Godclads

Rescue ops are surgical, dangerous, and rarely worth it. Understand that if the enemy manages to capture one of you, you are expected to engineer your own escape or remove yourself from the equation by death or nulling to ensure no information can be extracted from your Metamind.

Again, we’re Regulars, juvs. We’re the batteries used and bullets spent; made for the killing and the dying. But not nearly valuable enough to be preserved. Not the most of us, anyway.

Now, an Instrument, Authority, or a Seraph? Some other high ranking VIPs. Yeah, that’s different. Still rarely worth it since if you got snatched it’s probably Ori-Thaum, and they’re probably sequencing a new Sleeper into you without anyone knowing, but in one of the special situations where Stormtree hasn’t tortured you to death by making you fight their fucked up house pets or Ashthrone hasn’t used you to test their newest Heaven-busting bomb, you’re going to need force of violence, surprise, and velocity to get this done.

It’s always easier to face someone entrenched in a familiar plane or holding defensive posture. So, avoid attrition; go for a sudden breakthrough. Or an infiltration followed by total informational and instructional collapse on their end.

That, or you want a really, really powerful cadre on your side to rain fire and brimstone on enemies while you handle the extraction.

Whatever the case, one thing stays the same: Your enemy best not see it coming.

-Commander Winston Nicoma, Highflame Regular

32-3

Jailbreak (II)

Avo would have hated commanding an army if puppeteering wasn’t possible. Even with all the forces he “procured” there were endless issues he had to resolve.

A plague was eating through a five percent of his forces. What kind of plague? The kind that gradually layers one’s lungs into calcified sores and causes them to breathe infections spores out with every breath. How to cure it? He didn’t know, and neither do the local No-Dragons. Their Plaguesmiths were nulled and slain when it became clear escape was no longer possible.

The sick were contained in a secluded demiplane for now, but they needed to either be burned or treated soon. And this was one of the easier matters he faced.

His cog-cap was overstrained as well. After consuming the minds of the entire force and their prisoners, Avo had [31,031,144,511] Ghosts. Problem was, without the Nether active, he himself needed to function as a network between individual egos and loci, and thought controlling a single mind was a trifling thing, controlling a concert of a few million at once during complex undertakings demanded exponential levels of cognitive processing.

[Resolvable issue,] the Advisor declared. Avo had it characterized as a shrouded figure looking over a simulated reconstruction of their current theater. As the bulk of the template’s sequences came from Scaarthians sources, it was a particularly large shadow and with the outline of bone-runes swinging from lumps of swinging hair. He suspected the Advisor’s contours would change more down the line when he consumed a more balanced mental diet. [Create new independent templates for the forces. Make them optimized egos like I am. Independent ego operation is always more reactive.]

“Yes,” Avo agreed. There were some principles that remained synonymous between Necrojacking and military action. He needed to avoid spreading himself too thin—and concentrating himself in too many bodies—anyway. A single point of failure was fatal for any system, be it material or metaphysical. “Streamline an ego. Wish Draus was here. Wish I burned here. Didn’t have the time. No Regulars in this district. No Regulars. Only mechs and defense forces…”

GENERATING STANDARD COMBAT TEMPLATES

WOUNDGUARD (STANDARD INFANTRY)

HOUNDS (SKIRMISHER BIOFORM)

GRENADIERS (HEAVY BIOFORMS)

MAIN BATTLE PLATFORMS (ASSAULT MECHS AND OTHERS OF A SHARED CATEGORY)

FORTRESS ARTILLERY (HEAVY MATERIAL ARTILLERY)

INTERCEPTOR PILOT (LIGHT DRONES AND AIRCRAFT)

DESTROYER PILOT (HEAVY DRONES AND AIRCRAFT)

He would let the Godclads he now possessed retain their own personalities—with their flaws reduced. The golems? He’d use the standard Knots as a baseline, but as he had part of the Stillborn and could produce more golems or alter their Heavens…

[It would indeed make sense to build your forces around your golems. Once enemy miracles have been identified, it will be easy for you to create specialized Rendbombs or surgical strike forces to eliminate structured metaphysical threats. Stormtree bases their structure of Hunts: They are organized from the ground up, with each unit having a senior hunter or huntress in charge. They are in charge of interfacing with their counterparts. They are below a Houndhead, which governs a concentration of ground, air, infantry forces

[These forces then fight in concert behind twelve golems at the vanguard and at least one Bloodthane cadre at their core. These loosely organized bands all come together to form a Great Hunt under the First Fang. Each Hunt tends to number around ten to twenty thousand personnel. However, they are greatly crippled with the collapse of the Nether and severance of their out-theater pilots. The same limitation does not apply to you.

With your unique cognitive structure and how you can wield entire armies as extensions of your will, it is recommended that you order these forces along the lines of thirteen major combat arms constituted by 4000 golems each with remaining forces supporting them. Keep the Godclads in reserve as specialized forces. Once you apply these new templates to minds you burned, you can reduce your hold over them—you only need to keep yourself tied to 10% of the total force structure to retain maximal effectiveness. Only directly interface with the units you need. Reserve your cognitive capacity for complex operations. Let individuals bear their own weight.] R

Avo grunted in agreement as a constellation of minds flashed across the disfigured district of Tallstrings. Hundreds of thousands of military forces had their sequences rebuilt in seconds. That done, Avo withdrew his capacity and redirected it elsewhere. As he only possesses Ignorance, he could not release his units; his mind-flame might be invisible, but he couldn’t turn it to steam or encompass the world itself through Synchronicity. But he would find the Definements again. He could feel them through the Substance. He would return as himself—and more.

But another matter bothered him as his mind-chained legions underwent their reconstitution: Where were the Regulars? After the destruction of Scale, it seemed that all Draus’ comrades had been stolen away. Avo had a guess as to where they were, his thoughts always drifting to the Infacer and Omnitech, but even then, he wasn’t sure. He doubted this would be a pleasant thing to discover anyhow.

[No time to lament. Use what is available. Destroy what you cannot harvest.]

“Destroy?” Avo said, considering his Advisor? Avo would have expected trapping resources or even hiding them for later use. But absolute denial? That was quite the Sccarthian way of doing things. Might want to adjust the Stormtree sequence-source-density for this template.

[To ensure that this place is completely expended. It would be good to leave a Fallen Heaven in place as well. To deny the territory itself.]

Yes. Very Scaarthian. But this led into Avo’s main issue right now: logistics. A major Stormtree weakness as noted by practically all their adversaries. The stormtrees they gained their namesake from allowed them easy transference of materials, but the Skuldvast most Scaarthians held from was a miserable, inimical place. A place where the land, sky, and waters were infested with calamitous beasts and near-sapient disasters. They never developed effective industrial production—or even a functional tech base of their own for that matter.

Hence, the oft-repeated Highflame joke: “How many Scaarthians will it take to screw in a light bulb? A hundred. Ninety to die holding off some horrific nightmare, and the last one to kidnap and Ori for the actual work.”

Food. Water. Ammunition. Rendsinks. Batteries. Basic necessities. All these things were in short supply for his forces, and even after sacking and looting their way across the Elysium, they were barely more well off than they began. They were also about as organized as the forces under Mondelles’ command. Much like the Highflamers who got separated by the Substance, the Greens were a mess, displaced and disconnected from the bulk of their army.

Their situation wasn’t helped by Ancar deciding to wage her recent battles as if she had a stormtree open behind her, with active portals pouring in more forces to offset the attrition, Ori-Thaum running rear-line management, and Sanctus provided logistical support while Ashthrone siphoned away excess entropy.

As she didn’t actually have these things, what she got was 20% casualties, mass death, and a severe mauling inflicted on her golems.

Ancar was respected among her forces, but a good and adaptable commander she was not. It was increasingly clear that being a high performing Godclad didn’t make one an even mediocre leader of men. But when ambition festered and individuals rose blindly from being a warrior to a leader over the consideration of their actual skills, stupidity transpired, leaving Avo to weld the pieces back together.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Thankfully, he had an idea how to delay the sustenance issue. Ancar’s Great Hunt—the Stormtree title for a Sovereignty-sized combat command—was at least 25% bloat. A great deal of units under her command were technical personnel that could no longer perform their original duties due to the collapse of the Nether. As such, she did the stereotypical Stormtree thing of placing them as reserve infantry or support engineers.

This broke more things than it helped because, apparently, retraining and team cohesion was not among Ancar’s considerations.

Avo was comparatively wiser—even without a fully sequenced Advisor template.

The excess forces weren’t going to be soldiers or in-theater drone pilots, they were going to be human resources. And though all the local No-Dragon Plaguesmiths were dead, there was an imprisoned Instrument with a Sang Heaven focused on regrowing organic tissue, animal husbandry, and culturing its spread. Rationing might be needed for a while, but eventually, he would be able to start self-sustaining farms to feed the rest of his army.

That, and he could have the Godclads donate some of their meat as well. They could resurrect. In fact, he cast their minds orders, and they immediately began looping suicides.

This was something Ancar should have frankly done hours ago. Human egos. So many internal flaws. So inefficient.

[This solution is only circumstantially sound,] Avo’s Advisor muttered in the depths of his mind. [Having the soldiers feed on their own without your influence would have ensured mass disobedience and bottom-up tribunals, which would most certainly demand matters be settled through the Rites of Dishonor.]

“Why?” Avo asked, stretching his cog-cap as he directed his twelve scouting sorties to make another pass through the district. Golems, screened by high-speed interceptor drones, choked the skies above Tallstrings. But there was another problem—there wasn’t much of Tallstrings left standing beyond the massive hurricane Ancar threw up after seizing the district center.

[Because cannibalism is taboo in Scaarthian culture. It is a thing accepted only when all other options have been exhausted. It signifies the final trespass from huntress to the beast she stalks. One must know the path they tread.]

“Interesting. Would have thought the final trespass would be feeding infants to dogs. Never understood that. Beasts hunt for food. Instinct. Humans know. Humans can think. Humans can decide.”

[The culling of the adversarial young is merely being thorough. One does not survive without a hearth and home, and a hearth and home stand with the one. Should a tribe shed blood against another, it is best to see things permanently settled, lest another war follow with the next cycling of dead winter.]

Culture didn’t just shape someone’s cognition—it also mutilated it. Avo had spent so long focusing on Highflame and Ori-Thaum. He was in tune to their ways. But the other Guilds were their own puzzles, presented their own strengths and weaknesses, materially, mentally, and spiritually.

Under Avo’s direction, the restructuring of Stormtree began. Experience and group cohesion no longer mattered. All infantry, mobile armor, artillery, air forces, and golem pilots, could fight alongside each other.

REORGANIZATION AND EGO-UPDATE PROGRESS: [2.41%]

>ESTIMATION: [01 DAY 22 HOURS 33 MINUTES 41 SECONDS]

[Attention,] his Advisor chimed, [We have detected an imbalance in the tapestry.]

Avo’s attention immediately shifted, and he identified the aforementioned imbalance with a low chuckle.

While the bulk of his forces underwent changes behind the metaphysical hurricane that shielded them, he dispatched surveillance sorties across the rest of the district. With self-shaping cognition, Avo controlled the vehicles without issue, and because he possessed a Soul, he still possessed some resonance with the tapestry itself diminished though it was without a Heaven.

The biggest advantage here was his perfect attention to detail. Mental fatigue was beneath him, and every little aspect of the area he passed over were filtered first through a few thousand templates for any errors before finally arriving in his base mind.

Where Tallstrings had once been a grand sprawling Elysium characterized by four enormous golden willow trees that towered over the luxury blocks by dozens of kilometers, Stormtree had severed them at the base and dropped them on the cityscape. Normally, this wouldn’t have worked due to the nature of memite, but times were different; stranger. The resulting destruction that transpired when the grand trees fell could only be called apocalyptic.

Apocalyptic and troublesome. The obliteration of the district’s periphery must’ve killed millions, but he could still see countless accretions dotting the rubble and detritus below. There was no true stealth without thaumaturgy here anymore since Incog’s no longer functioned without the Nether, but even Ancar wasn’t stupid enough to spend more munitions on Citizens. Not when there were still actual enemy Godclads to hunt.

Everything looped back on destruction again. Ruins made for good fortifications, good cover, and useful catalysts. Catalysts such as a concentration of dust in the air that constantly circulated between four techno-thaumic reactors. Almost like a golem cadre moving between external Rendsinks. The kind a block in the Tiers would have.

[An obvious choice, though there were far too many blocks with functional reactors,] the Advisor stated. [if First Fang Ancar launched uncontrolled miracles across the city, it is likely that 80% of the area would be compromised by spreading ruptures.]

But that was just what Avo wanted. An uncontrolled rupture, splashing into the Substance. Dispatching a spy drone to dive into the ruins and chase the dust, Avo watched as it tried to tumble away—only to be compromised in an instant as he projected an invisible stream of fire through the platform’s locus.

His mind splashed through a threshold where spatial reality stood thin. On the other side, he found a collection of a thousand or so Highflame drones manifesting a defensive perimeter while a fleet of commandeered aeros, cargo carriers, and Citizen-use drones sailed around one of the few Skyforts Highflame possessed for the Elysium.

The Skyfort was smoking and damaged. It resembled an armored cathedral held aloft by ten non-fixed techno-thaumc engines, and at its core, Avo sensed fourteen thaumic signatures. Surviving Godclads.

“Found you,” he whispered, his fire spreading through golem pilots, across aeros, into the Skyfort itself.

Soon, he would add even more templates to his Soulscape. The fight there was still ongoing hours later. Seemed the hate between the factions was strong—doubted that would end anytime soon. But that was secondary to the main thing he wanted to do with the resistance—engineer a believable scenario behind a Fallen Heaven cascade. Something that wouldn’t draw Veylis suspicion to his existence when he finally destabilized the Substance.

He ignored all the non-Godclad forces and secured the cadres first. Each of the Instruments—and a single Seraph—jolted as if struck by lightning. Most of them were haggard in mind and body—morale low but ready for martyrdom. Such was the way they went as their templates were cast into the fire, new meat for the eternal war within Avo.

However, it was the Seraph that pleased Avo the most. Sixth Sphere. Primary Domain of Space.

Yes. Yes, this would work.

He controlled the Seraph directly while dispatching a flood of orders to the golems and Rendbomb-carrying drones he held in reserve for this very moment. They burst out from the storm wall of the Stormtree hurricane, unimpeded by the spatial and physical forces preventing unwanted entry. He sent out a thousand Rendsink and Rendbomb assets in total, all of them attuned to the Domain of Space.

As they streaked across the skies, the Seraph, now controlled by Avo, sent out a public thoughtcast declaring their position compromised before ordering the golem pilots to collapse demiplane and prepare to engage.

Golem pilots Avo already controlled.

Everything moved in a perfect sympathy, many acting to the will of one. Explosions of dread and pure despair swept through the Highflame survivors that Avo hadn’t taken yet, but it was the Seraph that mattered. And it was Seraph he was going to rupture to open a way for Naeko.

The cloud of roaming dust burst apart and every single Highflame asset rose from the haze back into reality, zooming over the ruins and reactors they used to hide themselves.

At this sight, Avo drew Ancar out of the fighting briefly, merging her template with his own. “Would have never found them.”

[Wha—] The First Fang was cast back after that, her confusion delicious. It would give her something to consider in time—about her failures as a commander. Avo was interested in knowing who came up with the Highflame strategy, though. Their means of camouflage was inspired. He might just have a new primary strategist to feed his Advisor.

The Skyfort roared loud, but from its top manifested an enormous hand clutching a tower-sized black blade that cleaved as long as the horizon. At once, its tip splashed against the top of the Substance, and Avo felt a crushing flow of perception drift around the boundaries of containing this place.

The Seraph’s Horizon Splitter was a simple Heaven dedicated to cutting anything, anyone, anywhere. He took in the canons as he could try replicating them in his golems and existing Godclads before make the Seraph carve downward toward Scale.

The shimmering barrier of the Substance splashed as Soulfire charged with Chrono-Conceptuality and poured down the manifested Heaven’s length to consume the offending Seraph. Which was the exact thing Avo wanted to happen. With the Heaven grounded into the Substance, it was like a lightning rod primed to channel corrosion.

While the Substance’s Soulfire poured down the Horizon Splitter, Avo’s “Rupture Wing” blinked across the horizon in as a congealing bolt of lightning. A bolt that crashed into the flat of the blade. A bolt that splashed outward, striking the ruins below, and drew close to a dozen still functional reactors.

[Estimated collateral casualties: 2.4 million within blast radius if judged by visible accretions,] the Advisor said.

“Yes,” Avo answered tersely. He reached out and began burning as many of them as he could to preserve their egos, but his options to save them were limited and their use, coldly put, was minimal. They didn’t offer enough ghosts to be worth the focus. He definitely could send out his forces to rescue them—because Stormtree just didn’t do that. And inconsistent surface-level behavior was one of the few things that wouldn’t go unnoticed by Veylis.

Drones launched their Rendbombs. Golems manifested their Heavens, and that was when it all unraveled. He selected these golems specifically because his Advisor said they were at a 68% chance of creating a paradox cascade. And as they crashed against the Horizon Splitter—

Space tore. As they crashed against the Horizon Splitter, space tore. It tore along a Sixth Sphere Heaven, cleaving upward in the shape of a blade. The tear continued across the descending Soulfire, surged into the Substance, and punched clean through it. Reality came asunder as metaphysical destruction slashed a vertical chasm across it pages, and though the Substance was chronology and conceptualization conjoined, all patterns existed upon the pages of the tapestry, and so they were to split as well.

Soulfire scattered. The metaphysical wound tore wider, tore upward higher and higher until the very ceiling of the Substance peeled open.

And Avo beheld the gaze of the Daystar as it was cycling to night, and his mind swelled with triumph as vapor and the crushing weight of a peace unstoppable came flooding through the grand crevice he made.