Godclads

Chapter 5-3 In the Fox's Den

Do you know the Sang paint their skins before they re-carnate? Use their skins to wrap up the newer infant variants of themselves that came with them when they hatch from the husks of their old bodies.

The ratio of young that comes out with them is always the same. Four girls and a dying boy–the latter has no chance of surviving less you ‘tomb them in one of those Voidwatch med-vats.

Why? It ain’t up to the Sang.

Dragons. Always goes back to the dragons. Don’t know what made them… different from the likes of our gods, but it seemed like those half-strands could cross over whole. Didn’t need any domains or Heavens to step into the real. From what was told, it sounded like they were proto-clads in a sense.

‘Cept for the part of them forcing the Sang to create other gods, before wearing the bodies of the Sang themselves to channel said miracles second-hand like.

What makes ‘em different also be why the Guilds still breed them; keep ‘em around. No other way to make Thaumic Cyclers. Don’t know any other beings that can loop their own chronobiology…

-Quail Tavers, New Vultun Sunrise

5-3

In the Fox’s Den

In her palm, the tea swirled. In her body, three different hearts guided an intricate system of arteries and veins, the biology between the woman and the fox interlinked, organs fusing together in a melding clash. Yet, only a single accretion of thoughtstuff rippled, belonging to the Sang resting gracefully in her seat.

“Does the rhythm inspire a hunger in you, Moonblood?” Green River asked, a placid smile adorning her face. No mockery clung to her words, only genuine curiosity, unchained by fear. But past the woman, the fox was staring at him too, and in its eyes, he saw the languorous gaze of a predator watching for weakness.

“Always hungry,” Avo said. “Good at ignoring it.”

Draus tilted her head in a low nod. “He ain’t lyin’.”

Green River chuckled. Her grafted fox squealed, its notes mirthful and sharp. “Be my very words so accusatory? I only tease.” The fox bit at Avo, ever-playfully. “But first, before more words, a drink.” With practiced ease, the Sang cupped the tea in both hands and brought it to her lips, blowing. “To your health.”

Now she sounded like she was mocking him. An intrusive fantasy of tearing the top half of the vulpine’s jaw off and beating Green River to death with her own graft appeared. He did his best to hide the gnashing of his teeth.

Reaching down, the Regular plucked a bone-carved cup filled with a yellowish fluid. A petal of folded tea leaves drifted, their shape a Sang character that he couldn’t recognize. Their light floral scent suffused itself into the steaming water and tickled against Avo’s olfactory senses.

“Black Jasmine?” he asked.

The fox perked up in surprise, and its human half frowned. “Quite so.”

He grunted. Walton preferred the common-soil flavor. If that was the accurate translation. Just another thing he didn’t get to ask before his father passed.

“Listen, River,” Draus said, doing her best to barrel through the layers of ceremony, “not that I don’t wanna speak with you, but we got something we have to–”

“Your rooms are being prepared. The supplies you requested have been stocked. Your prisoners are being chained. And your… associate is already on her way.” Green River smiled. “I understand your haste to greet your task. I have been there. So, I implore that you understand when I say there is not the need. All there is to do for now is wait. Relax. That is your role as a guest. Leave the rest to me, in my role as host, and master of this abode, to ensure the slave work is done thoroughly. That is why you came to me, is it not? Sold me the golem.”

Draus eyed her flatly. “It’s also my role to ensure that things are done proper. You’ve been where I am? You should know that too. Courtesy’s courtesy. But that only burns so long before you run out of wick.”

Green River drew in a breath and held it. Carefully, she tugged at the leathery collar of her green and white gown of pearlescent shine. A Qipao. Or at least that was how Avo remembered it being pronounced.

“I respect…” Green River began, “... candor. And I will honor your candor with some directness of my own.” The fox flicked its gaze at Avo, all playfulness lost, its expression growing focused, body perching on the woman’s shoulder. “Your survival. How did it occur? The stream grew thin at the end when that fool-child disrupted her own event. But I saw enough. I saw two refugees, a ghoul, and a Regular long stripped of rank and resources flee from a golem. A Sangeist. Tell me… how did you survive?”

Draus shared a look with Avo, their joined expression both empty, bereft of expression. He considered linking with her using his Whisper, but seeing the interlacing rings protecting Green River’s mind, he doubted she was ignorant to be fooled by the obvious.

“Did more runnin’ than fightin’ then,” Draus said. “Made it to the platform up. Tried to leave it behind….”

Green River pressed. “But how did you leave it undone?”

Draus sighed. “River, you’re askin’ an awful lot of questions.”

“Am I,” Green River said, feigning surprise. “Pardons. But seeing as I, as senior of the line, have a responsibility to ensure that my juniors survive long enough to at least greet their first cycle… I hope you do not take offense to my pedantry.”.

Between Draus’ visible annoyance and Green River’s continuous attempts to pry at what happened, Avo took to wielding the same lie against her that he used against Mirrorhead.

“It was locus,” Avo said. Suddenly, the fox snapped back to him as Green River halted, her attention thrown off from Draus. “Someone breached the golem’s locus. Made it malfunction. Broke it.”

“Someone?” Green River asked, gesticulating slowly as if trying to haul more information free from Avo.

It didn’t work.

“Someone.” He kept to his vagueness, seeing ignorance as a better place to make his stand than an outright falsehood or quickly-woven tale. “Would tell you if I know. Curious myself.”

Casually, Green River took another sip from her tea and nodded. “That is interesting. But what fascinates me more is the fact that I heard the golem was bare. Just… dead metal. Empty. Deprived of its Heaven. Such a thing cannot just go missing. Why, it requires a team of Agnoses with a steady stream of willing sacrifices to arm, and twice as many to dismantle. Yet, my sparrow only sang of three that lasted against the golem. So, unless the child amongst you was an Agnos of no uncertain skill...”

“Really, River? Using the dead as a tool already?” Draus asked.

A cringe ran through Green River; a twitch of shame at the faux pas she committed. A certain excitement had spurred the Sang to accelerate beyond the bounds of social acceptability, into vulgarly invoking moribundity and using the death of a child as an instrument to get at a much-suspected truth.

For a passing moment, Green River fell silent, her warring expression riding the edge between continuation and apology. She committed to staying in the middle. “To honor the honesty you have granted me thus far, I will like to compensate truth for truth. Perhaps it will be of interest to you.”

Draus sighed, rubbing her face, eager to be done with this conversation. “Fine. Let’s have it.”

“I have been in contact with one of my seniors—a Hundred-Eighter, operating out of the Undercroft. She claimed that the Upper Tiers are in an uproar. That the Paladins and Guilds are joined in cooperation, for once, tearing entire blocks apart in search of something.”

A beat of silence followed. Green River seemed content to let the room hang on the tension. Perhaps it was her method of vengeance against their obliqueness, matching them with deprived answers of her own.

“They, uh, say what this somethin’ was?” Draus asked.

Green River drew in close while her fox draped itself across her shoulders, nose snuggled between its paws, blinking demurely. “A LiminalFrame.”

Externally, Avo sampled his tea in silence. Internally, he had to use his Heaven to stop his claws from crushing the delicate cup to dust. Liminal Frame. What did she know? Was she taunting him? Or just striking the waters, trying to see who or what scattered beneath the flow?

Draus lip thinned. “Shit. Guilds must be must tricklin’ boiling piss at that. Theft? A raid? Fallwalkers looking to jump up a sphere without tradin’ in?”

A sour note of contemplation washed through Green River. “Alas, I cannot say. Further communiqué with my senior was silenced by the sheer density of scrubbers released by Guild-sanctioned redacters. A veil of censorship has taken full effect. But–” Avo nearly growled. She was making a habit of that. Dangling just enough bait to see if she could hook them like a fish. “–before her silence, she breathed a final rumor.”

Avo spoke this time, the annoyance in his voice naked. “What. Rumor.”

A coquettish smile teased its presence at the corners of Green River’s lips. “That this was not just any Frame. But a prototype. One with the capabilities of an in-built metaphysical factory. Capable of active growth. Unneeding an Agnos to help make changes or adjustments. Something meant to be made pattern-standard for the Authorities of Highflame.”

META-FAC FUNCTIONALITY AT 100%

Avo was glad he couldn’t pale as a human could, for, at that moment, his face would’ve run whiter than bone. Her intel was too accurate to be mere rumors, and she was circling too tightly around them to be “beating the grass and expelling snakes.”

If that was how the Sang proverb went. Staying here spiked all manner of rising alarms inside Avo. They couldn’t stay. He doubted that she suspected he had the Liminal Frame burned into him, but she clearly knew enough that she thought he or Draus was closer to the matter.

And judging from the frown hanging from the Regular’s face, he guessed she was thinking the same thing.

Again, silence put its weight down on the room, its mass growing from the weight class of uncomfortable into the territory of light suffocation.

There, in that narrow lantern-lighted room lined with tapestries of monochrome paintings from when the Sang still suffered under dynastic lines of warring dragons, two people and a ghoul found more fascination in the dancing of their tea leaves than with each other.

A knock on the door burst the bubble of silence and slew the spell.

Green River whipped out a ghost. a phantasmal chain leaped free from her and plunged into micro-locus hidden in the corner of the room, running out in an etheric lattice that served as a secondary nervous system for the living matter that formed the basis of the Second Fortune’s foundations.

With a wave, the door clicked, and like the releasing legs of a lobster, it half-unclasped itself from the wall, swinging open.

A younger Sang–her features looking almost identical to Green River’s–stepped in. Body festooned in the membranous tendrils of a nu-cephalopod-themed bio-rig, she swept her arms in a ritualistic flourish and spoke, eyes facing the ground, never meeting her senior.

“Third daughter, requesting permission to speak.”

“Third daughter, granted permission. Please speak.”

The most traditionalist of the No-Dragons and those associated played games such as this. Games. Because that’s what they were. Walton had ensured he knew enough about the cultures of each of the eight major colors that he knew deliberate deception when it was being portrayed.

Ultimately, the Sang were nowhere near as obtuse or rigid as they pretended to be with outsiders. He gave it good odds that this was planned–even rehearsed.

Whoever Green River was, she did not hold a senior enough position in the eternal cycles of the Sang. This ceremony was aped from the habits of one far older than she.

“The rooms of our exalted guests have been prepared, along with all other requested facilities. Furthermore, the third party has arrived and is waiting to greet them in their chamber. No difficulties have transpired in the meantime. We beg of our leave.”

“Most excellent. Leave granted.”

Backing away without turning, the third sister bowed upon reaching the door and disappeared upon its shutting.

A low sigh slipped free from Green River, uttered by both woman and fox. “I shall release you thusly. I beg your pardon for twisting pleasant conversation into seeming interrogation.”

“Nah, we’re all curious sometimes,” Draus said, brushing past things but sounding unconvinced. “Already water under the bridge.”

Green River smiled, her expression genuine. “Splendid. Well. I suppose I shan’t keep you longer. You both look… tired. Tense. You should enjoy my facilities while you are here. We have a most excellent gambling arcade, and there are local circuits to enjoy. Chess too, if your battleground is more of strategy than savagery.” She spoke the last words eyeing Avo.

He met her gaze then without issue.

“I don’t doubt that you do,” Draus said. “But as you said… tired. May we request permission to leave?”

Green River laughed, her voice a lyrical bell chiming in the wind. “You may. It has been a most insightful conversation, despite what little has been said.”

“Yeah,” Draus said, rising from her seat and rolling her shoulder. “Come on, Avo. We got some ‘sleep’ to catch up on.”

Looked like he was going to be diving again soon. Finally. More time to fix his sequences. Improve his phantasmics. Rising, they made for the door to leave, the path opening automatically as the living door sensed their encroaching footsteps.

“Oh,” Green River said, “one final thing–two, actually.”

Draus halted and turned. Avo just twisted his head.

“Should you desire to… participate in sport for the circuits, know that the doors are open to you. Both of you. And, mayhaps this might be more interesting to the Moonblood, but we have a most excellent in-house grafter as well. One with personal experience working on… your ilk. Perhaps it will do you well to see her. Improve upon strengths and fill lacking attributes.”

Wordlessly, Avo grunted. She wasn’t wrong. That did feel interesting. It also felt like a perfect opportunity for them to implant him with a specially engineered virus. He left the room ahead of Draus, deliberately planting a foot on the bar-crossing below.

Behind him, he heard Draus huff a low laugh. “Just had to be a shit at the end, didn’t you.”

“Need to leave. Playing games with us. Testing us. Place is her den. Unwise to stay here.”

Draus hummed. “Would agree, but these are the Warrens, consang. Don’t got no other place to stay less you wanna do some gutter divin’. And she owes me enough to be good for it.”

Avo nearly hissed with annoyance. “Honor? That’s your justification?”

“Justification is that we signed a contract, marking us as sworn-bound. She’ll catch the bleeds n’ die before she can betray us proper-like.” Oh. That changed things. “But you’s right. They onto us. Lookin’ close and seeing what they can get.”

“Think she’s No-Dragon?” Avo asked.

Draus laughed. “Her. No. Too young. Too soft.” Her expression then flattened. “But if she finds proof for what’s she suspectin’, I reckon that’s gonna go up the chain internally. Good thing is that she won’t sell us out to any ‘outsiders.’ Bad thing is that she might just be angling to become a proper No-Dragon.”

Part of Avo was disquieted at Draus openly speaking the words as a junior Sang came to greet them, to take them to their residences. But looking around, there was little hidden from obvious suspicions.

The walls here were alive, after all. And they were listening. They were always listening.