Godclads

Chapter 4-11 Galebreaker

Why Godclads instead of Golems? The fact you phrased the question that way tells me you’re looking at this wrong.

The question is why should we attach a Soul to one person via a Liminal Frame rather than mass-producing a bunch of cheap Heavens juiced up with thaums and a pocket for a pre-dump of Rend?

Tempo.

Intensity.

Sustainability.

Anyone can pilot a golem with training, but a Liminal Frame is special. It’s burned into the ontology of an individual in a process that’s half thaumaturgical genius, half ritual suicide. A good golem can fight for three hours at high intensity without requiring a Rend-dump followed by a thaumic refuel.

A Godclad can keep fighting. Theoretically forever.

Yes, there is the issue of their thaumic cyclers effectively causing them to over-produce Rend and need to vent at nearly ten times the ratio compared to a golem with an equivalent Heaven, but the fact that they have active Hells within them instead of needing to store that waste in a physical Hellsink is the difference between pushing your enemies back or needing to abandon your golem because they’re just too full of reality-tearing waste heat to fire up without godsdamned Rupturing.

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

Galebreaker

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 31%

Avo despised the Galeslither.

Even coated by the waterfalling flames of his Soul, the rancor that seethed within him stung hotter, the feeling more akin to the heat of an infection rather than the warmth of a flame.

It was two and nothing now. Twice the golem had killed him. Twice it left him less than a smear. Without his ability to resurrect and the sheer blind chance he didn’t cast his shroud out in the wrong direction, his death would have been permanent.

Learning to be a Godclad was a lot like training to be a Necrojack in a way; Avo might have had the tools, but lacking the mastery and a proper plan, all the Heavens, Hells, and phantasmics were wasted on him.

Quelling his impotent rage as best he could, he reverted to his best practices when faced with an impasse.

He accepted the situation, as Walton always did, and began working at the problem from there.

He had ruined a Sangeist with each death–a pity that he didn’t manage to paint his remains over the newest golem he killed. Didn’t know why it's Heaven was misfiring by the end either. He was like a blind ghoul manually piloting an aerovec when it came to metaphysics. Guesses and hopes were all he had.

There was a saying in New Vultun: “If you were going to hope in one hand, you best have a gun in the other.”

His raw power was unreliable against the Galeslither with its miracles far out-angling his. He needed to stick to the fundamentals. Build a overarching plan of attack, like he did with his dives. Letting his rage simmer in the background of his thoughts, he broke the situation down and approached it with as much candor as he could muster.

Against him were the following obstacles: the Galeslither could fly; the Galeslither could tear him out from reality and throw him into its demiplane; the Galeslither could engage him at leisure; the lingering effects of the thoughtwave bomb removed his offensive phantasmics from play in the near-term; the surviving enforcer and their fusion burner were still in the equation.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 31%

To his advantage, he was dealing with a far more even field now. There was a single enforcer left. The pilot of the other Sangeist might still be alive. He didn’t remember drinking in her Essence. What he did remember before he splattered, however, was the shape of a dog and two people in the room.

So, he had a Woundhound to avoid if that was true. Thankfully, he knew how to deal with that problem. Kill the host. He willed that the pilot didn’t know how to transfer hound ownership as Draus did.

If such was the case, it only left him, the pilot, the hound, the enforcer, and the Galeslither in play.

Avo’s thoughts halted to a screech.

The enforcer.

Avo had puppeteered one of them to kill the final Sangeist a mere minute ago, their fusion burner working through blood and alchemized matter to slag the command module. Yet, more than that, enforcers rippled with thoughtstuff–gave off signatures in the Nether, at least when it wasn’t all distorted by a thoughtwave detonation.

A most enticing flicker of an idea crackled ablaze like the fires that formed Avo’s metaphysical sinews. The Sangeist he was nested in shuddered with pleasure, blood rippling as the roots of a plan began taking hold.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 55%

The specs of the Galeslither were unknown to Avo, but from its behavior and the previous two engagements, he could assume a few things. The first was that it lost track of him every time he broke visual contact, such as when he went under the flooring. The second was that the pilot had a method of operating and was sticking to it.

They would either charge him down with a hurricane of force unleashed by the eldritch steed that was the true form of the Galeslither, or snatch him up to drop and splatter him again. Admittedly, it was a working strategy. He couldn’t fly and they were effectively rolling the dice to see how many times it would take to real-death him.

Or they could just retreat. The beast within him would rattle at that, but now, nestled deep in his Soul as a construct of concentrated consciousness, Avo would be fine with that. His hunger was an addiction, and the beast that wore his skin when the bloodlust was upon him had no eyes for how outmatched he was. It just wanted to hurt. To kill.

What he needed was to figure out how to properly use the Liminal Frame.

But failing that, what he needed was to take the last enforcer alive. Broken, but alive, so that the Scalper may be shaped into bait and instrument.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 78%

As the resonance of coiling drew tighter and tighter over him, Avo made his final considerations and set a few basic objectives.

He needed to remedy the matter of the Woundhound and the pilot if they were in play. Seeing how the hound managed to squeeze through a narrow gap to get at a hunter during the Crucible, Avo wasn’t going to risk it swimming through his Sangeist’s armor as well.

Then, he needed to subdue the enforcer and enwreathe them as a decoy Sangeist.

Finally, Avo would keep said decoy small enough for the Galeslither to swallow. Before forcing the enforcer to fire their fusion burner within the demiplane. Worse case, the golem might survive, but that would still give Avo enough time to get out of the area to somewhere his offensive phantasmic might be usable again; use his Whisper to brick the Galeslither after.

A thought occurred to Avo as he realized he was partially aping from the diversionary tactic Little Vicious had used to ambush him and Draus on the platform during their final ascent into the Warrens.

How satisfying it was to loot knowledge from a bested foe, even post-mortem. But then again, he was a Necrojack. It was as Walton had taught him: learning from the successes and failures of others was to prune the paths that could lead to one’s ruin.

RESURRECTION - 100%

IMPLANTING NOUS

As he drowned in his Soul’s shine again, he ascended toward the comparatively cold radiance that cupped existence, his pathway back far narrower than last time, like he was emerging through a porthole–a smear of blood rather than a pool.

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

DOMAIN RESPAWN ENGAGED

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 56 THAUM/c

LOADING PHANTASMICS…

  WARNING: LOCAL NETHER STRUCTURE UNSTABLE - ESTIMATED TIME TO STABILIZATION: 1H 14MIN

Again, he fired his reflexes as he pulled free from his Domain-made gateway, and with less than a thought, armored himself with the metaphysical matter of that which served as his entrance.

He came into being sixty feet away from where he must have splattered. Disquietingly, he could still see the mangled spread of his flattened corpse. When he died in the Crucible, he had left no trace of a body. With a shiver, all evidence had disappeared. Why had that changed? What was the nature of his resurrection?

Shaking questions of unanswered thaumaturgy, he made for the last Scalper and the pilot, the twosome yet to notice him. Shaping stalking limbs that let him stride silently across a carpet of shattered bark and glass. He kept his mass at body weight–light and quick for his ambush. As he rose, he spotted the form of the Woundhound–and what a grand specimen it was.

Ten feet long and encased in a disfigured wrap of waxen flesh, the hound seemed a parody of a bioform–a thing dead and made not so by some impossible miracle. A scent of burning human hair clung to it, its yips rattled in low droning barks with the dulled passage of time.

Beside it, the auburn hair of the mostly unaugmented pilot swayed.

Neither she nor the Scalper saw the threading wisp coming her way, and, with a flick of will and the calculated trajectory run using a Phys-Sim, Avo snipped the top half of her skull from her body.

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 57 THAUM/c

The enforcer jerked back, toppling in horrific surprise as the contents of his sole remaining comrade’s face came spilling free. Nearby, the hound burst apart into flaking ash.

Pressure building in his skull, Avo pushed onward, bathed beneath a single column of neon brightness cast from above, his form a pale white amidst the flickering lights of the hydroponics chamber.

The plants around him were burning. A consequence of biomatter getting kissed by hyper-heated air generated from multiple fusion burners firing as one. Forty feet away, cupped upon a small dais created by constant clotting pustules ballooning in an inverted U from the broken husk of the second Sangeist’s chassis.

Something burned wrong with its Heaven. Avo could feel it. Whatever urge he once had to shape from its blood or claim its radiance to enhance himself fled in an instant. Right now, the thought of taking from it was like supping from a bowl of contagious tumors.

The enforcer staggered then, but too late. Their fusion burner came up in an arc just as two haemokinetically projected spears punched through their shoulders.The enforcer howled, their struggle was all but vain as Avo’s control expanded through his bloodstream, holding the Scalper like a flesh-mitt.

Avo released his symbiote. The fires around him suddenly cried in unison, their crackles unheard during the dilation. Behind, the pilot finally collapsed.

With a flex of his claws, Avo tore every ligament and connective sinew in the Scalper's limbs. To their credit, they only choked out a muffled shout, shuddering as the pain consumed them.

Through the gap in the ceiling, a vortex poured in. Debris danced in spirals, the synchronized motion an augury for the coming of the Galeslither.

Perfect timing. Told him the duration of his resurrections ran longer within the confines of his Soul than in reality. Avo checked his Rend.

REND CAPACITY - 12%

Almost nothing. Good. Hide. Wait.

“Jaus,” the Scalper coughed, voice wet from internal bleeding leaking into their lungs. As Avo stepped past them, they twitched, surprise somehow shining through despite their crippled state and body language. “Ghoul…Godclad? Ghoulclad?” A delirious giggle rang from their rig’s voice modulator. Avo heard pain. He also heard genuine incredulity. “What the fuck.”

Profanity aside, Avo was inclined to agree. The Soul burning within him made him feel powerful beyond measure–had given him access to prey he previously couldn’t even dream of consuming.

It also wasn’t meant for something like him.

Draining and converting the debris around him, Avo funneled the glowing mass of his blood to form the shape of a Sangeist around the enforcer.

“Wait,” they cried, “what the fu–”

Avo encased them utterly and released his hold over the Scalper’s right arm, where the fusion burner was installed. Immediately, the sonorous thrum rang within the flowing crimson of the decoy Sangeist. Already, Avo was feeling his blood evaporating, fleeing from his control. Before he could accidentally trigger a backlash by clinging or trying to shape gas–however his hubris worked–he inflicted his decoy with Linger and watched as a pinprick of brightness began to bloom.

REND CAPACITY - 55%

The column of neon-bright radiance Avo stood under just moments prior faded, a coiling vortex surging low, the winds washing in with a neighing scream. A throb of discomfort clicked through Avo’s ears as he dove for the glass-coated tunnel he and the enforcers had a hand in making earlier.

As he dropped down and peeked over the edge, he watched as rivulets of blood were melting from his decoy, its insides bright like a lantern. Not noticing or simply too late to stop, he watched the Galeslither wash over the three-ton Sangeist bearing a special package of entombed-enforcer.

From sight did the currents slip into faint nothings, the Galeslither peeling the brightness of his decoy out from tangible existence with itself. The clashing winds wafted loose and spun inversely out through the long series of punctures Avo made during his fall earlier.

Sweeping out his shroud, Avo carved a final chasm into the hydroponics chamber and vented his Rend. As soon as his capacity was empty, he immediately began spiking it again, forming hound-like jaws from his body to snap through the bulk of an ash-claimed tree. In moments, Avo reached the mass needed to produce his grapple.

Triggering his Celerostylus again–momentarily this time–Avo launched a javelin of blood into the ceiling and felt it punch deep. He expanded gripping roots from its point of impact before using the link to reel himself up.

REND CAPACITY - 23%... 31%...

As soon as he reached the lip, Avo clasped himself in skittering insectoid-like legs, pushing and bounding upward as he smashed through the already wind-frayed edges of the exit wounds leading up and out of the block. Light spilled down from above in dappled undulations of shadow.

And as Avo finished his ascent, he understood why.

Smoke was flowing free from multiple currents of air, leaking up into existence as blood would trickle from a cut. Within the wind, a chorus of explosions thundered, and the draughts laced with smoke began to concentrate, began to fissure, and began to rejoin.

And from where once was just open air and clear skies, a burning steed tore screaming back into existence. One of its heads was shorn clean off, and between flickers, saw that a segment of its command module had been utterly cored by what looked to be a concentrated beam of heat.

Here then, was his hope. And there, burned through the body of a much-loathed foe, was the sign that his aforementioned gun had gone off.

Like a meteor, it trailed, speed and impact zone lined in Avo’s cog-feed via his Phys-Sim. He clacked his fangs, the beast hungering for the flesh of the pilot, his Soul yearning to consume a new Heaven.

Through a distant series of squat blocks, the whinnying husk of the Galeslither met aged plascrete in a thunderous clash, smoke and rubble erupting high into the air.

Clambering down the block, Avo rode out with steed-shaped legs of his own, galloping to claim a new Heaven.