Godclads

Chapter 3-5 Sanctum of Mirrors

The Guilds built the Warrens to be temporary. The widening of the Tiers was supposed to be a continent-wide project. A stable haven for humanity to re-expand across this broken world. And what more poetic place to do it than from the forge that once made the gods themselves?

The blocks were fabbed by Voidwatch. An act of unity between the voiders and the terrestrials. A cleansing of old wounds. Highflame provided most of the Souls. Ori-Thaum built the Nether. The No-Dragons reseeded the world with life while Stormtree wrestled the ecosystem back from the hypercanes and chronostorms.

Hells, even the Mandate got in on the action, mauled as they were. Filled out the local oceans and rivers again while Sanctum stiched the broken planes of geometry back in place.

Ashthrone? Their Hells made the whole enterprise logistically feasible. Just a shame about how the others tried to cut them out afterward. Some say that was what started the wars again.

Truth is, peace can’t last; Existence can’t uphold eight different utopias. Not after all the blood that’s been shed.

-Revo I’Kurita, The False Peace, Prologue

3-5

Sanctum of Mirrors

Mirrorhead made Avo’s blood churn. There was something wrong with the Syndicate Godclad, and it wasn’t the Heaven he possessed. Rather, it was the discordant nature they went about things that gnawed at Avo’s nature. For all Mirrorhead’s pretenses of control and refinement, they were at once naked power and fleeting attention–seemingly more lost in their own mind and questions than focused on the world around them.

Emerging into the night, the Warrens wailed at Avo’s senses. Through the Nether a line of loci burned like miniature suns, each bound to the next through megablock after megablock, junctions to traffic ghosts. In the material, Avo found himself in a place far different than where he emerged.

There was a certain density in the local ecology. A thickness in the air like life was overflowing. It was a place that slumming topsiders would take mem-shots of in disposal sheathes, taking in the sights and the daily lives of the mortals, before splashing the remembrances in their memory palaces for their friends to see. Some called it art. Others called it madness.

Walton would’ve called it expression.

Descending the landing pad after Mirrorhead, the topside of Layer One greeted with noise and motion from almost every inch of space. If the gutters below were characterized by abandonment and decay, then this section of the sprawl would be a biomechanical swamp at war with itself.

Biotech and alloys splashed against each other here. Rising fungal rot and bio-engineered shitslugs ate their way up the mid-levels of the blocks. Meanwhile, drones and holographically constructed aero-lanes lined the skies–arteries of flowing matter dancing to the age-old rhythm of red-yellow-green amidst all the neon.

Before Avo’s eyes, a cybernetic leviathan-whale swam through the air. Its narrow head snapped along as its colossal tendrils undulated behind it. Aerovecs blared their horns at it as the eighty-foot-long chimeric behemoth inched forward languidly, spewing plumes of fire from bulging pustules filled with helium.

Avo looked away from the bombardment of physical and phantasmal ads burned across the creature’s moon-bright body. He had caught sight of the flashing blurs of a local suicide and organ repossession center. Just staring at it caused part of the address to whisper itself to him. Whoever designed it also instilled the ghosts with an added kick of compulsion. Unethical, but effective.

Ultimately, ignoring the whale was far easier than ignoring the smell. The inevitable mingling of piss and perfume, of spice and stink, of deliciousness and disgust. New Vultun was a city at war with itself in every way, and it never let you forget.

Here then was where the light beheaded the shadow. Here then was where the alloy crowned the flesh.

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Mirrorhead trailed away, suit barely shivering, the wind drifting into him, whistling through his being like air currents sucked through a chasm. They must’ve been at least fifty stories above ground level here, and at least ten miles up from where the Maw was.

A long distance to rise in a single day.

Avo liked to think of the totality of the Warrens as a rash. A chaotic sprawl of urbanization spread out around and beneath the Tiers like an allergy of the skin. Where the topmost districts still shone with their spires and archways of glass and metal, it did faintly little to hide the chaos bubbling below.

Strobing lights of passing traffic slashed across Avo’s peripheral vision. He winced and looked away. Wailing horns interspersed with beats of gunfire and explosions echoed, the noises bouncing across the war-weathered bulks of each block. He pushed through the chaos with practiced focus and continued following Mirrorhead down a descending staircase.

Peeking into his cog-feed, Avo commanded his ghosts to interface with the local Nether. His MemNav display flashed in the back of his head as the ghosts ferried and scanned the mem-pack before installing them into his Metamind. He was in the Stralhurst District, and it was five-thirty-three on Thulsday morning.

The district was part of the Yuulden-Yang Sovereignty, with major ownership percentages going in favor of Stormtree and No-Dragons: thirty-two and forty percent respectively. What little remained belonged to Highflame. The post-mortem echo-tax would be divided amongst the three Guilds at the same percentages.

Mirrorhead led him toward a massive polychromatic bulkhead that hid like a depression a full dozen feet past the edges of the block itself. This structure was old. Probably built a century ago during the Hundred-Year Truce. Unlike most blocks around it, there was a bit of ground around the edges. Drawing more trajectory data into his Phy-Sim, he guessed that the bulkhead was a recent installation, as it was all edges while the standard plascrete encompassing the rest of the structure was more curved in design.

He wanted to cast out a Specter. Reach up and scry a bit further. Get a bird’s eye on his situation.

He didn’t. He wasn’t equipped to deal with proper opposition should he encounter trouble in the Nether. For now, he contented himself that he was far from the Crucible and the deeper–and some might say true–Warrens that spilled out far below.

A rumbling hiss pulled Avo’s attention back to the door in front of him. It folded upward. Gears ground on for a full minute before a small crack opened itself at the very middle, revealing a miniature entrance to what looked to be an ancient elevator. He struggled not to stare incredulously at Mirrorhead.

“Elevator?” Avo asked. No one used elevators in the Tiers. Not even the Undercroft. It was a blatant structural weakness–something that could be used to bypass levels without ID scans.

“Let’s go,” Mirrorhead said. The Syndicate boss marched forward with his hands in his pockets, never once bothering to look at Avo.

Probably because he didn’t see Avo as some kind of threat. Avo hated that. Mirrorhead wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t diminish the sour taste. The beast inside growled, wanting Avo to tear into the Godclad while they were distracted. This impulse was easier to control. Fighting suicidal acts usually were.

Following Mirrorhead, Avo waited instinctively for a skip of the man’s heartbeat, a stagger his step. Anything. But Mirrorhead betrayed nothing. Inside, he was a cone of silence. Outside, he was like a spot of emptiness.

The elevator was old. Very, very old. And very, very industrial. Avo couldn’t remember the last time he saw an elevator that didn’t interface with ghosts or at least a datajack. This one had haptic inputs. As the door closed, the coldtech bot that served as the limited intelligence for this platform sang a jingle.

“Wel-come to block 7! Choose your floor!”

“You gave something to Captian Draus before you left,” Mirrorhead said. “A ghost. What was inside the ghost?”

Avo didn’t lie. He expected this. “A memory. Of a killing.”

Mirrorhead barely turned his head. He stood only as tall as Avo’s sternum, so the effect of the stare was muted at best. “One of yours? Or one of hers?”

“Mine,” Avo said. “Parting gift.”

The Syndicate boss hummed. “I did not take you as one for sentiment, ghoul.”

“No sentiment,” Avo said. “Just something she deserves.”

“‘Blessed be the worthy,’” Mirrorhead said, quoting Highflame’s ruling mantra. “I do concur. A nuisance though she might be to my enterprise, she is, in her own twisted fashion, still living up to her charge. Highflame would be proud.”

Avo shot a furtive glance at the Godclad. The glass around them was dull and stained with filth. No hints of an eldritch leviathan dwelling beyond. Still, after the experience in the aerovec, Avo would be checking every reflection he could see for some time.

“You a golden?” Avo asked, throwing out a casual question.

Asking someone’s color was a lot like asking which side they declared for if the hypothetical “End-War” came about. Few would give a straight answer. Some changed their opinions based on taxes. And most didn’t give a shit and just wanted to live their life.

Mirrorhead stayed silent for a beat. Finally, he turned to look at Avo. “I am not a follower. My will is my own.”

The elevator had a u-shaped window above its controls. Without hesitation, Mirrorhead reached out and selected the option at the very bottom. S-300.

“Three hundred levels down?” Avo asked. That was deep. Probably at least as deep as the storage level from which he and Draus just ascended. A curious apprehension built within Avo. “What’s the need?”

Mirrorhead revealed his answer easily. “Far enough to survive a kinetic kill-rod.”

Avo couldn’t imagine someone wasting a tungsten rod to kill him. Suppose Godclads lived different lives. That thought struck a beat into his thinking. He wondered if he needed to plan how he was going to avoid getting killed by interstellar weaponry should he survive long enough.

He was, after all, also a Godclad. Just one experiencing meta-technical difficulties right now. Something he could remedy with a few more lives fed to his Soul if the thaumic requirements of his Hell were any indication.

A nicely curated garden filled with ebontas rose into view. The black, jagged slither vine of the mega-plant skittered out in eight directions, climbing up even the surface of the inner courtyard of the building.

“That’s a–” Mirrohead began.

“I know what an ebonta is,” Avo said.

“--an ebonta,” Mirrorhead continued, like he was never interrupted, and then stopped. The glass began to rattle. A shadow appeared in the depths. Avo took a step back. “Never interrupt me.”

Avo grunted a non-apology.

Mirrorhead promptly finished telling him what an ebonta was. Every detail. Location. Creator. When it was first biocultured into existence. Everything.

It occurred to Avo that there was one thing about Mirrorhead: if anything threatened his control, he hated it. Which meant the guy probably hated being alive, considering that he was down here and the Guilders were up there, making everyone pay them taxes.

Avo made a mental note about that. Maybe he could tip off the Guilders if he ever managed to jack into Mirrorhead’s information and found the Syndicate boss doing an evasion scheme. Guilders didn't agree about much, but not getting paid their tithes was one thing that could spur a joint operation.

“...and so, it cost me another fifty-thousand imps to have it transported inside.” Mirrorhead finished.

“Tough,” Avo said.

The courtyard was–surprise, surprise–also layered in wing-shaped panels of glass. Besides the hunters in the Crucible, it seemed that pretty much every member of this Syndicate was forced to run some kind of mirror theme. Guess Mirrorhead had a healthy ego.

“Organization name,” Avo said. “Something like Monochroma? Or Glassheads?”

Mirrorhead snorted in derision. “Cute. Conflux.”

“Conflux,” Avo said. “Because black-white convergence? Or Syndicate having both legal-illegal businesses?”

Mirrorhead suddenly didn’t have much attitude about that. He tugged on his collar, defensively. “It’s effective.”

Cute. That was what Avo wanted to say. He went for a less suicidal statement by just grunting.

The elevator had started playing some kind of chronobass. Avo hated chronobass. It was the looping of two different tracks crossing over each other that made his ears ring and his head hurt.

Peeking at the unmoving Mirrorhead out of the corner of his eye, Avo tried to come to terms with that, no, the Syndicate Godclad apparently was taking this all in stride. No awkwardness about nearly throwing him, Draus, and the father out mid-transit. Nothing about the slavery talk. Not even any mention of where he was going to move the other two or if he was going to provide them with any help at all.

It suddenly occurred to Avo that he might’ve been dealing with someone even more socially antagonistic than he was. That probably merited Mirrorhead a reward.

Slowly, they sank below the courtyard and Avo learned something that day: he learned that elevators were slow and he despised them. Reflexively, he wanted to reach out into the Nether again but froze mid-action. Unwise to commit to anything next to Mirrorhead. Especially if the latter knew of his capabilities. Might take his ghosts moving around as a threat.

Instead, Avo occupied his mind with another, more interesting question.

If his Heaven was working, could he kill Mirrorhead? Would a spike of blood and tungsten pierce his foe? Avo studied the Syndicate boss again. He had no idea what Heaven the man had grafted or how much thaumic mass he had, but it felt larger. Greater. But that didn’t mean it was more effective in direct combat.

Of course, there were several other issues, like how he was to go about procuring the requisite amount of blood first before engaging Mirrorhead, or what limits the enemy Godclad truly possessed. Their Heaven of glass and reflections must’ve had its own canons; its own hubristic limitations.

Knowing those might just be the path to survival.

What Avo needed was some privacy. Somewhere to study, experiment, and practice without someone watching.

Right now, he needed to figure out several things in order of importance. The first was getting his Heaven active again. Judging from his cycler, he was just seven or so kills away from getting it working again. The second was getting a chance to sleep so he could resequence his Metamind and mod and fab some new phantasmics.

After that came the bigger questions, like how he ended up in the Maw to begin with; what happened to a week’s worth of memories missing from his mind; or where was his previous Metamind; and how did he get a Liminal Frame burned over his ontology?

And that wasn’t even getting into Walton’s last message about theEasy Armistice or whatever the Ninth Column was.

Lots to do, with all of it needing to be done circumspect or upon being fully emancipated from Mirrorhead. Difficult but not impossible. Avo spent most of his career as a Necrojack being subtle. He’d find an opening.

There was always an opening.

The elevator door rang. Avo twitched. He was more used to ghosts announcing his arrival in the back of his mind than just blasting noise at you. He hated coldtech.

The door opened to a long, red carpet surrounded by several marble busts of pre-modern nu-cats and nu-dogs amongst other animals, now rendered extinct through biological obsolescence.

Mirrorhead marched on. The room ahead expanded in a gulf of brightness. Spears of blinding light pierced deep into Avo’s eyes as he winced. As he stepped forward, however, he felt his claws click against what felt like…glass.

His wince became a shudder. Avo pushed through the glaring radiance to realize that he was standing in a room made of naught but crystalline reflections, each pane polished to crisp perfection. Ahead, Mirrorhead’s skull grew hard to spot amidst the curving reflections. If not for the Syndicate boss’ suit, it would have been hard to keep track of the man at all. Eyes darting around, a disconcerting fear snaked through Avo’s veins: ghouls were made to be predators, not prey, but he had survived long enough to know when he was entering the den of another.

This chamber was a place of power for Mirrorhead. Somewhere they were nigh-omnipotent, nigh-omniscient. Greed and envy followed the fear in Avo. He realized that he wanted this: what Mirrorhead had–sanctuary.

And, continuing from an earlier thought regarding whether he could beat Mirrorhead should his Heaven be functional, he wondered if he could take Mirrorhead’s Heaven from them instead.

As they traveled further still, the room widened into a round expanse. No ghosts or thoughts penetrated this domain. The Nether went quiet. Dead. No electric cameras that Avo could see either. Just mirrors. Reflections. In every direction. A bunker of glass. The effect was so encompassing that Avo couldn’t even find the way out as the elevator doors shut behind him, for they too, were reflective.

Avo sighed.

Mirrorhead didn’t just use his gimmick like a brand. No, he cut its corpse open and literally used it as his skin.

They made it halfway across the red carpet to nowhere before Mirrorhead suddenly took a step off it. Now, they seemed to be heading toward a random curve of the room-sized mirror without a hint nor reason.

Suddenly, a flash of rippling fire burst from Mirrorhead. Avo cocked his head. There was something wrong with the other Godclad’s flame. It wasn’t flowing; it looked frozen. Dead. Before Avo could dwell further on that, Mirrorhead’s Heaven pulsed in the reflection and speared a shard of its wing back through Mirrorhead himself. The act was reflected across every surface in the room. Avo shook off a rising bout of nausea and looked away.

Mirrorhead motioned directly ahead. “Proceed.” Every instinct yelled for Avo to stop, that he was going to bounce off the mirror, that he was walking into a lair of an eldritch monster beneath the glass depths, waiting to devour him. But Avo knew natural instinct had died at the hands of this world long ago.

Without a better option ahead of him, Avo took his first step through the pseudo-looking glass.