Godclads

Chapter 2-16 Welcome to New Vultun

Want to know what happens when two Heavens clash?

A paradox. Paradox forms. And if there’s too much paradox, Rend backlash turns to thaumic overload, then someone’s Heaven falls and Ruptures reality.

If it's suicide you want, I got a dealer you can call. They got the stuff that will make your heart pop instead of killing everyone else.

-Captain Osjack Wells, Guest Lecturer at Axtraxis Academy of Highflame

2-16

Welcome to New Vultun

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

PSYCHOLOGY BASELINES ESTABLISHED - REMOVING MEMORY STABILIZATION FEATURE

SOUL ONLINE

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 20 THAUM/c

LOADING PHANTASMIC…

WARNING! TRAUMATIC OVERLOAD! NETHER UNSTABLE! NETHER UNSTABLE!

Existence stuttered. Reality screamed. As his senses crashed back into him in a muted rush, Avo felt a supernova bloom within him as he broke free from a puddle of blood, manifesting in reality. Around him, space itself quavered like a dimmed candle, his brightness usurping the natural laws and subverting them with the Heaven that was now grafted upon his being.

He knew what he was now. There was no way to deny it now. He had beheld this radiance nightly, gazing upon the blots of fused chimeric gods that dotted the naked flesh of the sky as they formed from ascending pillars of techno-thaumic energy.

He and those gods stood kindred in a way. But he was whole while they were merely puppets; a Godclad.

His Liminal Frame had exiled him from mortality now, returned him to life, and bound him to the deeper powers that dwelled with the metaphysical, the divine. This too must have been why his new Metamind sounded like him. Because the system had to be forked from his mind to prevent consciousness rejection.

With this known, a million more questions ignited inside him, but he cast all that aside as he found himself aware of the toppled cockpit, bobbling like a shell down a shallow pool. Inside, Avo felt the blood flowing inside Little Vicious, and could somehow see the rushing currents of red surging through her body as her heart screamed with fear.

Blind to all other desires, Avo strode past the father.

The man was soaked in red, weeping. In his arms, the boy spasmed and twitched, hemorrhaging from his orifices. His skin was sloughing off from his body as his muscles atrophied as sagged, his metabolism burning away to nothing. Impossibly, Avo also felt the haemophage eating away the child’s organs, breaking down all his mass and drawing it up to his prefrontal cortex. Soon, only a misshapen hive of flesh. Perhaps just enough to produce one ghoul.

It was only a matter of time now.

“A-Avo.” Draus. Her voice came from behind him, hoarse with pain. He would speak with her later. Now, he had a debt of pain to square–an act of cruelty to inflict.

Perhaps it spoke much of how base he was in that moment, so deep in his vicious intent that his mind and the beast hummed the same bloodthirsty thoughts.

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He could detect no ghosts around him. The spectators were still afar, mostly peeled back around the locus above them, holding its exterior in the Nether as if standing in defensive formations, not daring to approach.

The golem, on the other hand, spewed broken drifts of thoughtstuff before him. Something sparked and smelled of melted microplastics, a flame rising in a slot on its backside. Currents of chaotic memories and emotions washed over him, bifurcating against his wards, a stream cleaved by a yielding crop of rocks.

He had been torn in half earlier. He had felt it. Draus and the father had undoubtedly seen it. Witnessed it with their own eyes and minds. Yet, there was no sign of his body anywhere. In fact, if it weren’t for the infection of the boy, it was as if all the pain Little Vicious had inflicted on Avo had never been.

Striding across a carpet of gore, Avo felt the blood he was in tactile contact with gravitating to his will, surging like a tide to his footsteps in by desire alone. Though his knowledge of thaumaturgy was lacking, his instincts guided his new capabilities. His momentum became the blood’s momentum. His strength became his blood's strength.

Reaching out into his domain of blood, felt his haptic senses widen, the pooled blood beneath his feet greeting his cognition like a newly implanted limb. Above the lights of the approaching level flickered, the platform wailing upward as its warped matter ground against the mechanical pillar. Below, in the reflection of the red, Avo beheld himself not in flesh, but as the burning avatar that was the Sangeist.

But then again, it was now as much a part of him as his thoughts were.

With a simple act of will, he shaped the blood beneath him. A new interface manifested through his cog-feed, feeding his mind with new reports. The structure of his Heaven greeted him, the cognitive menu dense with information and overwhelming to behold. Several menus were flashing red. He knew little of “Rend” or how it was supposed to affect him. All he knew was that it was bound to his Hell, and his Hell was currently nonexistent.

He needed more deaths before it could kick in.

From his shoulders, a thin helm of blood instinctively clasped over his face, coating the right and left of his head in armor shaped like a hound’s jaws. Above his rippling Metamind, a new pattern burned, its structure spinning the properties of plasteel into the blood.

Perfect.

Avo shaped all the blood he could control, mapping the design after his own clawed hand. Connected to him by wisp-thin threads, he controlled his new haemokinetic construct–a near ton of matter bearing the qualities of both blood and metal. Rearing it over the ejected cockpit of the golem, he brought it down.

And knocked.

The beast inside him wailed, unwilling to wait. But Avo didn’t want it to be easy. He didn’t want it to be just another killing.

No. The torture and pain she had inflicted on him aside, she had infected the boy using his blood. That was an act that fit his former masters. That was an act upon the choiceless. And for that, Avo thought he deserved to eat her eyes.

“Vicious,” Avo said, unable to contain the chuff of slavering excitement inside him. “Open the door.” He felt her blood rush through her body at twice the rate it did before. The knowledge pleased him, and like a joy-fiend building up to a buzz, an uncontrollable grin spread across his face.

Now he knew what it was like to be her. How intoxicating.

He was smiling. Genuinely, truly smiling. It must’ve clashed terribly with the sobbing cries of the father, but Avo didn’t care. He couldn’t. Without a Morality Injector and with hunger on his mind, all the sorrows in the world could wait till later. Now was a time to feast and indulge.

Her voice crackled from the golem, only one working speaker carrying her words. “You’re dead. You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re fucking dead!” What desperate words they were. What palpable fear she had. What flavor would her eyes taste?

“Was dead,” Avo said. He shaped his haemokinetic claw tips down to the thinnest he could muster and plunged it into the crenulations of the cockpit. Mangled titanium screamed against the unceasing force of his claw, bending, tearing, coming apart. Sparks and plates burst free from the machine. Glass and sensitive electronics cracked. Servos and hydraulics struggled and popped.

In Avo’s cog-feed, warnings flashed. At any other moment, he would have stopped. Not then. Not when he could hear Little Vicious’ screams spilling out as he peeled the shell away from her. Not when he could hear her twitching heart and smell her over-fragrant scent.

WARNING: THAUMS INSUFFICIENT TO MANIFEST HELL

REND CAPACITY: 21%.... 28%

The claw flicked. The exterior of the cockpit came free. Little Vicious rose in a blur, a flash of light spilling from her gun. Reflexively, Avo cocooned himself with his Heaven, his haemokinetic claw fusing over him like an aegis, lifting him into the air as he strode forward, piloting the tower as if it was an exo-rig. The sweetness of their swapped roles pleased him, but not nearly as much as her feebleness did.

The hyper-accelerated spikes of her sub-gauss cracked against his metaphysical armor, the blood splashing and bending instead of cracking. Never breaking, always mending.

REND CAPACITY: 33%... 37%

Three spikes bit into his shroud, traveling but an inch before he managed to congeal his grip and harden his shell. At once, his tower’s plates thickened. Yet, he found something new greeting him. In the back of his mind, a new interface flashed into existence, asking if he wanted to swap alchemical patterns. He felt the plasteel symbol burning at the top of his tower blink, a cycling symbol flashing over it. The spikes captured by his blood meanwhile were coming alight with new patterns, a new sigil sliding into his awareness.

Avo tasted their composition with his mind. Tungsten. He somehow knew that the spikes were tungsten. Guided more by instinct than understanding, he swallowed one with his blood and digested it into his being. Suddenly the new sigil for tungsten overwrote the plasteel. He felt his protective skin harden. Inside, his thaumic cycler spun faster as his Soul roared like an accelerating engine.

MATTER ALCHEMIZED

REND CAPACITY: 55%

Little Vicious’ last few shots broke against his new armor. Unfurling the blood across his back like a jagged wing, Avo watched as the host of this miserable carnival yanked on the trigger, hyperventilating. Snot was running free from her nose. Tears ran down her face. Finally, after a few more moments of pointless panic, the gun clattered from her grip and she sobbed.

“But you’re dead. But I killed you. It’s not fair. It’s not fair–”

Two branches of blood shot out from his frame, sinking into her shoulders. Her screams were not what he would call sweet, but they made him hunger all the same. Like she had inflicted upon him before, he slowly began to grow roots of tungsten–spreading it through her veins, around her muscles. He took special care to carve through her implants while avoiding her vitals and even began directing the flow of her blood, doing everything he could to prevent her from having an embolism.

He wanted her alive for now. He was going to use her and make things right before he fed.

Beaming with pride, Avo marched back over to where the father and the boy were, Little Vicious now spread wide in his grip like an asterisk, held above him on threads of blood like a banner of torment. Draus was with them now, having somehow crawled her way over to the father with but a single arm and internal bleeding. The right side of her face, formerly cracked, was now latticed with scabs. One of her eyes hung on cords of sinew and wire.

Yet, even in such a state, she betrayed no hint of pain. Instead, she looked upon Avo with stunned awe. She breathed, the sound a rasped hackle of disbelief. “I’ll be…godsdamned. You…you’re fuckin’ ‘Clad?”

REND CAPACITY: 59%

She, however, wasn’t who Avo was looking for. Instead, he made his way over to the grieving father and the dying boy, just as the platform ground to a halt. A vacant sprawl greeted them, the lobby of a long abandoned megablock. They were in the load section. Where aerobarges were supposed to park along the square slots of the platform to deliver goods down to the storage level below.

A grand hologram played in the center of the room from a still beaming trident-shaped project, casting grainy images of smiling children waving, a voidship rising, and the brightstar revealing its face as the planetary rings spun passed the point of dawn.

All the while, the audio played on repeat, greeting all newcomers rising past the ruins of the world into one of the few great bastions remaining in the galaxy. “Welcome to the City of Tiers! The City of Gods! The Crown of the World! Welcome to New Vultun!”

Dangling Little Vicious over the boy and his father, Avo laughed. “Look. I made it right. Didn’t let her get away. Look.” He lowered Little Vicious, his tungsten-sharp roots slicing through her as she drooped. An inhuman howl came free from her lungs.

“Stop!” Little Vicious cried. “Stop! Please! I’m sorry! Stop! Fuck! Fuck! I don’t want to die!”

But instead of laughing or nodding with satisfaction, the father just stared upon the tortured form of his tormentor, his face a vacant stare. His thoughtstuff unfolded, whipping out from his mind in loose, breaking strands. A low moan came from the man’s throat as he dragged his fingernails across his face. A maddened gibber followed, his bloodshot eyes staring off into the distance between his fingers. He sank to his knees. The display made Avo chuff in slight displeasure. Why didn’t the man appreciate his attempts to make things right?

The boy, however, proved to be a different tale. As the Big Nothing came for him, the boy’s eyes rolled back into focus one final time. His lips quivered. He looked at Avo, at his father, at the writhing wretch that was Little Vicious, and finally, at a holographic voidship climbing up the levels, dissolving in the open air.

As welcoming audio looped again, he managed a triumphant giggle and smiled. “Nu–Nu Vultun!” he said.

His was a face of pleasure, a face cast in the glow of dreams that would have never belonged to the likes of him. Still, his was a face that was happy. Truly happy, without the need for cruelty and hunger.

Avo found himself jealous at that. He, too, looked at the rising voidship. Something made him turn Little Vicious around to do the same. There, the five of them watched as the welcoming holograms came to an end and restarted anew.

REND CAPACITY: 77%

WARNING: REND AT 3/4ths CAPACITY! RECOMMEND ACTIVATING HELLVENTS!

The recommendation flashed across his cog-feeds without Avo noticing, for Little Vicious had started laughing.

As his branches spiraled over the pitiful organ she called a heart, Avo found it a pity that he could not infect her. The vaccine was strong in her blood, her biology already conditioned to face the haemophage.

“This…this was not the dream.” she said, sniffling.

Looking up at her, he pushed his branches through her flesh, pulling her skin wide. Spreading apart to his will, the glow of the holograms made her resemble a leather lantern.

“This was the dream,” Avo said, pulling her back from any possible escape, physical or mental. “This,” he gestured out at the vast emptiness around him; the abandonment and the rust, “was what your kind made. All the Heavens. For a world of nothing.”

His words cut through her momentarily reverie and she threw her head back, giving all that she had left into a final howling scream. At that, Avo found his smile again. Her pain was his dream. Her pain was what he wanted. What he—

Avo swallowed. What Walton taught him to fight.

REND CAPACITY: 84%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

Staring at his prey, Avo gave a sigh as he heard the crunch of something pushing against the roof of the boy’s skull. The child was dead. Avo couldn’t hear his heartbeat. Still, better this way than in some gutter. At least the last thing he knew was hope and joy. That would prove to be his last forever.

As he drew Little Vicious in close, he found her looking everywhere but him. He cupped her face into his hands and forced her to meet him, eye to eye. “You had a choice. You chose. You chose to hurt. You deserve this.”

“No,” she whimpered.

“You deserve this,” Avo said, uncertain who he was trying to convince. He wanted this. She should die. She killed the boy. But the torture. The cruelty. That wasn’t for her. That was for him. Walton might have killed her. But not tortured her.

Avo wasn’t Walton.

With a thought, all his threads folded, and her body did the same. The sounds he earned from her then were demonic, primal, pure. He left her spine and skull intact, but everything else began to shift and tear. She came apart and began pouring out from herself, his will sculpting her organs into inverted wings mocking her descent to oblivion. She might’ve begged him at some point. He really didn’t hear.

When he was finally done, her disfigured skull and spine hovered, a mangled totem that served as a centerpiece to the fused blocks of her organs. Her heart still pulsed as he forced blood through it. Her liver was still warm on the inside. One of her lungs popped. Sloppy on his part.

But he had delivered his loathing back to her. The feeling was wondrous.

Eyes empty, her thoughtstuff spurting as chaotically as the father’s, all her tangled cords were capable of producing now were whistles. Short shrieks of belonging more to a bird than a girl.

Placed his hands around her head–so small that his fingers could wrap all the way around–-he buried his fangs around her eyes and sucked.

In a sense, his hunger was the last thing she ever got to see.

Avo feasted. And for a moment, the world was perfect.

REND CAPACITY: 90%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

WARNING: NO HELL MANIFESTED

UNABLE TO VENT

ENGAGING SAFETY OVERRIDES

ADJUSTING TO ZERO BURN

Suddenly, felt his connection to Heaven break. A flash of incandescence pulsed through him as Little Vicious flopped free from where the pillar used to be, her organs pouring loose like offal. In his cog-feed warning icons were flashing through the menu of his Heaven. Several icons were burning at capacity. He didn’t care. He was too busy chewing on her eyes. They were delicious.

After he finished, he heard another crack coming from behind. The boy’s body wasn’t much of a body anymore either. His limbs had detached at some point, drained dry of all substance as a porous sac swelled from where his chest used to be. Something inside was swimming. Pushing. Traveling up the sack and nursing on the remaining brain matter within the skull. A ghoulling was about to hatch. Inside, Avo heard the tiny hisses of his offspring. Just the one.

The father was clinging to the boy’s hand, even as he whispered broken prayers. Artad this. Artad that. Artad was dead and so was the boy.

And Avo, even with all his newfound power, could never make that right again.

Avo ignored the man and walked over next to Draus. She was looking up at him, her wariness returning. Only when he matched gazes with her did he realize that she was probably thinking if he was going to kill her. “Nest. About to hatch one.”

Beaten. Maimed. Weary. She rolled onto her back over her scab-coated stumps and let out an exhausted breath. “Yeah. I know.”

“Didn’t want to infect him,” Avo said. “Going to deal with it.”

She flicked her eyes over to him. “You. You got a Liminal Frame. How?”

He shrugged. “Can’t remember.”

She scoffed a laugh. “Jaus fuckin’ Avaundaer. ‘Course you can’t.”

Another crack. A flap of the skull was lifting off. Distantly, Avo could hear the pounding of heavy footsteps approaching with a course of whining servos. Exo-rigs, it sounded like. Approaching from beyond the desiccated marble columns, standing like parapets before the partially collapsed walls.

“Probably Syndicate hitters,” Draus said. “Come to collect us. Or finish us off.”

Avo walked over to the boy. He didn’t look at the child’s face. He did his best to let there be no memory at all. With practiced ease, he brought his foot down on the boy’s skull, pulping it and the ghoulling festering inside. The crunches came with two echoes but only one ghost.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 22 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [35]

Ah. Right. One more of each from Little Vicious as well.

The father, past the point of breaking, just stared on as the blood pooled toward him. Avo dragged him away to avoid repeating the same act on him later. No sense in letting the man get infected too. As Avo returned, he looked down into the blood at his own neon-basked reflection.

He expected to see the Sangeist again. What he got was just a ghoul in a tattered undersuit, the holographic glow of a voidship rising over his skull like a crown.

He shook his head and chuckled mirthlessly.

The city was welcoming him back. The only way it knew how.

“Missed you too,” Avo said.