Godclads

Chapter 2-1 The Crucible

It’s impossible to shut the snuff market down. Wouldn’t matter if we had enough Liminal Frames to field a thousand more of us. Too much ground to cover; too easy for the syndicates to cut their losses and run the black.

What we can do is keep this from happening to any Guild-sponsored citizens. Won’t be hard to track them using their FATE markers.

The Warrens belong to the syndicates and the ghouls. They want to rule over that festering pit, let them have it. We do what we can with what we save.

-Internal Paladin Memo, “The Growing Problem of Snuff Vicarities”

2-1

The Crucible

A ghost usurps both your mind and senses when it takes root inside you. A parasite of cognition, a weaponized ghost made thinking akin to clutching water in a clenched fist. Discordant fragments of secondhand memory spiraled over Avo’s awareness like a typhoon, trapping him in a cage of dreams.

Lucid, but contained, Avo waited for control to be returned to him. There really wasn’t much else to do. Flesh and will matter little without a properly sequenced Metamind to channel them through. This, he knew from experience: being a Necrojack, he dove through his share of minds.

With that being said, the nightmare loop they knotted into his mind to keep his consciousness partially suppressed was slapdash at best. Missing details. Unloaded figures. Placeholders for clothing and infrastructure from all the wrong eras. Even if he wasn’t a Necro, this was an obvious mem-sim.

Within the nightmare, he had been cast into the body of a priest and made to kneel before a burning church. Before him, the blurred contours of snarling soldiers were throwing the rest of his flock one after another into the conflagration. Their laughter was warped. Discordant. The dream reached its end when they finally grabbed him and fed him to the flames as well, the heat swallowed his flesh, boiling him from the inside.

Then, the memory looped, taking him back to the start again.

A traumatizing memory for a human mind, perhaps, but Avo had felt the flaying glare of a fusion lance. Had to pull himself loose from the skin of his melted brothers as Guilder golems rained eldritch fire upon them. Before a scalding heat so vicious that every breath speckled simmered flakes from his lungs, the church fire was but a sauna.

Besides, there was another reason he wasn’t impressed. The entire design was not chaotic enough to be a naturally occurring dream and not consistent enough to be remotely well-made. Avo felt more insulted than traumatized. It boiled his blood to see his craft so demeaned by the hands of a pretender. Even more that he fell victim to a phantasmal assault so poorly designed. Alas, preparation and knowledge were key when diving against another Necrojack. And when he was storming his way blindly onto the bridge, unequipped and improvising, he experienced the old Kosgan adage.

“Better to be a middling practitioner than not at all.”

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The nightmare looped again, starting anew. The heat of the flames stung weaker than the barbs of humiliation. When this was over, if he was still alive, he would find that captain, and he would demonstrate to her how to properly knot a nightmare into a mind.

For anything between seconds to hours, Avo waited, counting the mistakes of badly interlaced memory artifacts, sneering quietly at the sloppy build.

Sometime after his two-hundred-and-eighth loop, the nightmare dissolved mid-way through. A pulse of cog-data flowed through his mind. His Metamind activated as his senses burst into being. Snapping back up into his flesh from deep within his hijacked mind, Avo blinked as spots cleared from his sight. Cog-banding. That’s what it was called when a consciousness was pulled out of the body and released like a bowstring. The sudden lurch was dissonant in the best of cases and inflicted psychosis in the worst.

POSSESSOR DETACHED

SYSTEMS CLEARING

SCANNING COGNITION…

  REVIEW COMPLETE: COGNITION STABLE

The physical world hit him all at once.

The comforting cold was the first thing he adjusted to. Near-freezing, but not quite. The chill was a hissing breath against his skin, pouring through his flesh and stiffening his numbed strands of eel-like muscles. A low mechanical whine sounded from behind as he felt himself being lowered. He tried moving, but his body refused to obey. A strange weight was lodged in his back. Directing his blood, he felt at a series of needle-like mechanisms were drilled into his spine.

A sudden flash pierced Avo’s eyes as he stifled a growl. Blinking the spots from his vision, he noted the four tube-shaped projectors brightening in front of him. In the narrow coffin that contained him, he felt packed. Claustrophobic. The feeling brought memories of his infancy back to him; the sensation of squeezing through crevices while hiding from his older brothers, desperate to avoid becoming prey.

Grainy light spilled forth from the projectors. Motes of light fused to become a static-sheened reflection of his body. A dozen spilling lines of data connected to different places in his body in the display, identifying near-healed wounds and his half-grown left arm.

Lines of description filled the top right of the hap-screen. SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION: GHOUL; STATUS: Alive; HEIGHT: 7’7’’ WEIGHT: 389lbs

Pulling back, it became something of a mirror. Avo felt dismayed at his haggardness.

His current outer fangs had gone unpulled for some time; the four of them were each as long as a stiletto. His five tertiary rows of inner teeth were also itching. He needed to grind them down again. Beneath his translucent murky-pale skin, the countless layers of slithering, sinuous muscles coating his ligaments, bones, and major organs twitched. He hung hunched and stiff beneath a red glaring light. The great length of his right arm caused it to brush the bottom of this pod, even while suspended.

Light glinted off his obsidian-hued scleras. The narrow chasms of yellow that were his pupils shrank, attuning themselves to the dimness. He looked the same as he ever did: long ovular skull; jutting fangs poking out from a lipless mouth that ran up to the small nubs that were his ears, and two pinpricks instead of a nose.

He was made to be a monster from a child’s nightmares. Towering, Gaunt. Predatory. Just how the Low Masters desired it.

The interface froze. A number was assigned to him.

Fourteen.

“Good evening, contestant!” A cheerful voice crackled to life. “Please per-per-perform a vocalization.”

Avo frowned. The words weren’t projected directly into his mind and ghosts didn’t tend to stutter with static pops when delivering information. That told him he was dealing with a coldtech interface–something entirely natural and unpowered by thaumaturgy or metaphysics. Technology in its purest, dullest form.

Out of simple curiosity and obstinance, Avo stayed quiet.

The voice repeated the question twice more before it flashed red.

“Please answer,” the voice repeated, with just as much cheer as before, “or we will be forced to list you as absent and liquidate–”

“Not dead,” Avo said, his voice a hoarse rasp. When was the last time he spoke? How long had they kept his mind nulled? What was he even stuck in? Seemed like every time he woke, he found more questions waiting for him.

“Thank you for your confirmation.” replied the voice. Its response came a full second late and started another cycle of waiting. A spinning icon had manifested over his reflection. Avo hated coldtech. The beast told him to claw at the walls. To tear the projectors from where they were festooned and force his way through the weak metal. Functionally, the needles implanted into his spine left him paralyzed. The beast was an impotent thing, its rage worthless, its strength unexpressed. The rational part of him laughed and mocked the creature he was. How rare to see the monster immobilized so. The bulk of him simmered in frustration.

“Location?” Avo asked, trying to expedite the machine’s response time. “Where am I?”

The machine ignored him. Another thing ghosts didn’t do. Ghosts always responded because they were conduits to a living will and were anchored to the Metamind that commanded them. They were the very definition of malleable, bending and changing with every thought, capable of being tuned into cognitive-affecting constructs via the resequencing of memories.

Not coldtech though. Coldtech rigidly did what it was programmed. Pre-planted dialogue paths of ones and zeros. Avo always found it too inflexible.

“Thank you for your confirmation. You are now listed as Fourteen among the survivors. Confirm?”

“Survivors?” Avo asked.

Once again, the machine ignored him. “Please state any and all experiences, skills, and abilities you believe might benefit you in a life-or-death situation.”

Vague. Ominous. Demanding. Somehow, Avo felt that whatever he was talking to was probably coded for customer service. “Elaborate?”

It did. By repeating the question.

Avo fought the urge to growl, to rage. Instead, he thought back to Walton. Yes. Walton would know what to do. Walton would accept the situation. Always accept the situation. Accept, understand, and then alter the situation.

“Ghoul.” He looked in the mirror. That was self-evident. The machine, however, continued to buffer, as if wanting more. Avo rolled his eyes. “Licensed Necrojack.” Licensed, but without a properly functioning tool. It was the same thing as being a marksman with a disassembled gun, if a gun barrel needed to be resmelted to fit the unusual nature of his neurology.

“Confirmed. You have a one-in-eighteen percent chance of survival. Would you like to make a bid? All imps will be transferred to you upon your ascent into the Warrens, should you survive.”

Avo’s unease grew. The beast within purred with delight. Beneath his feet, he felt the clicking of delicate machinery. Something was opening up. Avo remained silent. Without his old Metamind, he was effectively destitute. Nothing to bet with and no place for the imps to go after.

“Thank you for your participation FOURTEEN. We hope you enjoy the festivities.”

Avo frowned. He had a bad feeling about this. He thought to ask the bot what it meant but decided against it. Limited answering parameters. Waste of time. He steeled himself in ringing silence as unease bubbled up from inside him.

The projectors flashed and went dark. A low hiss whistled out from beneath him. Avo wanted to look down, but with the bolts in his spine, his head wouldn’t bend.

He didn’t think that getting kidnapped would offer so many more questions, no answers, and more problems coming by the minute.

A series of clicks and snaps sounded. Whistling trails of warm air rose from beneath him reeking of stinging disinfectant and the fading taste of blood. But the blood smelled wrong. Polluted somehow. Like there had been something added to the mixture.

Drills whined as servos and motors thrummed behind him. Without warning, the weight caging his spine retracted. A series of cracks rattled up his spinal column. He drew in a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Twisting his neck, he relished the ability to loosen his bones and stretch his muscles.

Better. Reaching over, he rubbed the growing nub on his left arm. It was past the elbow now. A few more hours and a few thousand more calories and he’d get his arm back. Kidneys too, if he really accelerated it. Didn’t want to risk the cancers though.

A crackle went through his pod again. “Please brace for ejection.”

Avo froze at the statement. Ejection? Avo’s freed neck craned down and saw thin lines of light spreading at his feet. The familiar sound of a maglock disengaging snapped.

The “floor” gave way beneath him with a shunting noise. Gravity took him. Light speared into his eyes, blunting his sight, but not yet bright enough to blind him entirely. The drop was a short one, fortunately. He slammed feet-first into what felt like plascrete. It smelled like it too.

The cold in the room was at the freezing point; the thin sheen of ice he stood on demanded that he dig his prehensile claws in for traction. The loud roar of a thruster singed his scalp and deafened him. Through squinted eyes, he saw his pod fly up and disappear into an alcove.

Stumbling to find a wall or a corner, Avo blinked spots from his eyes as he heard additional thrusters echoing down from all around him. It sounded like he was in a tunnel. Flowing wind washed over him from several directions. The air was scrubbed. Stale. Familiar somehow.

A whisper slithered over his mind, intruding into his thoughts. A taunt. +Theybrought us a ghoulie to play with this time.+ The ghost bore a voice most shrill and girlish. A lingering sneer could be felt in her pronunciation. +Going to enjoy breaking you, paler. Going to watch you die good.+

Turning, Avo braced himself for another phantasmal assault. It wouldn’t matter much, but if he was ready, it should at least protect him from deeper cognitive damage.

A roar of gunfire distant rumbled. Avo went stiff. Faintly, he heard footsteps pattering down from his right.

+Attention!+ a loud, monotone voice announced in a pulsing wave of near-tangible thought. +Survivor: Fifty-Seven has been liquidated. Hunter: NuDogNuDay228 has drawn first blood.+ Through his cog-feed he watched as a massive phantasmal wave composed of ghost-carried thoughts washed through matter, bringing with it a building static of secondhand excitement.

Voices chittered in the back of his mind. Bets were traded. Insults were cast and laughter followed. A reticule directed him to look up. A hundred miles above, past countless walls, his cog-feed located a massive nexus of ghosts interlaced into a chain around what looked to be a star formed of living minds. He figured that was a locus. A big one to keep the local Nether stable. But why would they need such a massive construct. It didn’t make sense unless–

Suddenly, Avo realized where he was and to whom he had been sold. Truthfully, he should have figured it out sooner. The machine calling him a survivor should have given it away.

Another voice washed over him. The waves were splashing down from the locus above. +Go-oood evening, viewers and contestants,+ the new voice was youthful. Girlish. Practiced. Familiar. He knew this voice. Heard it before during several of his dives. +Thank you! Thank you for streaming in on an Ursday evening! Another hard day of work in the biggest of the big! Another night of fun that you won’t find anywhere else! As always, I’m your girl, Little Vicious, delivering you the play-by-play for all your violent delights!”

A roar of pure desire flooded the atmosphere. The weight of a near-billion viewers was hard to hide, especially in the Nether. That answered why they needed a locus so large that he could detect its signature from here. The crushing weight of radiated emotion from poorly tuned ghosts spilled over into reality on a tidal wave of descending consciousnesses. They were all here to feed the same urge.

There weren’t many emotions that burned similarly in a human and a ghoul, but bloodlust was one of them.

“It’s going to be a messy one tonight, consangs. Three hundred survivors, some volunteers–others volunteered–against our players. Fan favorites like Visekeles, Gravemarrow, Slaughterman, and R3surr3t are here tonight, so stay synced and keep your wards up. Wouldn’t want the Exorcists to be knocking on your doors in the middle of tonight’s Crucible!+