Let me tell you a story about my favorite gun.
Spoiler: It’s a piece of shit. Situationally.
Now, you might be wondering, “Tavers, you old sow, why is your favorite gun a piece of shit? Did you survive all those years in the Warrens off raw luck alone?”
The answer is yes, by the way. You have to be lucky to make it out down here. Any squire that says otherwise is bullshitting you.
Anyway, favorite gun. Omnitech piece they called the Transgressor Supreme–yeah, yeah, fuck off. I know the name’s real rust, but I was eighteen and it was the finest godsdamned piece I could get my hands on.
I’d like to start by mentioning the Transgressor’s problems. It’s large. Eighty pounds of alloy and complex machinery. It’s complex. Takes a bit of technical know-how to even aim the damn thing. It sucks power like a growing Scaarthian does a teat, and more than once I found myself gunning the trigger only to see my beam materialize and fizzle in the same instant.
Let me tell you, there’s no cold dread like the dread you feel when your gear fails you in the field.
To top this shame-cake off, the damn thing explodes if you overclock it.
I’m not even talking about the cute “might splatter a flat or two” pops. This shit goes off like a goddamn mini-nuke because it’s literally running an unstable microfusion battery.
Remember when I said Omnitech made it? Yeah, it shows.
Everything Voidwatch considers a science is more an art to the glitchers.
Anyway, by this point you might be wondering why I’m even using this thing. After all, it sounds like an unwieldy death trap that’s more liable to get me killed than keep me alive in a firefight.
Well, consang, let me get to the “situational” part.
You see, the Transgressor is a nightmare to use, but a dream to assemble. Whatever thaumic fuckery the Red did to make it come together, it works like a dream. The entire thing’s also spinal-mounted and thought-fired, so your hands are free to do other things, like gouge someone’s eye out or hold your guts in.
The power system might be a sow and a half, but it’s flexible, and so is its recharge. You can feed it sunlight, electricity, coal, heat, synaptic tissue… hells, if there’s one thing the Transgressor does right, its combat longevity. All this comes to a beautiful crescendo when you're burning holes through unarmored skulls for a single percent of your charge in one instant, and then when a fucking golem blasts down the wall next to you and you feel your wards start to give, you flick that shit up to ninety and let the world around you boil.
Crank too hard, and the Transgressor might explode. That’s true.
But you handle things right, and this thing will core a Sangeist from 10 miles away, and let me say that there isn’t a more satisfying feeling than dropping something god-touched with just your gun, your grit, and a little bit of luck to serve as the grease.
Anyway, the point is that you gotta know your tools. Know what it’s built for. I knew some smart godsdamned squires that got snuffed because they didn’t have what the run demanded.
A nova Necrojack isn’t going to be much use to you if they’re trapped in a firefight right next to you, and a snuffer’s just waiting to get their strings cut if they’re wandering around with no N-Sec.
Figure your shit out. Figure out your kit. Keep your preferences secondary.
-Quail Tavers
14-9
Drawbacks
“Perhaps some countermeasures are in order? Some kind of support structure to prevent your sudden demise? I understand that the patterns of vivianite can serve as a conductor to your ghosts and thoughts. Mayhaps that might be a solution.”
Avo was far ahead of his Woundshaper when it came to resolving his new vulnerability, but an outright solution remained annoying far.
The problem lay in the nature of the Nether and the reactions within Necrotheurgy as a whole. A Thoughtwave Disruption was less akin to a bomb and more a chaotic vortex collapsing consciousness beyond their housing in the material.
For most, that usually meant losing track of what they were thinking or needing to reset their Metas. For Avo–as a thoughtform unchained from the anchor of a body–this resulted in his swift and unceremonious death.
There was something about how phantasmics and ghosts could stay rooted to a body so long as it was bound to the material even as the Nether came crashing down around them.
Avo understood himself to be the inverse. The fullness of his “self” had been drawn over into the Nether by the merging of his Conflagration and the war mind, and now bodies were less anchors to him and more articles of clothing.
Sheathes, in a word.
RESURRECTION - 88%
His current empowerment in the realm of cognition had also left him with severe drawbacks. Presently, even simple Thoughtwave Disruptions were a matter of concern. What would happen when a Thoughtwave Detonation destabilized an entire section of the real like in Yuulden-Yang? Would he even be capable of resurrecting in such an environment?
Was his consciousness just going to cling to the vivianite formed by his blood somehow?
More pressingly, how was he going to remove himself from his current situation once he returned, and they simply decided to hit him with another disruption?
Presently, one plan was to grow Auto-Seances within shards of blood-wrought loci before casting them into the dark and pushing them down the hall. This way, he could shift out of his body if he suspected an attack was coming. Again, he found his mind drifting back to Kae and her exocortex. Considering the war mind festering within his being, he wasn’t entirely certain a machine intellect would prove to be the insulation he needed, but he would never learn without experimentation.
Perhaps the next update to one of his canons could be something of a closed planar pathway? A Domain of Space that interfaced only with him and not the world somehow? Such an improvement would prove most useful when paired with the unfettered nature of his consciousness. He also wondered if integrating more external Conflagration aspects would broaden his cognition any further.
With every growth, a new vulnerability. But with every growth came new paths to ascension.
His untethered thoughtform made him vulnerable to Nether-destabilization, but it also made him an apex predator in the Dreaming Unsea.
If he wanted to escape, the clearer path was through. Through the locus of the Wight. Throughout the session, it was running into the Necro on the other side.
That way, he could escape into a new body and also comprehend all that was transpiring in the same instant.
Drawback. Benefit.
Vulnerability. Advantage.
“I approve of your thoughts for once.” the Galeslither said. Shadows flicked up like dust devils from the skin of the tempest-molded steed. Six storm-cracked eyes stared at him from three heads, and he sensed a faint note of excitement in the Heaven. “Your sense of direction is good. I believe escaping–and devouring the mind of the unknown–is a viable passage to freedom. Would you accept some criticism, God in my stead?”
The Woundshaper existed on creating and killing, fitting considering its lore as a Blood God of creation and sacrifice. The Galeslither, contrarily, was delighted to flee, delighted to seek the horizon in any situation. Such want was not born of cowardice, but worship. To seek the curve and place trouble behind was a victory all its own, and for those to offer themselves to the skies in exchange for faster wind were martyrs not unlike the huntresses the Woundshaper so loved.
Over the Woundshaper’s scoff, Avo allowed the Heaven of Air to speak.
“You are of a different nature than I or the Butcheress. Our divinity was communal. Worshipped by countless, shaped by communities. You are an egocentrist, and the masses serve only as your fuel.”
“Calling me arrogant?” Avo asked.
“No. You are always willing to learn. True arrogance denies a person such a gift. But you are reckless. And you fixate on specific things, concepts, and actions far too much. And you are impatient.”
Avo paused. The last fact he could not deny. “I had the opportunity. I wanted to learn how my changes worked in a practical environment.”
“And you were too good to waste your flames swallowing the low-quality minds of the murders in the streets that you had to sample the finest delights found only in the heights? You wanted this. The thrill guides you, and you placed no safeguards against it. You might have an expanded consciousness, but you are more enslaved by your whims than ever. You feel what you wish to feel. You pluck and shape thoughts to suit your every demand. You are forgetting a critical part of every journey.”
“What’s that?”
“Friction. Even the softest wind drags against an object. You should feel the world pressing back against you so you know what you face instead of a self-constructed gilded cage of phantasmal falsehoods. What you do now is beyond delusion. I will not lie to feed my ire: I envy your freedom to shift between persons and minds. But I… loathe how you exercise such power, for so far, you are but a monster channeling aspects of humanity when convenient, and discarding them when it is time for pleasure anew.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“So what is your solution? Want me to abandon “myself” and be someone else? Some you might enough being a part of more?”
“It is impossible for me to enjoy being bound to any person. Such is my mold and make. Such are my canons and mythos. But you are the god here, not I. All I wish to say is for you to serve your travels to the very end. You possess the ability to fully epitomize a union of thoughts, as the Godslayer complimented you. Be such instead of an impulsive post-mortal who shifts his nature to feed his impulses or escape discomfort. Pain is not the enemy. Ignorance is.”
Silence couldn’t follow within the bounds of the Frame, for the Woundshaper always flowed and chimed with drifting constructs, and the Galeslither was an endless whistle of rising noise. Still, there was a special sting to be so… scolded by what was supposed to be an ontological construct that obeyed his every whim.
Stripped of will though the Heaven of Air might be, Avo found himself glad the reawakening didn’t deprive the steed of character.
“I will apply this to education,” he said. Part of him wanted to be outraged, but that part was impulse.
Impulse.
It seemed a figment of his baser nature carried still into his ascension.
The Galeslither offered no immediate compliment nor acknowledgment. All it did was release a small chuff of wind. “Then you may perish later than most.”
RESURRECTION - 98%
Turning his attention back to his brainstorming, he went over his plot to return, assault, and escape immediately using the Wight before another detonation could go off. He decided to add in the scattering of his blood from shadow as a secondary action in case the first didn’t work, and he readied himself for his return.
A final precaution was to mold his mind in the shape of the Incubi. Ill-fated though they had been, most of them were simulated to be less prone to indecision in live-fire situations than he. It was best that he embody his right self when embarking on any activity from now on.
RESURRECTION - 100%
Life and light came in a clasping embrace of fire. Through his Soul he was birthed back into the real, and existence slammed down upon his senses all at once as his cog-feed loaded and his subminds returned.
[They’re not here.]
[Wight’s missing.]
[Don’t bother firing your reflexes. Rooms empty. Subconsciousness knows that from the first chitters of the Echohead.]
He ignored the deluge of noise and encased all surface matter around him in a razor-thin film of blood. Pushing himself off the ground using his tentacles, he rose and swept and expanded awareness by forming a Skimmer. Tides of perception swept through the room and rebounded back on him.
Most of the room’s loci were now gone. As was the Wight. As was part of the couch.
The only addition to the room was a locus on the ground beside him.
Staring at the triple-faceted crystal with suspicion, he lifted it using his Haemokinesis and gazed upon its contents.
The phantasmal shine inside was dim, and a single ghost quailed before his glare.
If this was meant to assassinate him, they either knew more about his current nature than the Low Masters or himself did, or this was something else entirely.
SIMULATING PRIMARY OPTIONS
DEVOUR//DISCARD//USE PROXY TO ACCESS
The first bore a 0.03% risk of nulling from estimates. The second left him without any obvious leads. The third might expose some details about him he didn’t want a third party to know.
Avo let out a low sigh and cycled through his available minds to get their advice before settling on the option he long knew was best. Before he consumed the ghost, however, he took care to empty his Galeslither of its Rend by vibrating a haemokinetic construct held in stasis.
As he burned away the contents of the locus, a brief recording trickled into his mind followed by images and DeepNav coordinates. +Sorry about snuffing you. Still not sure how we did that. Decided to pull out to avoid escalating this “misunderstanding.” If you still want to talk about the Strix and compare notes, we’ll be in the aero parked in the dock. The deets are attached. We’ll wait ten minutes.+
The information left his expression frozen between a frown and a chuff of confusion.
[Well, if they’re trying to fuck us here, this is one roundabout way to do it,] submind-Abrel personality said.
[The Gold-bitch is right,] Benhata agreed through clenched teeth. [Too many moving parts. This is an invitation. They want to meet you.]
“Then why did the ‘Clad try to sneak up on me through the plascrete? Why the thoughtwave?”
Abrel clicked her tongue and thought about things for a moment. [Well. How I might go about “procuring” a mundane versus how I might “convince” another ‘Clad take two very different approaches. Killing you was probably unexpected, but the moment they found out, they bugged out. I suppose they really didn’t want to start a ‘Clad on ‘Clad brawl here. Would be pre-tty loud.]
[Don’t go unless you have precautions,] several of the Talons interjected at once. [They might not know about your Conflagration, but there is only one clear reason for your death just now. They might not understand why the disruption kills you but do not expect them to refrain from using it. If you go in person, you expose yourself again.]
“So how am I going to do this?” Avo asked. It was uncanny letting his mind fully run conversations with himself, but the interplay of colliding consciousnesses offered him new insight–a dialect that could only be discovered in a cognitive maelstrom like himself.
[You know, asking this question makes me really embarrassed about getting my shit pushed in by you,] Abrel sighed. [Use your Heavens, stupid. You’re not just a floating, burning torrent of brain fog. You’re not just meat. The Heavens are you as well. Start actually treating them like part of your being instead of pulling them out when you have a tool to solve.]
[Don’t do that!] Benhata cried. [Typical Highflame delusion–]
Abrel spoke over the Glaive, as was her habit when addressing someone she regarded her inferior. [Listen, ghoul, the Silver here is about to give us a speech about the False Apotheosis or something irrelevant like that, but they forget: first, you’re already a godsdamned psycho cannibal. Not much worse you can be getting; second, how about you create a construct from your blood, pour part of your mind into it, and form an Auto-Seance? Now, I don’t know how that will work with whatever happened to your mind, but if your consciousness is also where your will is connected… maybe you can dip into several different bodies at once even without direct connections?]
Now there was a thought.
Avo wondered how long it would have taken him to come up with that on his own. Possibly not that long. It remained a bit of a leap from how he used to puppeteer Syndicate muscle and use them to fight as his patsy, but this was another level of sophistication.
And before the transformation of his consciousness, an outright impossibility.
Forming a thin framework of himself from his haemokinesis, he watched as a latticework replica of himself took shape. Dipping his cognition inside it, the arterial circuitry of his crude simulacrum came alight. It took mere seconds for him to grow the needed Auto-Seance within its structure, and he left the bare minimum requirement of ghosts to maintain its functionality.
Finally, when he was done with the “false self” he was crafting, he opened a pocket in his Sanguinity’s broadcast around the simulacrum and braced himself for disappointment as it sagged.
But even severed from the physical touch of his Heaven, his consciousness still remained within the structure, and to his delight, the blood within it flowed to his whims after a heartbeat of hesitation.
[Well, would you look at that,] Abrel cooed. [New Ensouleds grow up so fast. Are you feelin’ that? That’s what it means to be a ‘Clad. The impossible can go fuck itself.]
Strangely, he found himself happy to have earned Abrel’s approval. This was an advancement even without the need for thaums. He had been treating his Woundshaper wrong this entire time.
It wasn’t just a creator and a killer, but an assimilator. Like him. It traveled through matter like an infection, and now through its power, he could spread his very being through structures and up edifices with barely anyone noticing.
Like a plague running beneath the skin of this city.
A cackle of pure joy echoed from within his Frame, and he felt his triumph become paired with his Woundshaper. “Glorious. Glorious!”
With a thought, he shifted the blood within the puppet and it stagged forward. It still moved a bit awkwardly considering he was more “piloting” than “wearing” it, but such things could be improved.
As he compelled it to walk over the darkness before the door, he drew upon the powers of his Galeslither and felt it sink down. Darkness spread around him, but the Specters the simulacrum had in place of eyes lit the way ahead all the same.
As he coated his mind in the analogy of the Incog, however, his vision vanished, though his control over his new puppet remained.
New options. Drawbacks.
More kinks to fix.
He reached out using his Sanguinity and disassembled his new toy. No need to expose his newest ace to the block’s security since he couldn’t hide the brightness of his mind.
He would approach the meeting point manually, but depart immediately thereafter.
In his stead, he would leave but an offering of blood in his place.
***
+Raldi, I’m telling you this for the hundredth time: there’s no way I would go meet someone after I got snuffed. It’s just too embarrassing.+
+Maybe they’re not like you, Reva? Maybe this one’s curious about its memories.+
+How curious could they be considering they just got snuffed by us? And you seriously think the thoughtwave disruption did them in?+
Across the session White-Rab sighed. +It’s my best guess. Maybe they were piloting a drone or something.+
+Don’t explain the anchor they left behind,+ Reva replied.
The Necro didn’t know what to say about that.
Presently, he had a dozen phantasmics running surveillance for him outside the aero and was tuned into the block’s systems so he would know just when their “guest” left to room.
Through the Nether though, he caught a glimpse of some peculiar mem-data. Whatever the loci glimpsed when the Godclad resurrected didn’t look like your usual Meta. It looked… like it was burning.
Almost like a Conflagration.
But it couldn’t be that. That destroyed minds.
A few seconds later, something stranger happened. A second, smaller mind sparked across from the larger one, moved around a bit, and then subsequently winked out. The big one followed as well.
Concerning.
He cast the details over to Reva and she groaned. +Great,+ she said. +Half-strand probably has a spatial Heaven of some kind and just pulled in some help. That’s it. We’re done here. Dinner better be ready by the time I get back, you hear. This has been probably one of the messiest operations–”
And then, in a flash, just beyond their aero, something rose out from the darkness cast by one of the four clamps securing Reva’s Harshlander M-II.
Both of their minds snapped to attention, but instead of that creature, he found himself greeted by a wiry figure that seemed to be made from…
+Is that blood?+ Reva asked.
+Yeah…+ Raldi replied, feeling a bit weirded out himself. +That’s blood.+
A growing note of tension rose within the Bloodthane.
+Hey, Raldi.+
+Yeah?+ He answered, focus fixated on the crimson construct that began to stumble its way toward their vehicle.
+Remember when I told you I got nulled earlier?+
+Uh-huh.+
+Well the ‘Clad that did it had a Heaven of Blood too.+
Suddenly, White-Rab didn’t feel so good about this little meeting anymore.