Chapter 8-6 Idealization (I)
What you got it aint enough.
Look at your arms, your legs, your skin, your eyes.
Think of the last time they failed you.
Muscles that couldnt carry. Eyes that couldnt see. Lungs that couldnt breathe. Skin that burned and bones that broke.
Arent you tired of being let down?
Arent you worth more than some first draft of random biology?
Yes. Yes, you are, with the new Ascender modifications, you can be all that you want to be.
[+Mem-Code pop-up deployed+]
Dont just dream better; choose better.
Choose Ascender.
-Dawnforge Industries, Ascender
8-6
Idealization (I)
REPAIRING ONTOLOGY - 9%
The ability to travel as wind was freedom absolute, and such a liberty, once tasted, made the act of walking feel almost subhuman.
Walls and doors were constraints. Blockages. Time was wasted. It felt a capitulation for Avo, his sense of power shifting just under his skin calling to him like a siren.
Still, he followed Green River all the same. Though he knew where the grafter resided, remanifesting would expose the truth of his ontology to prying eyes. Though it was promised that the Second Fortune was circumspect when it came to its guests, the Ninth Column managed to pierce the mind of its mistress with ease, and the distressing fact of reality was that there were other segments of Walton to be wary of.
Their descent brought them further down than he ever cared to go on his own. Of the Second Fortunes numerous floors, the basement substructure was designed to hold one thing and one thing truly.
The blood den. The circuit ring: a place where brutality watered minds dry of entertainment. Here, imps flowed and death came cheap. Street toughs fought bioforms, fought captured ghouls, fought anything to wet the tastes of watchers between even grander events.
As he, Draus, Kae, and River emerged from the slow descent of her private elevator, she led them free from a small alcove, the flesh-like walls beyond the opening elevator doors unfurling into flaps to let them out. They found themselves far down between climbing promontories where live watchers lingered in other organic alcoves.
The stands were empty of cheers at the present, however. The bloodletting was over for the day, set to start anew tomorrow.
Such was a thing Avo was beginning to appreciate in the Sangs architecturethe modularity. The responsiveness. Metal had its virtues, but unto itself it was a dead thing, one necessitating damage to be reshaped. Changed.
Striding out, they found themselves out upon a spiraling path made from smooth-carved bone. With each step, Avo felt his claws click and the substance below rattle. A hollowness existed. Inside, he felt a tug.
Master. I feel something deeper yet. It is swimming in the marrow.
Do not concern yourself with the fishes, Green River said as if reading his thoughts. They are merely being filtered into the rest of the Fortunes arteries.
So, that was the origin of her little show earlier. Different bioformed aquatics ordered on the go directly from the basement.
How convenient it was to have mastery over life. Avo wondered if that made her chains all the tighter considering she herself was obliged to serve so many. Torture came in different expressions.
They were far beneath the casino proper now, their path taking on a winding quality even as the path widened. Casting his winds ahead, he felt his reach drift into a place wide and cavernous, with hundreds of bodies and shapes dancing in a ballet of constant motion, tinkering with strange shapes built into the walls.
As they encroached on the grafters burrow, the walls grew thick with muscle, its texture ribbed and rubbery. Specks of sparkling insects frozen in amber inlaid the gaps between clefts of tissue, their decorative purposes turned functional as scintillating enhancers to the growing veins of bioluminescence brightening the path.
The end came as they arrived at an open threshold to the cavernous chamber. Vast was its space and geodesic was its design, its roofs supported by five spinal pillars fused to a swaying chandelier of pulsing gray matter.
Avo tilted his head at that. Lines of synaptic tissue draped down as in hundreds of umbilical tethers, all connected to the massive organ that loomed over them. Draus hummed. How long youve been hiding this exomath under your establishment, River?
Five years, she said. I kept the brain for safekeeping. A favor to another sister.
The way she said favor made Avo wonder if blackmail was involved.
Countless bioforms and eunuchs marched, their bodies animal, insect, dog, and human all. This was the ballet Avo felt earlier; they danced their number in perfect discord, all moving at different paces to fulfill divergent tasks, but never did they collide. Never did they even come close. An uncanniness filled him as he realized he saw nothing of the thoughtstuff about them; their minds were so vacuous that they existed unseen to the Nether. Overhead, insectoid arms picked and plucked eggs and gene-helix-marked cylinders to load into the chitinous chambers lining the walls.
Then, Avo saw her. The Scaarthian he had scried during his early days here. The grafter herself. She lay entombed within the clasping ribs of what resembled a biomechanical device made for torture. A connector ran into her mind as well, but her leash was thickermore statically imbued than all the others.
Parallel to the drone jocks in their stasis modules, the grafter was playing composer to a roomful of vessels beyond her own. With her face exposed in its entirety, twin scars ran far down both her eyes, partitioning her face into three sections. She was bare of scalp and soft in feature, with a pointed chin and a button for a nose. As she blinked, he caught sight of the misted clouds floating over her irises as if oil upon water. Her face twitched, expression one of absolute focus.
Considerable effort was being exerted. Her body simply wasnt part of that equation.
Hail, Ruveca, Green River said. I trust your day proceeds pleasingly?
The grafter gasped and chaos cascaded. Bodies slammed together. Eggs and other pieces of genetic material being loaded into aortal chambers lining the walls slipped free from limbs. A slick sound sang from the ground as part of the floor drew back, exposing a cage of teeth and gums below.
It did, Ruveca said, nodding more to herself than anyone, just before you spoke to me. It did.
No offense lined her word. Not even annoyance. Her chain of focus, now broken, stayed as such as the countless bodies in the room turned to gaze upon the newcomers.
A towering split-jawed tiger-spider hybrid blinked slowly at Avo as it loitered along one of the major spinal columns, its chimeric instincts on auto as it awaited new commands. He wondered what it took to hollow a living being out to such an extent, and why they didnt use ghosts for such an operation.
Perhaps they feared their allies at Ori-Thaum might just pluck from them their secrets.
Striding forward, Green River gestured to the three behind her. These are
You know what I like about my eunuchs? Ruveca said. Theyre blind. Blind in their hearts. They usually know what to do when I tell them, but if I dont breathe any sweet nothings in their minds its silencejust silence. Its peaceful. But thats quite the opposite of what you do, isnt it ghoul?
For once Green River seemed startled. She spun, shooting an alarmed look at Avo. Her expression only deepened when he shrugged in reply. Ruveca how might you know
Ruveca laughed. It was too girlish a noise to come from so large a giantess. Bright-Wealth spoke of him in our weekly ma jiang game. The genius ghoul. The ghoul of ghosts. The master of memories. The crowd's echoing smile was a controlled, perfected motion. Something that came from years of controlling countless bodies besides ones own, Avo realized. I have wanted to meet you for some time.
Sounds like you got a fan, Draus teased.
Avo ignored the Regular.
Know why Im here?
Ruveca considered the question. Only reason why anyone comes to see me: They want a new monster; they want parts of a new monster in them. Suppose you will have to be my third. A monster, that wants to be even greater at being monstrous. Her puppets grinned wider, the word monster amusing to her. I have worked on many of your kind. Butchered them. Conducted my art using them. You are the first of your brethren not to greet me with fangs intent to taste my flesh.
Could do it if youre feeling nostalgic..
Lets leave such boring habits in the past, shall we?
He grunted. Looking for bioware. Augmentations.
Of course, she said. It is something I would seek if I was one of your nature as well. Implants are not a common thing for your ilk though. Shame about the blood. It really limits your receptivity toward chrome. An entire pathway toward purity just gone. A single tear ran down her left eye. He tasted a sliver of sorrow leak forth from her mind. Its heartbreaking.
Through word and expression, he read and understood what she was. Alloyist?
Of a branch, she said. The mainline does love their dead metal so very much. Wait. I wish to meet you mind to mind. Please hold.
With her words, the tiger-spider skittered over, its outer flesh a twisted weave of meat and muscle wrapped around eight clawed paws and jutting mandibles from a splitting skull. A full ten feet in height, it towered over even Avo as it approached, and when the umbilical snapped free from its skull, it crumbled with a heavy thud.
The cord swayed, its tissue silk and membranous, running down to a crystalline speartip and small hair-thin dendrites that groped at the emptiness of space.
Loathe as Avo was to impale his skull with a foreign object, death and damage meant little more than brief setback to him now.
Kill me if my thoughtstuff goes out, Avo said.
Draus shrugged. Might consider that to be an improvement. Could take you and the Frame for a joy ride.
Get nulled the first time you run into a problem without me.
Gettin a big head there; Ive survived plenty without you.
Saw you get smashed by a golem. Poor impression. Maybe thats why you're disgraced.
She inhaled through her nose. Yeah, that hit something tender. See, Avo, this the kind of talk that makes me tear my consangs arm and beat him with it.
Were consangs?
You gonna let me tear your arm off?
Children, please focus, Green River said.
Both Avo and Draus glared at her.
Hey, Avo, you remember when River spent twenty minutes sayin nothin only to end up getting your brain broken by your dad?"
"I remember.
Yeah, Draus said. Didnt seem so long ago.
Kae giggled.
Green River pursued her lips and held her head high and unashamed. She gestured toward the umbilical again. Please. Kind Ruveca is waiting.
Clutching the shape of the cord, Avo felt the slime run between his fingers as he angled it toward his skull.
Through the eye works as well, Ruveca said. She smiled brightly. Least resistance to the brain.
He ignored her and forced the tip into the softness behind his skull instead. The crystal bit into his flesh and immediately, he felt the dendrites pry into his tissue like prodding fingers.
What manner of communication is this? the Woundshaper said, seeming more interested than disgusted. A strange practice this huntress of mine has decided to pick up. But I applaud her all the same, for what is the body but blood architecture?
A spike carried upon bolts of lightning flashed through Avos mind. Lines of mem-data danced across his cog-feed as something bypassed his ghosts to initiate direct integration.
[INTEGRATING HOSTS]
He was on an island comprised of pure viscera, with gardens of organs pulsing from trees and growing like crops beneath his feet. Crimson waves crashed against his ankles. Pieces of meat were pulled from the shore into the water. He breathed in but there was no taste. He scanned the horizon using his feed, but his Metamind fed his consciousness no useful details.
Hello, Ruvecas voice came from behind. He turned. The Scaarthian was standing next to him. She wasnt blind here but her golden eyes remained distracted and drifting. Her body held a strange moonlit quality to her as she gazed upon the unseen light spilling through the mask of blackened clouds. A brigandine coat layered in plates scrawled with Scaarthian runes and jade squares painted with Sang characters adorned her. She held out a single palm. Let us talk about what you wish to become.
The soil heeded her call as organs and ichor rose to greet her palm. Between her fingers, a simulacrum of Avo came into shapeor perhaps it was just another ghoul. It wasnt easy to tell these days.
She rubbed her index finger and her thumb together, the motion prying something apart from the gore-molded ghoul standing across from Avo. Its chest opened. It spun. Along its spine, the flesh of its back unzipped. There, he saw a mimicry of his Celerostylus plain to his gaze. A marker was placed upon it, listing it as an item worth study. Squirming tighter around the simulacrums spine, the Celerostylus ran in countless strands up through the brain, through the body in a weave of enhanced nerves. It was a foreign symbiote installed as a rooted stem.
How did you come by this, Ruveca breathed, fingers coveting the bioware, but unwilling to touch it, even in this dream of a simulation. Her approach to augmentation was reverence. Near-worship. But he supposed that being obsessed was a relief in itself. In this broken eon, how wonderful it was to be blessed with personal purpose. This shouldnt be out for months. And it works on youIm reading more potency than the commercial version. Yes. Yes. This mustve been stolen from the No-Dragons themselves.
She looked at him and smiled.
You are a bearer of many gifts, do you know that?
More than she realized.
But she spoke, her face shrouded with frustration just as the light lessened from the skies. Your body cant bear it. Ghouls are enduring. Survivable. But fragile. Soft. Weak. Slow. Lacking in so many ways How long can you use it? The organ.
Bit more than ten maybe. Pain spikes after. Each subsequent use is hell.
Just so. Even without straining your muscles, the sheer voltage flowing through your system are cooking your nerves; killing your neurons. Its a starship engine for an aeroship frame: too much; all too much.
Can you enhance it? Fix it. The Celerostylus was his first priority. Without its blessings of speed, he wouldve been dead countless times over. Even his Heaven of Blood would find itself deficient with its parting.
And of no fault of mine, the Woundshaper sulked. Your designers offend us both. We should find time and seek them out; make prey of our precursors.
A worrying thought for another time. Again, he was not ready to face his fathers segments. They were too much to bear right now, and something told him that his wards and skills were not nearly sufficient enough for such an encounter.
Enhance, Ruveca said, confused. The Celerostylus is already a good piece of art. It is not it that fails you, but your foundational structure. She clasped her hand together and pressed down. The waves drained out into the fathomless cleft where the horizon met the land. Where once they stood on sodden ground beneath cloudy skies, shapes began to fall and sway; biomods offered on mem-data strings, made easy for his perusal.
There were dozens of options swaying in the air. Some seemed as if entire bio-rigs; were full-sheathe replacements. Others were simpler. New eye, new ears, new skin, and calling to Avos attention most of all, what looked to be a cluster of eight writhing serpents.
Its not easy getting things to integrate with your biology, Ruveca said. The No-Dragons spent considerable effort cracking the codes to your hemophage so that they could bridge the gap between implant rejection and acceptance. What you see is what may be joined with you, but understand that some structures are foundational, and two shapes cannot occupy the same vessel.
She leaned down, and Avo felt her hot breath wash over him in barely bated delight. What his Necrothurgyhis power did for him, biomancy did for her.
Can I ask you something personal?
He grunted, a slight tinge of discomfort beholding the spark in her eyes.
In your dreams how do you see yourself? What is your idealization of being?
At this, the Woundshaper laughed. Oh, my poor child. You see but a facet of facet; you fight to hold a narrow corner of totality.
Past the Woundshapers words, Avo himself spoke, a long-hidden desire teased with fruition. Predator. Apex predator. What we should have been instead of mistakes.
Ah, Ruveca said, but you werent a mistake. Just a first draft. Dont be ashamed; you dont get to choose your birth, but the present is a story still unwritten
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m