Godclads

Chapter 5-2 The Second Fortune

“In principle, we are inverting what the gods used to do to us. Where once they channeled their divine miracles and Heavens using our vessels as expendable conduits, we of Highflame have risen beyond meager grudges to seek greater aspirations.

What we are offering all those who commit to our color is simple: agency; choice; the ability to hold your own leash. We’re not here to use and burn you at our leisure. We broke our gods for this transgression.

All we want for you is to take the flame through your merits and become someone that can provide a better future for humanity unchained by mortal limits. Here at Highflame Industries, we stand alone but rise together.

Should any of you prove yourself worthy of divinity, you’ll find yourself amongst a court of peers and equals, a place where iron is sharpened by iron. But that is only if you have the will and skill to claim your place. Idheim has suffered enough from mediocrity.

Blessed be the worthy!"

-Supreme Seraph Veylis Avandaer, Commencement Address for the Highflame Academies

5-2

The Second Fortune

Draus’ expression twisted as if she tasted something sour. Shaking her head, she tilted, glancing at Avo. “You believe this? A name. Our… friend here is gonna buy our goodwill… with a name.”

“Everyone’s got one,” Avo said, clacking his teeth lightly, trying not to think of how the soft inner flesh beyond Chambers’ eye sockets would glide against his tongue. “I got one.”

“It’s Mirrorhead’s real name,” Chambers said, straining to keep upright with all his limbs snapped. His efforts came in wiggles, the motion reminding Avo of the strange slugs he saw back in Burner’s Way. “I’m not trying to juke you.”

The Regular scoffed. “Didn’t say you were now, did I? Just meanin’ it probably ain’t worth spit to us. Know plenty of names already. Osjack. Osjane. Oswin. Ling. Yang. Uwayde. Kossolo…”

“Jhred,” Chambers interrupted, jutting his chin forward, his rat-like grin masked beneath shadows and bruises. “How’s that for a name? Know that one?” The barge twisted again, turning hard. Chambers twisted hard, jerking to stay upright, but his back made a squealing noise as he toppled, a light smear of blood marking his face-first pitch against the corner. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

The enforcer's head rang against the metal again, forming, cupping him in place. “Fuck! Ow!”

An inconsistent pulse sang out from within Draus’ chest. For the first time, Avo heard her biology betray her emotions. Through his Heaven, he felt a surge of force run through her veins, her heart thundering twice. If Chambers’ had a drum, that beast that beat in her chest was an artillery piece.

Over her head, the nigh-transparent crown of her Metamind rippled, her thoughtstuff boiling at the frequency of rage.

“Know the name,” Avo said. It wasn’t a question. Not when the effect was so obviously written across the Reg’s features.

“Yeah,” Draus said, the playfulness leaking out of her like blood from a slit wrist, “yeah, I reckon I do.” Reaching down, she plucked Chambers up and laid him against the corner. A small bump was building as a thickening bulge along his head. Draus glared down at him. “Alright. You was right. You weren’t lying. Got my attention.”

Chambers smiled.

“Problem is: you got my attention. So if I don’t like what I’m hearing, I’m gonna get real forgetful about why I need you alive, and let Avo here do the talkin’ for me.”

Chambers’ smile melted into a twitching gulp. “I’m gettin’ you loud and clear, ma’am. Nothing but the truth from Chambers.”

Across the floor, Janand snorted a laugh. “This’ll be good.”

“Shut the fuck up, Janard. Roll over and pretend you’re dead or whatever the fuck you were doing.” Chambers sighed. “Alright. So, let’s start with his name–”

She flipped him over. Chambers yelped. “Hey, the fuck are you doing? I’m trying to tell you–”

“Avo,” Draus said. “Pluck the bomb.”

Avo stared at her. “He could tell more.”

“He could. He don’t need to. I need you to sweep his mind later. But I know who he’s talking about. Get the rest by divin’. Pluck the bomb.”

“D-don’t you even want to know how I–” Draus struck him across the jaw, the flow like a blurring sledgehammer. Chambers’ head whiplashed, but Draus–in a feat of speed–caught him before he struck the wall again, allowing him to flop down silently.

Avo frowned. “You good?” How odd it was he that promised her to remain in control. Even the beast was momentarily silent in confusion, his bloodlust abated by the sudden violence from Draus.

“Nah,” Draus said. “And I’m hankerin’ to get worse. Pluck the bomb. I… just need a second is all.”

Huffing slightly, Avo extended roots of blood from his wrist. Draus winced, the flash of discomfort gone in an instant. Janand, though, caught full sight of the miracle, and whimpered, turning to empty his stomach.

All over his unconscious partner.

Avo snarled. Pathetic. The father held stronger against Little Vicious. And the man was a flat.

Reaching into Chambers’ body with his Heaven, Avo dug through his bloodstream and collected the pieces of the cortex bomb. The ease of the act startled Avo–his powers allowing him to conduct casual nano-surgery.

REND CAPACITY - 2%

Avo vented his Hell right into the glinting particulates in his blood’s grasp. Then, he moved onto the shivering form of Janand and did the same thing, with the nameless tech following soon after.

Drawing the web of blood back into himself, new horizons expanded much as the sanguine roots did in his veins. He wondered if he could mimic the matter of flesh and build himself new implants. Or use his Heaven to build him a mimicry of a rig. Or just use it to implant others with cortex bombs without them knowing.

The Sangiest suddenly offered far more than just blunt force trauma and limited fabrication applications. He had been thinking too limited in his approach to solving his problems.

Letting out a breath, Draus sighed. “We’re gonna need to talk about that too. Your Frame.”

“Yeah,” Avo said, agreeing. “Still don’t know functions. Not completely.”

Draus nodded. “I know someone. I’ll make a call for you. See what we can figure.”

He grunted his wordless thanks. “What was that? Hitting him. Losing composure. Not like you.”

“You know what I’m like now? Known you for a day, ghoul.”

He ignored the jab even as the beast bristled. “True. Also true that you never act this way. Not against the golem. Not even while it was breaking you.”

“That's,” Draus said, “a different case.” She hissed out a breath hot with rage. “This one said Jhred. Well, I know a Jhred. Hells, all of Highflame probably knows him. But I personally knew the half-strand’s father.” A thunderous expression came over her. “It’s an old wound. From the war. You understand.”

Though the details were sparse, he did. “Yeah.”

A stutter cut into the barge’s engines, its descent slowing to a low whine. Draus flicked a ghost into the locus at the front of the vehicle and lifted her chin at Avo. “We’re here. Welcome to Xin Yunsha. First and most prosperous district of the Yuulden-Yang Sovereignty.” She chuckled. “That still ain’t sayin’ much.”

As they landed, Avo noticed the ripples coming from four accretions of thoughtstuff below. They were waiting, two in the front and two in between, like a waiting party.

Or an ambush.

“Relax,” Draus said, sensing his tension. “They wanted to snuff us they would’ve sent swarmers to melt us while we’re airborne.” With a thought, she opened the backdoor of the barge, and the winds came flowing in. Strange that his Sangiest was so active yet his Galeslither had yet to respond.

Maybe Draus could help with that.

Out in the spire-dappled light of midday, two bioforms stood waiting, both armored in titanium vests and muscle with unnaturally biocultured muscles. One of them was a ten-foot-tall bipedal nu-tiger, albeit one that bore glinting scales instead of stripes upon fur, and sculpted to be bipedal. Across from it was an ox-like beast, even wider but a head shorter.

Upon their bodies were strange hives, chittering with glinting insects, bright and menacing. Swarmers. Hyper-acidic, hyper-breeding insects that could eat through steel in seconds.

The only thing the two creatures shared were the glinting crystalline shards embedded in their heads. Loci.

Draus took a step forward, with no hesitation, no fear. She waved at the two towering bioforms, throwing out orders. “Three alive. Limbs busted. Need them fixed. Handed over to holding. And the barge needs to be disposed of–locus smashed.”

+Be you Draus?+ an echoing voice carried by a ghost crackled from the locus embedded at the center of the bioform’s head.

“Yeah,” Draus said. “I be Draus. Tell Green River I’m here and that I hope she finished setting up our abode.”

The tiger’s eyes blinked in a rhythmic sequence. With a low chuff, it obeyed, backing away and out of sight. The entire time, neither bioform even regarded Avo, seemingly not noticing he was there.

Like there was a vacancy in their instincts.

Behind the ox, two smaller figures approached, their bodies short and mutilated, their top halves obviously human, the bottom that of dogs. Along their shoulders was a red carpet, rolled and carried.

Eunuchs, Avo remembered Walton calling them. Those born of the Sang and hailing from the Thousand Plains had a different manner of settling accounts. For most, crime was a question of rehabilitation or punishment. For the No-Dragons, the question was one of debt incurred against the community and state.

Both the Eunuchs were–against the name–female, their eyes held open by hooks while hair-thin serpents grown from their eyelashes dripped dollops of lubricant, watering their eyes but ensuring they never blinked. Their bodies were wretched things of flesh-sculpted artistry, chimeric in design, molding to be mockeries of dog and human both.

Four dog-like legs strained to bear the mass of their obviously human torsos, clothed only in sacks of ragged white seemingly designed to stain at will. From the hip up, they balanced themselves with each step, the weight of the carpet on the shoulders heavy, dragging them low as if supplicating before Draus as they approached.

With a practiced motion, they cast the carpet down and rolled it out. Small legs chittered out from under it, clattering along the ground and twisting around the corner. Along its surface, long strokes painted words Avo couldn’t understand.

“Tyrants seek blades; the wise seek a path,” Draus said, reading the script. Avo couldn’t tell. His Metamind was giving him gibberish. He stared at her. She grinned. “Yeah. Can’t read it, huh? Written in archaic form. These Eunuchs here probably can’t read it. Can you?”

“We know nothing, esteemed guest,” one said, the words practiced. Routine. Accepted.

"It is not the privilege of a dog to know things,” the other added.

Leaving the barge, Avo found himself in another alley, this time pressed between blocks grown from still-living bone. Scents of clashing flesh and warring biologies greeted him. Following the carpet, they came before a small tower, the insides loud with clamoring voices and clacking chess pieces. The entire structure looked like a stacked pagoda grown from columns of enamel.

In the matter, Avo saw hints of the old war towers that the Low Masters aped during the Uprising.

He wondered how much truth there was to his old owners getting their support from the No-Dragons.

As they came to a circular door at the back of the tower, the tiger stood by, head now bowed low, gesturing for them to enter the courtyard.

“Keep your foot off the bar-crossin’,” Draus said, pointing to the rising protrusion of bone protruding along the bottom of the door. “Sang get real particular-like if you offend their customs.”

Avo grunted. He knew. One of his old fixers–Nine Fox–was Sang. Still, it was good to keep that in mind. He supposed that was the reason why the Eunuchs were trailing along with them–a reminder of what awaited those who transgressed, outsider or kindred.

Into a square-shaped courtyard where a tumorous expanse of roots grew, skin tags swaying instead of willow leaves, Avo breathed in the scents of flesh and bone around him. Few things were of inorganic design. The glass. The titanium carapace armoring the nu-ox and the nu-tiger. The loci implanted within them.

That was it.

There was nothing here that couldn’t be grown in a nest of flesh or a sufficiently developed organ farm. Yet, unlike the sloppy transplants that gangers plied, there was a symmetry here, an engineered art.

Standing before the tower, veins of bioluminescence lined the exterior in neon. Beneath large Sangshanese words, a secondary line flashed into Avo’s cog-feed.

Welcome to the Second Fortune.

As Avo stepped past the threshold of the front door, he felt a sudden wave of enervation cleave through him. He gasped, hand snapping out to hold himself upright using the hinges, claws digging furrows into the frame. A warmth spilled from inside him, blood trickling from his orifices like snot. With a thought, his Heaven flickered and he drew his leaking ichor back inside himself.

“You alright?” Draus asked.

He nodded, forcing his blood to still.

By now, the discomfort had nested itself deep inside him, boiling his veins. The pain was muted by the strength of his Heaven, but he knew it would always be present so long as he was in Sang territory. Not unless someone gave him a neuter-mask coded toward femininity.

The Dragon-Curse was radiation and ontological alteration both. Infested in the surviving bloodlines of the Sang, the affliction killed all that it deemed “male.”

It started with chromosomes. And then it moved on, its effects lessening but never quite wavering, going from a hemorrhage down to a nosebleed depending on your habits, principles, diet, speech pattern, and even facial shape.

In the attempts of the dragons to break their former slaves, they had culled over three-fifths of the old lines of the Sang. They thought it was enough. They judged the death of the patriarchs and the solars of the family to be that which stemmed the tide of rebellion.

A classic mistake of divorced cultures between the rulers and ruled; one that the dragons were educated upon via their own enslavement and mass slaughter when the Godsfall came.

Still, the curse remained. And no matter how many dragons were forced to divide for additional dissection and experimentation on the parts of the No-Dragons, they just couldn’t quite crack the changes the dragons inflicted on them.

The first–always the first thing–that struck anyone about the No-Dragons was the fact that they usually wore some kind of bio-organic rig that counted as a living creature. Incarnates, they were called. It was their main method of circumventing the infliction of the curse should they be required to battle or conduct activities understood by the dragons as “masculine.”

In such a respect, it could be said that it was the creature they wore that did the act instead of the sister that did the piloting.

Entering the establishment, they found more Eunuchs tending to the room, holding up curtains of skin that blocked Draus and Avo from the sight of the other patrons, feasting on dumplings and steamed vegetables, voices bright with laughter and drowned by flowing rice wine.

“Regular,” the fourth sister greeted, her designation assigning her labor. She stood guard at the entry deep past the lobby. She too shared arm-limbs of similar design to those transplanted upon Draus, though she stood taller on the legs of a spider. “The third sister’s waiting for you.” The fourth sister swiped her eyes over him, the motion like the flick of a blade, not even lingering on him. “I see you found a pet monster. Shall we place it in the kennels while–”

“He’s called Avo,” Draus said, leaning in close to look up at the Sang. “But you’re right about one thing: he is a monster. Do well to remember that.”

The fourth sister shot Avo another glance and shrugged. “Your suggestion is taken with gratitude, now please, our sister has been waiting most politely.”

And it just wasn’t the No-Dragon way unless there was that slight spark of passive-aggressiveness. Tea, but with a bit of spit in it.

Led on by the fourth sister, they followed, the bright orange bioluminescence cast from the organ lanterns in the last room turning into a thick droning red. Along the walls, ink slithered beneath patchworks of perceived skin, the blots coming together to form ads and showcase the latest bioware and symbiotes for sale.

Avo stared, wondering if they had anything that could work on his biology. Mirrorrhead managed, and the Sang were the best in Idheim at biomancy. The problem with them was less of a matter of could and instead one of would. He was a monster, after all. Draus bringing him in was faux pas enough. Like bringing a nu-dog to a club.

Deeper and deeper into the casino they went. Drugged-out joyheads leaned against the walls inside padded lung-like cells of frosted glass, ghosts swirling over their heads, faces distorted with expressions of unending, ever-climbing bliss.

Stepping through a side room, a scent of blood struck Avo as he peered over the rails. Far below, a fight was happening between two piloted Incarnates, the stands filled with braying spectators and drifting ghosts.

The fight was between a twenty-foot serpent and a spider that could fire swarmers from its shoulder hives.

Through a veil of rattling jade beads, the fourth sister led Avo and Draus to stand before a flesh-caked door with a narrow eye implanted at its center. Squinting maliciously, it blinked twice as the bone slats along the wall clicked.

The door swung open, and there, at end of the narrow chamber lined with luxuries of flesh and matter both, Green River sat upon a grand oaken chair. A patch of tumors had grown over where her eyes should have been while the long scarf-like body of a vulpine unwrapped itself from where it was grafted into her neck. Its pale green eyes locked on Avo and Draus as the fourth sister guiding them bowed and backed away out from the door, eyes never meeting Green River’s.

“Former Regular Draus,” Green River smiled, the vulpine attached to her sharing the expression, “Your return pleases me. Come, drink with me.” The fox turned to stare at Avo. “You too, Moonblood. A sparrow I know told me quite a tale regarding the two of you. Now, I wish to hear it from the source.”