Chapter 7-13 Proper Prey
It it let us go. It just let us go.
There was a moment II thoughtoh, Jaus, you should have heard his breath. There was nothing human there. Nothing. Heard that sound before I did! From Duskraptors. Looking for prey. Proper prey.
It was powerful. A god! We could feel it. Feel the wind heeding its will.
Im from the Gulclinesin its gorgesII
The things it let us dothe slavers
[Sobbing, mixed with laughter]
We felt their pain. He wanted us to feel their pain.
It was glorious. It was glorious. There is a god worth praying to yet in this gogodsdamned city.
-Paladin Interview of Refugee Req Tnaqin after the Laced Crucible Incident
7-13
Proper Prey
Avo killed.
His Soul brightened; expanded.
The Scalpers, new and feeble as they were, died by the dozen.
But past the few twenty killings or so, while the beast shook with overwhelming delight, Avo found himself strangely displeased. The struggles of the enforcers occupied only the borders of his focus, their forms too slow to react, too weak to survive and offer amusement.
They died as he found himself lost in the labyrinth of his own mind, and its riddle was one of disappointment.
By blood and Rend he saw his foes unmade, sacking the temple of their bodies for blood before cleaving their withered husks with the backdraft of his gales.
Amidst the slaughter, perhaps only one managed to get a shot off. Even then, they missed.
The greater difficulty, he discovered, was traveling from one team to the next, keeping his Rend in check, keeping a tally of the pleasure Draus snatched from his grasp.Here, in the end, he studied his last victim with growing frustration. The whimpering enforcer crawled away from him nude of rig and skin, her remaining muscles glistening, flesh flayed with savage efficiency.
He had taken her legs as well. He couldnt remember when. By testament of will, augmentation, and adrenaline, she pawed forth, her voice a guttural mix of sobs and snarled curses, broken fingers digging into what scattered debris lay piled from the force-carved surface of the ground.
A faint recollection greeted Avo. His unnatural accelerationboosted further by each ton of swelling massproved more than the architecture could handle. At some point, the ruination he inflicted, the matter he drained away, grew beyond what the structure could support.
From there, the topmost deck collapsed, descending like in a tidal wave of plascrete and glass, an artificial landside.
The new strength suffusing Avos ontology made him feel a stone upon paper and glass. The devastation he left in his wake marked his movements like falling artillery rather than accelerated strides. Moreover, where the threshold of his force felt insufficient, his command over alchemy proved absolute.
Matter was his plaything. Matter was a feelinga mood. A binary choice for him twisted between blood and not, with patterns easily fed to the cage that burned upon the apex of his Woundshaper.
But a month ago, his present feat of power and harm inflicted on a near-hundred chromed bruisers would have left him drunk with awe. The horror he inflicted through the lobby? Unfathomable. Unthinkable.
Only a team of well-armed, well-supported, well-prepared street squires could have infiltrated such a place and subverted the locus as he did. And even then, the possibility of such a team cracking the wards was in question.
Yet, as he stared upon the last Scalper, as he watched the spearships begin their turn, the weight of a malaise came over him. Dissatisfaction.
Ah, his Woundshaper said. Familiar bitterness, long have you been apart from me. Be not concerned. Such is customary for your nature. The emptinesses. The desire to seek higher peaks. A louder thrill. It takes little for the chains of your biology to acclimate to your newfound elevation in this iron jungle.
The dying enforcer called out for someone. A father perhaps. Her words were cast out, howled over the crumpled railings of the first deck. A wide, pearlescent path lit with neon arrows running out into the looming bleakness of the gutters beyond.
Someone would hear her out there. But it wouldnt be the one she sought.
A low snarl hissed free from between Avos fangs. Encased within the striding tower that was the Woundshaper, the noise went unheard by the world, belonging to him and him alone. He checked his Rend and made to finish this slaughter.
REND CAPACITY: 89%
A hooking tendril dug into the hood of skin left jiggling upon her shoulders. The shrieks she made as he lifted her like a half-skinned rabbit from the ground made the ghosts swirling about his thoughtstuff quiver and his wards rattle. Dangling from a hinge of sinew and meat, he found himself glaring down at the pitiful creature tortured empty of her humanity.
And worst of all, she couldnt meet his eyes, for hers was rolling upward, ever upward. Where she remained in vessel, she was long absent in mind.
Why? Avo growled.
This day was set to end so well, so deliciously. But somewhere along the way, the rapture of the killing faded from him, and only low doses of reactive pleasure surged through his being. The hits of enjoyment came, but not enough. It felt like eating an aratnid: junk food.
Beneath him.
He drew the last Scalper in close and parted the outer shell of his Woundshaper to better gaze upon his victim.
Her breaths were rapid and ragged. Cupped by flowing blood, he squeezed her lungs like a pump. Hoarse choking followed.
The beast chuffed with joy but listlessness remained with Avo still.
Pleasurable? Yes. Always.
But unsatisfying.
So immensely unsatisfying.
Avo squeezed. Her body unfurled from the inside out a blossom of gore. His breath left his body, steaming with rage.
He had come down here to kill. He had nulled the minds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Butchered more Scalperstheir meat too soft for his liking, though the dull creature that lurked within him enjoyed it all the same.
THAUMIC CYCLER: 422 THAUM/c
Ghosts: [397]
Peering past the mangled remains he held in his grasp, he watched as the spearships made to ascend, doubtlessly driven away by the death wails of the enforcers. But from so far down, he could still see the shine of naked minds, still feel the flow of blood.
Scoffing his disdain, he judged the shapes of the aeroships and found himself offended. Their aesthetics prickled his ire, and he thought them better as slag upon a rising fire.
Avo shook free from his ontological encasing, instilling the Canon of Linger upon a final constructa long dagger.
The Woundshaper was trying to speak with him, to halt him. Master, what
His Rend burst free from his being in coruscating tides. Around him, a fourth of the first deck dissolved down the middle, the front entrance of the Ultimart bifurcating as lashing mists ate all that was tangible away into flaking motes.
As the ground faded beneath his feet, Avo turned his body and positioned the blade.
More, he said, the words for himself, once again just for himself.
With blade angled by hand to the floor below, the impact drove its tip through his eye and into the softness of his brain.
A sudden darkness splashed over one of his eyes. He felt his muscles fire and few times involuntarily as he tumbled down the widening through of darkness into the fires of death.
INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 1%
Again he tumbled. Again he shifted Heavens. Again he accelerated the pace of his return.
Strange how the weight of mortality was shed. Freeing though it was, he felt it uncanny how casually he viewed suicide. In a way, it felt little different than diving into the depths of his Meta, or changing an article of clothing.
But that was what life was to him now. Something that could be shed to his convenience, the plane of death an automated grafting station for his use only, and the Ontologics within him mere implants to be activated.
Cladding himself with the Galeslither again, he ignored the complaints of the former god as he prepared for resurrection.
When the percentage hit fullness, he rematerialized as a torrent, surging up after the five shapes fleeing upward toward the light.
The spearships, true to their design, looked like little more than long ramps with a dozen engines on each side. Rust stained the weathered chrome, while haptic graffiti sputtered gibberish into the disturbed tides of the local Nether, joining crackles of thoughtstuff from ghosts flung astray by spectators yet shattering, yet dying.
It mustve been over four-hundred thousand by now if they kept coming. A surge of joy came from that. There was true destruction, true harm. The mark of his Necrotheurgic artistry and thaumic power was undeniable.
This was something to seek: To mark the world with wounds indelible. Those below were less than meat, barely fodder; calling them finger food would be a sign of greater respect than they warranted.
What he wanted was some new delicacies, to sate both spirit and Soul upon all that had been denied him.
A prior thought returned to Avo. He had not experienced being inside a crashing aeroship personally. The vicarities always left traces of leftover emotion from the host. He wanted to sample the trill true.
Galloping hard, his steeds roared as lassos of wind wrapped about the aeros, their ascents quavering as fusion engines sparked and swiveled, fighting the sudden storm emerging to swallow them.
A crackle was coming through Avos session. Draus was trying to say something to him. He ignored her.
In whorling runes lay bone-like decor, marking the spearships as Scalper property. As personalized as they were, it also made it easy to slide along the grooved channels as he sought a way in.
Though not built for speed, the five ships burned hot enough that touching them meant risking backlash. Hence, he made to climb above them and lash at them from on high. Clustered minds were aglow inside their shells, the signatures of the entertainment, refugees picked ripe for the slaughter.
REND CAPACITY: 6%
Blanketing their topsides with his presence, he dug his flowing limbs into cracks and between machinery, the steed lurching with strange shivers as if he was using the air itself to lockpick the ships. The pressurization of the cabins was like pawing against thickened pools of mud.
Another issue with air then: though he could pick people up, twist and rend them through counter-torquing currents, he had no capacity to grip or crush as he did with the Woundshaper.
His Galeslither, unnatural though it made the winds, was wind at its root still. It was going to take more effort to pry his new toys open.
Or maybe just an alternative angle, given a little bit of finesse.
They were beyond the epicenter of Nether collapse below. The unseen ocean was calmer here by far, so close to the passage through Layer One.
His Ghostjack manifested through the wind-wreathed skull of his centermost steed, giving it the visage of a unicorn bearing a ghost-fused horn. Static built along the tip as he loosed his traumas in torrents of screaming ghosts.
His immaterial lance stabbed out, an instrument he was beyond familiarity with. He cut. He struck. With each blow the reach of his ghosts licked pieces away from fraying wards, striking casually in the distance of visual range. From stripped sequences, he divined weakness. Vulnerabilities and inadequacies in the spearships design.
Whoever shielded them had done an acceptable job. Same warding pattern as that which protected the lobby. However, where that had a staggering mass of ghosts, the armored lining of the spearships was diminutive in comparison.
So, he struck with repetition, jabbing with Lucilles Regret to locate the shifting damage before thrusting Secondhand Fatality into the cracks. It took the scantest of moments before he felt the defenses of each crumble, each collapse flashing a ripple of bursting thoughtstuff as all the phantasmics functioning within came spilling out, exposed to scrying eyes.
From his Whisper extended five links primed with the same commands: for the ramp doors to open; for the ships to halt in their climb.
Through newly made openings, he entered, rubbing his being across the writhing bodies of the survivors festooned in their rattling, ceiling-affixed enclosurescrucifix-shaped mechanisms that held them in place between teeth of spine-piercing needles.
The interior of the ships ran a narrow passage toward the cockpit located just behind the speartip of the vessels design. Each ship seemed to have two jocks operating there. He knew they were jocks from the general shapes of their gimbals, especially considering the needles running up into the base of their skulls.
In the depths of their dive, confusion must have been the primary thing assailing their minds, seeing as how he was in command of their vehicles.
With an effort comparable to taking a single step as a being of flesh, he rematerialized through a curtain of billowing smoke. Resheathed into his natural vessel, his senses were immediately assailed by a cacophony of pitched wails.
The passengers reeked of filth and dried blood while their minds tasted of animal terror. Their bodies swaying like mangled fruits upon gnarled branches of chrome, skin raw, eyes hollow, the gauntness a sign of severe malnutrition.
Even the beasts enthusiasm at greeting them was quiet. Little meat and mostly gristlehe could indulge in better dining by breaking into and eating the nu-birds in an aviary.
A low mood of disdain leaked out from within. What appalling conditions. Such filth befits neither servant nor slave. It is a sign of structure and instilled order to see sacrifice offered with proper ritual, for truly, what greater worship is there than culture? Than tradition.
If the Woundshaper could spit, it would have. Culture and tradition our adversaries seem hollow of. Make fuel of these slaves and be onto your desires. I yearn to see you reach this Burners Way. I wish to see the pedestal you are to offer m
Please. The cry cut through the noise.
The Woundshaper fell silent. The wind whistled. Again, the voice spoke. Avo looked up. In rows of five were the survivors lined, and in the middle of the fifth was the one that spoke.
A gleam remained within this ones eyes, a hardness possessed by the fabric of their thoughts. His skin was fair and his stature, though unimpressive by most standards, parted him from the other flats present by lingering muscular. With his scalp shorn down to the fuzz, the refugee looked more hardened prisoner than a sacrificial slave, the cheekbones thick and chin wedged.
The kids, the survivors voice fell. They deserve more than this, if no one else.
Avo tilted his head and studied his supplicant further.
From an inverted perspective, it was almost as if he was a god being offered prayers from a believer on high.
Ah. Groveling. Its an unbecoming sight. Master, I suggest
Choice, Avo said.
What?
For a passing beat, Avo said nothing, studying the face of the survivor. The beast knew only hunger, so whispered savagery was all it offered. But there was more here. More. An experience. Something that had been denied.
Didnt get to save the people on the barge, Avo said, mostly to himself. The boy.
Master, surely you dont care
Dont, he admitted. But want to know
Know what?
What its like, Avo said, staring into the despairing eyes of those that hung above. The flavor of worship. He smiled. Want to give him a choice.
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