Godclads

Chapter 4-9 Apotheosis II

A pre-modern assault group of golems is called a knot. Vaguely based on Godclad cadres, a knot is typically structured with the–now outdated–four specializations in mind.

Porter. Seer. Breaker. Maker.

In tandem, the designated Porter of the group works to position their allies–most typically the Breaker and Makers–to ensure maximum kinetic output and battlefield shaping capability. Likewise, the Porter must work in sync with the Seer to maintain a strategic dominance of the battlefield.

A knot, then, usually serves as the maneuver and firepower core of a Fist –with a Fist denoted as two teams of operators, a knot, and two drone squadrons; parted into variant assault platforms and logistical aid…

-[Redacted], The Old War

4-9

Apotheosis II

Launching his Whisper high, Avo studied the opposition and found himself playing a game of simple arithmetic. Even by raw numbers alone, he was outnumbered. Overwhelmed. Moreso than that, they had the firepower and range advantage as well. Three golems. Five enforcers. Uncertain if they had any drones left.

Bad odds, even with a Heaven. If he let them collapse on him, his death would be certain. More certain than it was now, anyway.

With the Galeslither bearing its weight down on him, he couldn’t climb, couldn’t even maneuver all that easily. There was a growing pressure pressing down the room, bending branches, cracking trees.

Presently, he was moving like an inverse marionette–a spider, driving his body and limbs into motion using the blood inside himself. With a flex of his mind, he snapped his floating hipbone back into place before the grinding winds could pry it entirely free from his body.

Forced into nothing but bad choices, he took inventory of the essentials needed for his survival. He needed to break through one of the units pushing on him so that he wasn’t fighting in the corner. More than that, he needed more blood to buffet his survivability.

And with that, the path became clear to him.

Spraying tendrils of blood out from his claw tips, he felt his constructs bite into the sterile floor, sinking through crystalline material as he grappled off the coiled tree infested with hydrapedes. Lanes of fire cleaved into his sight. He tensed his Celerostylus against the winds, warring against its staggering pressure. Numbers and variables screamed across his vision as his ghosts tried to focus.

The Galeslither was building pressure around him, two warring vortexes trying to flay him by applying opposite axes of force. Already he could feel it. More than that, lines of fire sliced past him, distant guns trained on his person. Around him, the thicket provided paltry cover against either wind or gunfire.

Suffusing his flowing blood with the full celerity provided by his implant, he lashed his way across the ground in desperate grapples, flinging himself at the rightmost golem smashing through a row of encased trees to his right. Trails of gauss fire lanced past him by bare inches as he twitched, averting his foes’ aim more than the speed of their flechettes.

REND CAPACITY - 22%

With how diminished he was now, he doubted he could even spin a single round aside. His Phys-Sim screamed constantly. The enforcers were thundering closer, sixty feet. The other golem was forty. The one he was going for was twenty.

Desperation and humming bloodlust collided in his mind, fusing to become a nigh-fatalistic determination as he quelled every one of his phantasmics aside from his Whisper, spearing it down toward the golem. Immediately, with his capacity expanding vastly, he drove his ghosts down, using his wards as a drill, priming a single ghost pregnant with trauma as a disposable dagger.

Looming forth, the widening form of the rival Sangeist mirrored his own, its blades lashing wildly in a crimson embrace. For a moment, a surreal weight washed through Avo. Not a day prior, he had been here, fleeing from Little Vicious. Here and now, he was charging the very golem that killed him, spurred on by dilemma and bloodshed both.

And deep within, he could still hear the voice of his Heaven pleading, crying out.

MAKEMEWHOLE! MAKEMEWHOLE! MAKEMEWHOLE!

Three blows landed concomitantly. The first was a gauss flechette shredding clean through Avo’s right arm. The second was the shredding of the tree he was standing on by inversely spiraling gales. The third was Avo, his mind crashing against the pilot of the Sangeist, his wards greeting theirs in a cataclysmic burst as he felt his surface thoughts disintegrate outright.

GHOSTS - [50]

Even as his train of thought slipped free from his mind, he felt a deluge of spilling memories washing over him, his phantasmal shiv punching deep into their palace and detonating.

His focus cracked. His cog-feed peeled from his sight like particles of dust, his nearsightedness returning in full force. On instinct alone, he managed to keep his arm, his reaching tendrils of blood latching on and reforming the limb in a lattice of pseudo-matter. The bones within, meanwhile, remained parted like shrapnel.

COG-CAPACITY OVERCLOCKING - 103%

  WARNING: MINOR MEMORY DAMAGE INCURRED

  DISABLING PHANTASMICS

Biting back pain in both flesh and body, Avo fired his reflex again, feeling a sudden lightheadedness pop behind his head. A loose spray of hyper-accelerated blood came free from his flopping arm, more clutched by his blood than reattached.

Before him, the mind-screams of the pilot told him that the golem fared no better, and did not expect such a hit. Madness mingled with maudlin spilled from the shattering thoughtstuff of the pilot as the Sangeist toppled, the command module tearing through a screen of blood. The machine within the miracle shot past Avo and slammed into the other Sangeist in a thunderous impact.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 52 thaum/c

The fact that the pilot had died did not capture Avo’s notice. Instead, his focus was drawn to the burning shine of thaumic resonance. The flesh of a god’s Heaven was installed in its Domains, after all, and that which belonged to the golem was washing forward within a tide of blood.

Dimly, a flash of light speared into his eyes from the periphery of his sight. A flash of arcing electric sparks spewed from the exposed coils of a gauss cannon. Without looking, he vented his Rend, coating himself in a second-skin of decay as he pushed toward the golem with all his might.

The wind was shrieking, plucking at him. Fire ran down from his skull into every sinew, every nerve. Speckles of pain stung his body as grains of metal tore into him; micro-filaments leftover from flechettes that passed through his shroud.

REND CAPACITY - 20%...18%...

Mauled in thought and guided more by the screaming want of the Heaven burning inside him, Avo dove to greet the collapsing Sangeist, arm outstretched as the very ground he strode upon was disintegrated by his shroud. Each step was a battle against the howling gales, feeling as if the world itself was pulling him back, trying to tear him loose from the ground, the pressure ever-building.

The claws of his feet snapped amidst the struggle. With a snapping tear, his blood lost its grip and his dismembered arm came loose.

REND CAPACITY - 12%...4%...

A shower of blood connected to the golem greeted him in an invigorating torrent. The world grew wide in Avo’s mind, the inverse flame within him surging bright–

REND CAPACITY - 0%

The first shot blew a chasm through his ribs. The next three cleaved his torso into strips of quavering sinew. What started as a cry in Avo’s throat ended as a choked spray a dozen more shots tore into him, his body misting apart in splatters of gore.

ATTENTION - HEAVEN DETECTED [DOMAIN: BLOOD; MATTER]

  DESIGNATION: SANGEIS–

And like the hammer of a titan, the weight of the winds descended on him, smashing into him as a swirling gale, flensing bone, flesh, and all. Avo felt his body crumple in on itself as something flashed into sight before him. Against the cold chrome of the Galeslither, Avo came apart as a smear.

The last sight that struck him before the light left his bleary eyes was the surging visage of a sleek tri-skulled steed shaped from the matter of blackened clouds. The true form of the Galeslither, unbound from the machine.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 1%

SIMULATING LIMINAL FRAME

Like he had been cast down from the mountain of existence into the jaws of a welcoming fire, Avo fell into the stygian sanctuary that was his Soul, sinking into his core and feeling the growing swell of his Heaven. Again, he had passed through the gulf beyond reality and that ineffable threshold between, his path empty of Rend.

The more he died, the more the act felt like stepping through a portal: a waiting room inside himself before he could begin his next attempt.

His mind and vessel felt pure again. Clean of wounds. Clean of pain. Stripped from the baser impulses of his body, his thoughts greeted him with a torturous clarity. Dead again. Dead, but not done.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 11%

A familiar shape greeted him–looked the same as him in the expanse of his Soul’s cascading radiance. Another Sangeist sank to greet him, looking identical to his current form. He guessed it was easier to standardize the golems instead of ensuring each had a custom-made Heaven.

Suddenly, a will beneath his own writhed, the veins of grasping limbs shedding out from his current Heaven, desperate to embrace the other. With a thought, Avo quelled the involuntary action and recoiled. What just happened?

WHOLE…

From inside his consciousness, he heard the thunderous whisper of the plea. There was no life behind the desire, only a mournful finality–the last fading echo given breath by a long shattered primordial being. From the weight of its lament, Avo tasted despair and dread. He remembered sampling similar thoughts from ghosts that died after having their organs harvested.

A quiet terror of dismemberment–of being unable to even preserve your own flesh.

Emotionally parochial as he was, Avo empathized. He did just lose another arm.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 11%

Reaching out with the limbs he impulsively shaped earlier, he enveloped the other Heaven. It gripped him back. No. More than that, it was sinking into him, the shape of its tower pooling apart, the entirety of its ontology bleeding into him.

GRAFTING HEAVEN - 99%

  REQUIRED THAUMS - [20 thaums/c]

  REVI–

ERROR - OVERLAPPING HEAVEN DETECTED

THAUMIC CYCLERS: 1/1

SOULS: 1/1

ATTENTION: (PROTOTYPE) META-FAC FUNCTIONS ACTIVATED

  DECONSTRUCTING HEAVEN

  REASSIGNING COMPONENTS

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 35%

Funneled into the expanse of his own Heaven, the metaphysical components of the Sangeist he just swallowed flowed into his ontology, down the spinning rings of his Essence-looping serpent, smelting its architecture down to raw quintessence using the fires of his Soul.

Within the territory of his rippling radiance, the twin sigils that marked his governed Domains erupted, expanding outward like snaking roots that grew egg-shaped nodes for each Domain. One that rose above. One that fell below.

CLAIM…MY…MANTLE…

Again, the Heaven relieved itself of an utterance, its crimson form shuddering. Faced with his growing Domains, Avo tasted each new node and found them seeds–paths of growth that offered him new canons to empower, and new hubrises to suffer.

And right now, they were bare of form, their fertile beings the stuff of raw chaos, of fundamental creation, incubating potential miracles.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 45%

And Avo was running out of time to properly prime them. Thinking quickly, he thought of his battle earlier. Of his death. The Galeslither was the greatest threat he faced with how it could bend the winds and shunt matter through its currents. He still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t absorbed it as well.

He managed to swallow Little Vicious’ Sangeist upon death. Did that have to do with her destabilizing the Nether using Thoughtwave detonations?

Shaking the questions aside for later, he focused on what he needed to survive his next resurrection.

What he lacked was mass. And force. But if he could have more blood to alchemize, he would’ve had much better odds. That, or if he could somehow get a Heaven that gave him a free month of time to hunt down each of his foes in the Nether and fester them using mem-plagues.

He thought of one of the seeds, willing blood to be created from nothing. To his delight, the Domain of Blood flashed as his Soul’s radiance flowed into it. And then fizzled out.

INSUFFICIENT THAUMIC MASS TO ACHIEVE DESIRED MIRACLE

  REQUIREMENTS: NINTH SPHERE LIMINAL FRAME

Instinctively, Avo checked his current build.

[STILLBORN] - FIRST SPHERE LIMINAL FRAME

Delightful. He still knew absolutely nothing about what all this meant, or what separated a First Sphere frame from one that was in the Ninth. Creating blood out of thin air should’ve been just as impossible as using said blood to channel the properties of solid matter.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 66%

But time was not an ally and should he return as he was before, another death would surely be inevitable. His mind speeding, Avo defaulted to his experience as a Necrojack–build from symmetry. Build from foundations.

To the domain of blood, he offered a prayer. A new canon.

This time, an egg connected to his Domain of Matter hatched, a new marking spilling down to join its sigil.

DOMAIN OF (MATTER)

CANON: HAEMIFICATION - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW SUBSUME SOLID MATTER INTO BLOOD; THE CONVERSION WILL ONLY PROCEED ON TACTILE CONTACT AND IF THE BLOOD SUBMERGES THE MATTER ENTIRELY

HUBRIS: ONLY SOLID MATTER CAN BE CONVERTED. ANY ATTEMPTS TO CONVERT LIQUID OR GAS WILL RESULT IN THAUMIC BACKLASH.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 86%

Muted sounds greeted him, modulated voices sounding as if they were underwater. Or he was. Already, he could feel the flames of his Soul clenching his consciousness, priming him for reinjection into the world.

Thoughts accelerating, he thought of what he truly needed from his Domain of Blood. Right now, he could control the blood in his body.

Wield in accordance with his speed and force. Add an aspect of reach to it as well? A haemokinetic field, perhaps? Something that would allow him to tear the blood from his foes as well?

UNABLE TO PROCESS CANON

  MISSING BRIDGING DOMAIN [SPACE/FORCE]

Of course. That would have made things far too easy. Sensing his Resurrection counter pass ninety percent, a memory flashed into his mind.

Cover. The enforcers had gunned him down before the Galeslither got to him.

If he could just make his blood harder or eject his hardened blood as pieces of quick-fabbed matter then maybe–

Another egg hatched from his Domain of Blood. A horizontal column extended from the center of its sigil.

DOMAIN OF (BLOOD)

CANON: LINGER - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW EJECT THE CONSTRUCTS THEY SHAPE FROM THEIR BLOOD; A BINDING PERCENT OF REND WILL BE GENERATED FOR EACH CONSTRUCT FABRICATED IN CORRESPONDENCE WITH THEIR SHAPE AND MASS

HUBRIS: ONLY UP TO EIGHTY TONS OF BLOOD CAN BE MANIPULATED AT ONCE

Likewise, the hubris melded here as well. What were the rules? What was the cost?

REASSEMBLING HEAVEN

  MODIFYING [SANGEIST]

  GRAFTING HEAVEN - 100%

  REVIEWED - MYTHOLOGY STABLE

HEAVEN GRAFTED - [SANGEIST]

DOMAIN: (BLOOD/MATTER)

THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 40 thaum/c

With another 20 thaums added to the cost of manifesting his Heaven, Avo felt the mass of his Sangeist double, but more than that, he felt its shape change. From within the jaws protruding, another pattern rose, quavering like a blistering eye beneath the symbol of the matter he was channeling. Between the layered slats lining the body of the tower-like Heaven, a ventral jaw expanded into existence, and from its baleful depths spewed a deluge of blades, bullets, and other instruments.

All instruments that Avo had recently shaped in service of slaughter.

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 99%

With the new additions to his ontology, Avo felt a growing weight settle against his Hell. A pale reflection of his Heaven danced like a flickering ember down through the concentric gates of his Hell.

RESURRECTION - 100%

IMPLANTING NOUS

Fingers of flame clasped over his consciousness, and with a push, Avo rose, cast back through the threshold of death, back into the screaming embrace of reality.

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

DOMAIN RESPAWN ENGAGED

ENGAGING THAUMIC CYCLER: 52 THAUM/c

LOADING PHANTASMICS…

Avo tore out from the pool of blood left by the golem he nulled, his Celerostylus firing even before he fell upon the unprepared team of Scalpers.