
A spike of contempt jolted out from the former god. How little you know of your history, master. How little have you dreamed of our true design?
It continued before he could utter another question.
They had fled into my unconscious embrace, my form the barest flicker of a flame fractured from its greater whole amidst the void. Then, I burned, the last of their hope in a cold valley, mimicking their impulses back to them. Like children, they fled the dark and sought my bright, and with the pull of their yearning, I was sewn into form from chaos to order.
Around the fire, the tribe knelt, begging, praying, the children mimicking the adults, the matrons leading a maddened chant as bestial shapes were reflected off the reflective surfaces of the valleys.
They entreated me then, begging me for aid when they heard my thoughts. To smith truth from fleeting memories, I was less solid then, and more liquid; where I began and the wills of my worshippers ended, who could say.
The Sangeist continued. The memories flowed on. The price was the same as it is now. No Miracle could spawn without a point of emanation, just as no god could be shaped into being without an initial spark of worship.
The monsters drew closer, the nights grew closer, and the tribe grew worse. Nine amongst the ten darkened into grayness. Only one remained, her face calm and determined, her muscles hard and thick despite her age, mingling with her wrinkles to make her look as if carved from wood.
Rapt with fascination, Avo studied her face. How strange it was to behold a humana subspecies at the very leastmade weathered by natural age. There were those who remained elderly and withered even in the present, but a sheen of artificiality clung to them.
Lesser coldtech and thaumaturgy could starve off entropy, but to blunt age entirely took more than cheap installments and gutter-grafter surgeries.
Euunal, the oldest and wisest of the surviving huntresses, struck a pact with my primordial flame. Her flesh, her blood, her entirety would be given unto me. In exchange, all she asked for were weapons and shelter. Something strong enough to protect her children.
With a final breath, Euunal closed her eyes, drew a dagger of jagged bone, and opened her throat to feed the flame. Her kindred mourned. The children screamed. For a moment, it looked like the primordial flame would die, and the last flickers of its radiance would be witnessed by encroaching beasts rather than living tribes folk.
The flame sputtered then, but it did not die. Instead, it retracted from reality in threads, slipping away to someplace unseen. In it manifested a pillarnoa tower, its emergence seeded from Euunals blood.
Avo beheld the first construct created by his Sangeist then. A ring of rising battlements emerged as hastily made parapets from the red of Euunals veins, the exterior growing jagged and spiked, the interior rising another deck higher, with ladders leading up to narrow slots that jutted outward, preventing an easy climb while allowing the survivors to spear down. Against the rising walls, the horde of monsters bled themselves.
And from them, the Sangeist fed, suckling blood from open wounds as the walls grew. A slaughter followed, but the past came blurred. The mass of his nous slid back into place, resting from the perspective of his soul.
A murkiness spilled over the tapestry of the Sangeist, the puppets and scenery of the ancient past lost to a growing haze. This was all I could recall. All that remains of me now. The memories that follow are without proper color, and bereft of coherence. Its voice was wistful. I was immense once. Greater and larger than any structure on Idheim. I was fed the nectar of millions by the month. I crested the void and grew greater yet. Bloodforge. The Red Tower. The Woundgiver. So many names. So many stories. All shattered. All lost.
This this is Guild-restricted mythology! Kaes thoughts cut into the Sangeists monologue. Two minds turned to the Agnos, both divine, neither human. Aware of the attention that was bathed upon her, she wilted as the Sangeist manifested. Avo the Guilds they have-have Exorcists doing thoughtscans for this! To to stop people from understanding how to make make the gods again!
To stop? the Sangeist said. Ah. I see. For their sole use. What folly. What delicious folly. It will be a wonder to make worth from their veins. A wonder! It turned pleading desires upon him again, begging him to heed its wants. We are conjoined in desire, master. As you feel, I am wieldedexistat your whims. But though I am whole enough to be again, I wish I wish to reclaim other fragments. To become more than what I was. With you. Through you.
Using me, Avo finished.
Yes. Just as you used my remains to service you. Nothing has changed. All remains true.
Kae swallowed. Avo, you should
QUIET, SUPPLICANT! IT IS FOR THE SHINE OF YOUR EYE THAT YOU ARE NOT
Avo strangled the Sangeists voice from it with but a thought. He knew if he was of flesh at that moment, a rage would be upon him at the Sangeist bucking against his will. His will clenched it in a fist of pure control. It ceased to flow. It ceased to shine. Darkness spread over its sheen as his eldritch shine fell over it like a cage of searing light.
My Soul, Avo snarled. Mine. I let her in. I let her talk. I let you talk. I can keep you silent instead. Forever. Want that?
He felt the apology coming from his Sangeist. A cowering supplication. It could not fight him. It couldnt even exist without him. It remained his instrument, merely with an added voice paired with suggestive desires
Its the flames, Avo said. That gives true control. Kae. Every god had a Soul before. Personal Soul.
Y-yes, she answered, disturbed at his control. I we we found it was possible to to replicate Heavens. But but not a Soul. Never a Soul. Takes takes something we dont know something lost.
Which was why the golems outnumbered Godclads a million to one.
He released his hold on the Sangeist. Unstrained by his might, he felt its surface flatten into compliance as it shaped its hands to mimic the gesticulation of a bow. No words followed. There was no need. And it tasted the emotionless ire oozing from the wounds left in his ego.
He knew not if he could hurt the god, so narrow of desire that all it hungered for was to channel and grow its domains. Despite being a god that once enslaved the world, its nature was disquietingly pure.
It reminded him of the beast: made for a specific purpose, with all other aspects of life sliding past them, oil upon water. More than likeness, there was symmetry, the wants of his basest self and the god parallel.
To feed. To grow. To be a being above all others in food chains or pantheons.
A halt followed in his thoughts. You. Youre making the hunger stronger. The beast stronger. Its hearing you. Drawing from your strength.
For the first time, he sensed confusion from the Sangeist. What beast, master. There is only you.
The haste of his reply nearly overtook his mind, but before thought could be unleashed into the subreality, words of the Sangeist struck.
There was only him.
Only him.
Walton was dead.
The node had shattered their code. Taken his choice from him.
And removed the last shackles binding him to past virtue.
He had worshipped his father. Tried to live up to the mans ideals long after his passing. But to the words of his fathers shadow, Walton was dead.
Walton was dead.
And there were still other echoes of him in the city. Fighting a war Avo didnt understand, building new cages and funnels to herd him for their use.
Choose. Choiceless. Fateless.
Did he ever have a choice? Was he always meant to be used and wielded? Was he fated to be an instrument to an eternal group of masters, if not of immortal flesh, then of a rhyming mind?
No.
Walton was dead.
But Avo remained. And now, he was a Godclad.
A Godclad free to sustain himself on whatever diet of worship he so desired, and slake himself on whatever hunger that dared torment him.
Yes, the Sangeist said. Yes. That is your nature now. That way, and not some other way.
Avo Kae asked, daunted by his long silence. She was trying to get him to notice something.
RESURRECTION - 98%
REASSEMBLING HEAVEN
MODIFYING [SANGEIST]
THAUMIC OUTPUT RATING - SPHERE III
GRAFTING HEAVEN - 100%
REVIEWED - MYTHOLOGY STABLE
Giving you a new name, Avo said. Giving us a new name.
The Sangeist listened, eagerly awaiting redesignation.
HEAVEN - [WOUNDSHAPER]
DOMAIN: (BLOOD/MATTER)
THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 265 THAUM/c
Ah. How fitting
A thing it had to say, so leashed to his will.
Choice was a beautiful thing. Choice was a sweet thing.
And choice was going to see many, many of two particular Syndicates be made offerings to Avo. Offerings to himself, now the only god he had left to worship.
RESURRECTION - 100%
ONTOLOGY REVERTED
RESURRECTION COMPLETED
ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 299 THAUM/c
Ghosts: [242]
LOADING PHANTASMICS
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