Godclads

Chapter 5-7 Tower or Sea

"The fuck is this shit? A Galeslither? The Heaven you earned is a fucking Galeslither? A Heaven for a First-Sphere? Your Liminal Frame... a First-Sphere too? Jaus fucking alive--why the fuck did we spend so much on you, then? Is this my fault?

Didn't I give you the best genes? The best life?

What's that? I did? Then why didn't you even manage a Second Sphere? Your half-sister managed it! And she's practically a subhuman mongrel. Her half-strand father didn't even splice her! You had every fucking advantage you worthless piece of godsdamned gene trash...

-Conversation between a mother and her son, Axtraxis Academy of Highflame

5-7

Tower or Sea

Disentangling from the Sangeist was a disquieting sensation. It felt like he was hatching his mind out from his flesh. Considering his current ontological state, however, perhaps the analogy was closer to fact.

Sinuous arteries lined like metal and blood both snapped free from the fires of his Soul, parting at a shrug of his will. Dismembering himself from the Sangeist was akin to ejecting both limb and senses from his body. Behind him, the shed Heaven shivered like a mirage, remembered, but no longer solid.

HEAVEN DETACHED - [SANGEIST]

  THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 40 thaum/c

Avo wondered if it would be possible to rename the Heaven down the line. It wouldn't be fitting to keep the designation of Sangeist once its capabilities outstripped that of a common golem. A tool needed a name that matched.

"Kae. Heavens. Can they be redesignated?"

His thoughts were bound to her False-Heaven now, her tears bouncing up and down like a wavelength. She blinked, not expecting his sudden inquiry. "Y-yes. Root functions. Dive down while your... uh... dive down inside the Heaven."

He wasn't looking forward to that. The last time was like trying to drown himself in a sea of data. It was like thinking through a deluge that flooded your mind constantly with thoughts and excess mem-data. But then again, that was what the root was supposed to contain: foundational mem-data.

The Galeslither greeted him as a foreign entity. He would have fancied possessing the powers of flight as a younger ghoul; during a time when he constantly hungered for mockeries and other birds. Now, his favor lay more in the practical aspects.

When he faced this Heaven as a foe, it had killed him twice, both times trapping him within its demiplanar embrace, claiming him in a cage of howling wind.

That power belonged to him now. Or so it seemed. He had yet to graft it to his Soul, after all. As his father had often told him: "Before success is confirmed, disappointment's always got a fighting chance."

His presence greeted the solidifying vortex that formed the outer flesh of the Galeslither. From his fire, the Heaven's three heads grew animated, wind sparking with repressed static steaming from their nostrils, their storm-enameled ribcage crackling with life. Beneath hooves shod with grumbling, ink-black nimbuses, miniature tornados screamed their hate at the world around.

Shrouding the Heaven was a veil of currents feeding into it, collapsing down and coursing into its body like an eternal delta, the heart of the plane, the rider of the storm.

So it was through roaring swells of storming winds that Avo plunged into the newest vessel he would use to clad his ontology. And where the Galeslither was the heart of the storm outside, so too was he the master of its domain within. The weight of torquing air spun deep, suffusing his Heaven as his cycler began to spin in pace with the whirlwind fortress that was his new vessel.

GRAFTING HEAVEN [GALESLITHER]...

HEAVEN GRAFTED - [GALESLITHER]

  DOMAIN: (AIR/SPACE)

  THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 55 thaum/c

Like the Sangeist, two symbols manifested to the sides of his Heaven, each representing a domain. Air and space were his to wield by way of wit, will, and canon.

DOMAIN OF (AIR)

CANON: AERO-VECTORING - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW GUIDE AND ACCELERATE THE DIRECTION OF THEIR SURROUNDING WINDS WITH A THOUGHT AT SPEEDS COMPARABLE TO THAT OF A TYPHOON; ONLY WIND CURRENTS WITHIN A 400-FEET RADIUS MAY BE DRAWN UPON

HUBRIS: ATTEMPTING TO DRAW AND SHAPE HYPER-HEATED AIR WILL RESULT IN THAUMIC BACKLASH

Fascinating. Another hubris that results in a Rend-spike upon encountering an environmental deviance.

"The... opposites are... is a common hubris," Kae explained, her voice pealing clear like a crisp bell despite torrential spiral lashing at her pedestal. "Most... most Stormtree and Sanctus Heaven-builds use opposites as a template... because... because it's like a Hell. Something... something that the Agnos can easily modify."

"Hubris. Can they be entirely removed?"

"No," Kae said. "Drastically... drastically reduced at... at the cost of increasing thaumic mass, yes, but not removed. Its... it's a deliberate design. Something that a god uses to set boundaries... to like a decided weakness but--but to know that it exists. Like... a drawing the borders of your own personhood... Maintenance of self--uh, what was I saying... self-awareness."

How strange it must be to cripple yourself to gain full awareness. Then again, Avo had never lived life as a concept. Violence offered him clear enough distinctions to where he began and another ended.

But, he had to confess, with these Heavens, with the powers they allowed him, he felt a drift building in the back of his mind. A strange sensation that felt like he was bleeding over into his power through the commingling of his senses, natural and metaphysical.

DOMAIN OF (SPACE)

CANON: YONDERGALES - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW SHIFT INTO A PARALLEL DOMAIN USING THE FOLDS OF AIR CURRENTS AS A GATEWAY; THE YONDERGALES OCCUPY A 400-FEET RADIUS AND ALL CONSTRUCTS OF MATTER PULLED IN ALONGSIDE THE MASTER WILL BE TRAPPED IN A CYLINDRICALLY VECTORED FREEFALL

HUBRIS: DRAWING IN OVER 400 TONS OF MASS WILL MAKE THE SIMULATED PLANE COLLAPSE AND RESULT IN THAUMIC BACKLASH

Between the two, the domain of space struck him as the far more useful one. He could imagine situations where he would be bereft of air, but few that could take from him the ability to edit the laws of space.

"Brilliant," Kae said, the cheer in her voice a squeak. "Su--success. Auto-installation. No need for a constant flow of deaths to... to link the Heaven. N-no boot-up g-glitches... stuttering? No... none. Even active onto-tethers... not needed. Soul interfacing.... interfacing and bridging alone... It's brilliant."

Her joy was a confusing one. With all that she just described--the parts that he comprehended--it sounded as if she was cheering on her own obsolescence.

But it occurred to him that her individual severance from use likely happened a long time ago.

"Other Agnos. Are they like you?" Avo asked.

Her smile quavered unevenly, her expression as if the fire atop a candle graced by a flow of wind. But as the discomfort passed through her, the happiness remained.

"No," Kae said. "T-they're still afraid."

"Afraid?"

She nodded. This, then, was a topic she remained absolutely lucid on. Something she knew down to her bones, a thing that was beyond solid, beyond certain. "I... I did something... the right thing... helped someone try to fix... fix a Fallen Heaven. I think. I can't remember...Can't."

The loss pained her. Pained like a dismembered limb would. Except her wound was always bleeding, and would never fully mend unless something could fix the damage inflicted on her cognition from the inside. Just what did she do that deserved such torment instead of just death?

"It... it doesn't matter," Kae said. "Something... something wrong with your current build is that... is that you don't have a symmetrical Hell. Nothing for air.... space."

"Break down another Galeslither when I get the chance. Use Meta-Fac."

A flash of fascination lit up her non-crying eye. "Bring... bring me. I want... need to see. To help."

To be close to the art she could once practice that was now lost to her. This was a rare moment in Avo's life. One where another had made a demand of him that was far nobler than what was spoken.

Truthfully, he wanted her to remain regardless. The way that Ori-Thaum damaged her, was, in turn, something he wished to study. To practice upon. The Incubi were they who haunted every sequence of memory in the Nether, and Avo envied them for it. How could he not? They were what the Low Masters intended to make him by design: apex predators in the great, black sea of memory and mind that was the Nether.

What better masters could he learn from now that Walton was gone?

Gone.

Was his father really? With the final message and this frame, Avo wondered then if perhaps his own memories weren't as solid as they appeared. Stripped of a week in recollection, the damage could have gone far wider.

Ultimately, without a Ghostjack to edit and manufacture memories with, certainty offered only brief flirtations and no commitment. That phantasmic, then, was his next priority. His mind had been left bare of a proper arsenal for too long, and without it, whatever Draus wanted to do with Chambers and his desire to examine the Agnos' damage would be impossible.

For a while longer, Kae spoke to him, going over more details of his internal subreality. There were things that his Soul lacked that others had. Onto-tethers meant to properly festoon a Soul to a Heaven; fixed thaumic cycler hardpoints that were made to fit Heavens of specific spheres, in the separation of Heavens by build and classification.

And it was then that she asked him the question that stood at the foundation of all ontological builds. "A-Avo... do... uh... do you want to be a tower... a tower or the sea."

Avo grimaced. "Riddle?"

"No... no, two philosophies," Kae said, her hand forming a vertical shape. "The... the tower focuses on building one Heaven... or fusing as many canon they can into... into a Heaven possessing just... just a few Domains."

A specialist. A predator of a specific ecosystem but no more. There was comfort in being such, but if Avo had learned anything from all the time he spent as a Necro, it was that over-specialization saw you nulled all the same. There was never just one situation. There would always be another, and power, when not applicable or insufficient, meant little on its own.

He wanted options. He wanted to be overwhelming. He wanted more angles of attack.

"Sea," Avo asked. "What's that about."

Kae titled the shape her hands were making sideways. "No... not as directly pow--powerful as a tower, but wider... more options... if... if a tower let you channel the power of a sun... at... at the Seventh-Sphere as a tower... then a Seventh-Sphere of seas would have... have a Heaven fused from over... a dozen others, with... twenty or more domains and canon to wield."

"Power versus utility," Avo said.

"No," Kae corrected. "Mistake. All... all Heavens are powerful. The... the Sangeist can alchemize matter using blood. Can... can kill anyone it touches if... if it clots their bloodstream. But... but it can't bend the winds to its will... and has no control over space. Both Heavens are absolutely powerful. The tower and... the tower and the sea is a single question: symmetry and asymmetry. Dominance by... by absolute control over a Domain or two within a reality where... where you are a god above other... other gods, or endless angles of attack, but less... less scope and scale..."

Kae studied his Galeslither and gestured at his Sangeist as well. "That... said, you might just... I think you can do both... You can... swap... swap Heaven at... any time now..."

Avo peered down and noted a distinct lack of a circle attached to his thaumic cycler at the foundations of the Galeslither. "Sure. Just need a Hell first." Two strange thoughts greeted him, one following the other. "Kae. Can I control two Souls? Or can I run two Heavens at once?"

"I... it's been tried but... tears the nous in half and kills you. Two realities do things to your being... doesn't clone--it fragments. As... as for the Heaven... yes. You... it's been done. Very popular for Stormtree, in fact... but you'll.... you'll need more than one thaumic cycler to interface with each Heaven you want. Easier to fuse Heaven in most cases."

"Thaumic cycler? How do I get one?"

Kae giggled. It was a hopeless sound. "Simple. Kill... kill and absorb the Essence of a dragon."

Avo fell silent at the thought of that. "Where are dragons now?"

"No-Dragons will sell them to you... from... grows nulled versions of dragons on a farm. But the cost is high... The natural-born dragons... the No-Dragons' original masters... either long massacred or missing. Hiding in places between places. Too valuable to be left... left alive."

Avo grunted, and through his new Heaven, the horses neighed. "Simple. Not Easy."

"Like... like many things in this city."

Her remaining lectures and elaborations added more to his fundamental understanding of just what he had become. Through this, the waters of worry within him had calmed somewhat, this new gnosis--and the possibility of the Agnos' continued aid--proving to be a salve to his confusion.

She spoke on while he half-listened. In silence, he plotted. Procuring a Ghostjack top priority, but after that, more task essentials grew clear for him. He needed two new Hells--one to sate his Sangeist, the other for his Galeslither--he needed to dive through Chambers and the two techs' memories before executing whatever Draus wanted to do with them; and finally, he needed to start doing step-up work on the Conflux megablock.

He was free now. The momentum had shifted to his side, but the task, as Walton would understand it, was half done. Mirrorhead was still alive, and the father was still trapped. Two things Avo couldn't abide by. How clashing were these two ideals as well, the act of killing the rival Godclad one of selfish hunger and retributive bloodshed, while the need to save Esssus was rooted in his ethics?

"...Any.. anyway, I think you can probably... probably remember enough to use the Frame now... Somewhat..." She swallowed. "Avo... I... I wanted to apolo--uh--apologize."

Avo's full attention slid back over her while confusion slipped over him. "Apology? Why?"

"I... I assumed that... as a ghoul that..."

"I'd want to hurt and eat you?"

"Yes. That, and you being an... an animal."

"Not wrong. When I'm... in the flesh. I want to. Hurt and eat you."

Kae fell silent. "Oh... I thought..."

"Can control it. Can't ignore it."

"Like... like me and... my thoughts," she laughed.

"No. Someone hurt you. Someone made me to hurt. You were born a person. I was a poorly made weapon."

Here, inside the Soul cut away from his biological impulses, the truth flowed ever so easily, like all was weightless.

"I... see," Kae said. "Well, I--"

"Changing back to Sangeist now," Avo said. "Also. Want to make you a deal."

"Deal?"

"You help me with thaumaturgy. Heavens. The art. Keep teaching. Want to keep learning. Return: I'll try and fix your mind."

She took a step back as if the deal was a dagger driven into her gut.

Avo continued. "Will also need to vet you first. Scan memories. You understand. Know Draus. Don't know me."

"I... do... do you really think... think you can fix it... my... my mind?"

"Yes," Avo said, more out of selfish curiosity than certain capability.

"Then, I... I think we... we just might get along," she said with a faint smile.

If her damage was as stimulating as it looked, Avo didn't care about getting along. What could he say? One person's crippling was another's education.