Cults in this city are nasty godsdamned rat nests.
Considering what they’re up against, they kind of have to be.
First, there are the Guilds and the Exorcists and the Paladins and the Syndicates and all the usual problems. Let's name the obvious half-strands first to get them out of the way. Most cults get snuffed out here. The idiots get noticed, and then they get dead real quick; the enterprise gets crushed before it even rises.
But then there are those who are used to running the shadows. These consangs got frost running in their veins and minds thought-sealed like knots. They’re not like most of you. When you’re done cycling through these memories, you’re gonna have your drone make you a nice meal and cast over to your favorite flick, any thought of being hard leaves you with your next breath.
These fuckers? They live that life. They are that life, none of them don’t wanna be any other way.
No family? Couldn’t give a shit. Out of imps? Steal, poach, kill, snatch… they’ll do it all. Hunted by the big shots in the city? Hells, this identity was boring anyway. Time for a change of face, and a change of mind.
These are the ones that become trouble. These are the ones that got the Incubi prowling the Warrens most of the time.
Most of these types are former enclavers. The difference is that their enclave was probably run by pseudo-religious freaks.
When the gods got broke and Idheim pissed itself, lots of people died. Lots. Do you think our trillions are a big number? This place used to be an active farm of life and death. If you wanna have some nightmares, you should look into the Nolothi breeder farms. Let’s just say their organ implantation process wasn’t nearly as refined when judged by our present sensibilities.
Anyway, even though the pantheons fell, enough of their priesthoods survived, albeit in scattered pockets after Thousandhand had her fun with the purges. Most of them got the memories cut out of them with the establishment of the Nether. Ghosts make it easy to mark anyone with memories you don’t want anyone to have, and our new guns made it so you could solve the problem from a couple of thousand miles away.
The diminishment of the faithful was pretty much an incremental massacre. But still, some of them slipped through. And the children of these “some of thems” are usually the ones to endure in the dark.
They remember some of their scriptures. They recall enough of their canons. And ultimately, they want their gods to come back.
And they’ll do whatever it takes to see that to fruition.
Up to and including slipping into the Guilds themselves or playing Fallwalker.
-Quail Tavers, The School of the Warrens
15-3
Overlap
[Gods, I hope that room is ghost-tight. You left two ticking rash risks right there, Avo. This is on you if it turns into an outbreak. Of course, seeing as we’re burning ourselves into fucking Chambers, I guess you don’t care about the rash that much at all!]
The patterns of thought leaking over from Abrel’s simulated mind were closer to frustration than active annoyance. Normally, she enjoyed a spot of romance, but these were not normal times anymore. Trapped inside a ghoul, she played secondhand voyeur from Avo’s perspective and realized she would never get the chance to indulge in these little love games and moments of bonding.
Instead, she would be rewarded with a novel act few humans found relished in: cannibalism.
[Fucking yay,] Abrel deadpanned. Her bitterness remained even as Avo’s fire seeped into the self-supporting rubble that was Chambers’ mind.
The man panicked briefly–the fact that he had time to at all was a testament to the durability of his consciousness. But as the Conflagration ate through the self-clashing mem-cons that were now the paradoxical pillars of the former enforcer’s mind, both ghoul and man overlapped each other.
But instead of simply usurping the structures of Chambers’ Meta, Avo blended to its symmetry as he once did with Abrel. Sequences aligned with sequences, and thoughts aligned with thoughts. Across the vastness of his consciousness, two minds were branded into one, and in a shapeless expanse were both egos manifested.
+Rotli–uh, Avo?+ Chambers said. +That you? Did you just… burn my mind away or something like that. I’m getting these thoughts and urges and they’re… really unsexy. Dead gods, what’s with all the noise?+
Working his will, Avo quieted the other templates so as to not overwhelm their newest cohort. He didn’t speak immediately, instead choosing to study the constitution of Chambers’ cognition.
Perverse, absurd, and all-too-sorrowful urges.
Understanding Chambers was like sampling a subtle tragedy. When viewed from within, the man had thought himself joyous and implacable before the depravities of the city. But when judged in totality, he was a wound that filled his pain using lust and hunger, the need for stimulus compressing the scars of his psyche.
The noise of vicarious pornography and intrusive mem-ads captured one’s notice like a garrote. There was no evasion possible, all was sound and havoc and dullness wrought from overload.
+You’ve always been hungry too,+ Avo said.
+What?+ Chambers replied, completely lost as to why these words were spoken. He was still blind to the greater gestalt, a new implant yet to be slotted.
+It is nothing. I should have tried to understand you better. All of you. So much wasted flavor. So much.+ Avo’s lamentations came from the marrow of his being. Vast and distracted as he was, his recent killings had been the finest hits of satisfaction he ever indulged in. To know all that there was to a person, to draw in all that could feel as you drained them utterly…
The flesh was wanting. The tang of blood was not enough. He had imbibed more now, and so this was to be.
+It’s… alright, consang. I–you know, you try a lot more than lots of people. Hells, I’ve only known you for a bit, but you’re already more nova than–hells–most of the people I know!+ Chambers was trying to grin, but the act was difficult to perform without facial muscles.
Avo decided to form a rictus on Chambers’ behalf. As his senses solidified a catastrophe of cog-feed formed into shape. Chamber's template clicked into place along with the vast myriad of others, and new perspectives became known.
Stumbling momentarily, he found his legs like stumps and his arms too short, and it took drawing from Chambers to properly gain command of the body’s new instances. Avo adapted with a thought, but the stabilizing grip pressed against his shoulder was a welcome one.
He didn’t need to see Draus to know it was her. It was in the impossible control exuded from the ebb of her thoughts, and the unmoving weight behind her palm.
+Yeah, good ol’ Draus,+ Chambers sniffled. +She didn’t kill me any more times after you left, so I think our relationship is improving.+
Somehow, Avo thought otherwise; it was more likely that the novelty of butchering unequal prey diminished her interest. +Chambers. Listen. I have need of you. Going to improve you. Give you new understandings. New skills.+
Excitement and glee erupted from the former enforcer. The overwhelming spike in the man’s happiness made Avo’s simmering thoughtstuff recoil. +Fuck! Yes! I love you, ghoulie! What’s happening! What’s happening? New Soul? New Heaven? New what? Lay it on me. Chambers can take it.+
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Talk about not looking a gift-ghoul in the mouth.
+That comes latter. Going to teach you things. Burn years of experience into you. Saw you trying to figure out how to jack earlier–+
“Avo?” Draus said, interrupting from the outside. “That you?”
“Yes,” Avo said, but Chambers’ voice answered for him. It was strange being smaller than Draus. A growing sense of dysmorphia arose immediately, and the worst thing he found about being Aedon Chambers were the strange pangs of phantom pain coming from his–
Oh. Memories accelerated through him, and he understood. The aratnid left scars that ran deeper than bone. The fact that Chambers retained them meant he didn’t consider them altogether unpleasant, however.
All the other templates cringed in sympathy and disgust.
All except Corner. [Fuck it. I’ll respect this. Seen nastier shit done by nastier half-strands. This is nothing.]
+So, you think I have the potential?+ Chambers asked, adding another voice Avo had to heed.
+No. Too much feeling. Too easily distracted. Too much fixation. Wouldn’t have even made a bad one.+
His words made the man’s mind flinch. +Ouch. So… training program?+
+No. Burning the necessary memories and habits into you. Adding them to your structure. You’re habits and choices are still… suboptimal. But you will understand how to operate now. At an acceptable level.+ Avo hoped.
Hurt was an evanescent thing to the half-strand. Where but a breath before he was insulted, now he was elated at the prize bestowed upon him. +Hells yes! I’m not gonna lie, rotlick; I was a pretty bad student. Probably wasn’t that much chance in me having the self-discipline to train so this is perfection. Wait… have you thought of charging imps for this? You can show people anything! Make them remember too! Wait–wait, wait… can you even do that? How does this new fire-thing work, anyway?+
Action proved to be more efficient than elaboration. Avo willed it, and the contents of his currently simulated consciousness reassembled itself. He let Chambers see past the obfuscation, and for the first time, the man found himself greeted with the templates. Years of unearned mastery were torched upon the branches of his recollections.
+Holy fuck…+ Chambers said, gasping as he struggled to bear all the weight of foreign memories. The fires were assembling his new cognitive architecture still, it would be a moment longer before he had the requisite capabilities to serve as Avo’s aide. +How many dive-vicarities did you just dump inside me?+
+A bit more than twenty thousand.+
+That’s a lot of dives…+
Letting the new structures marinate, Chambers studied his new internal fixtures, cut off from his senses as Avo sealed him. As flames wove the ghoul’s mind into place, perception manifested fully and he found himself staring up at Draus.
Her shimmering optical implants spun and regarded him like a wolf would a rabbit. A moment’s surprise was all it took for her to realize the change. That, and the blaze seeping from his halo. As she withdrew her hand from his–Chambers’ shoulder, Avo noticed a ring of glass shards spinning through the air in a weightless ballet.
They were still hiding the demiplanar dormitory, but it appeared the Regular had pierced its bounds using her Heaven.
“I’m back,” Avo said.
“So you are,” she replied giving him a slow second appraisal.
“Enjoying your new canons?” Avo asked, glancing at the pirouetting glass spiralling about them in the plane’s second level dormitory. The question was thinly disguised as a taunt. “Remember you said you didn’t want them. Remember you wanted to die fighting. Die clean. Die feeling the weight. Are we getting forgetful? Or does power taste too good?”
Her lip twitched upward in the briefest of sneers. “A samplin’ ain’t a meal.”
“Spoken like a joy-fiend.”
She shrugged off his insult “I still wanna feel it. The point behind every kill. You did this to me. You owe me a centerin’.”
And he could deliver using his flames. But would she let him?
“How’s your time been playin’ with your new toys, then?” She pivoted before he could reply. “ Have fun jumpin’ around burnin’ egos into yourself? How many did you kill this time?”
“Few thousand?”
“That it? What? Feelin’ soft and merciful after Nu-Scarrowbur? Bit too much to chew on.”
“Taking in more now. Claimed much on this sojourn. Where’s Kae? Essus.”
“Downstairs,” Draus said. “They’re talkin’ with the Columners. Our poor flat might be gettin’ himself some fancy voider mind-mender to help ‘em or somethin’. The ‘Glaive’ is gettin’ all details about Godshaper clean with Kae. Been down there for just about thre minutes.”
“I consumed an Ori-Thaum administrative node. Have secrets. Have Incubi inside me. Know the identities of surviving assets that ruined Kae’s life. Have a gift of revenge to deliver.” He paused. “And got some other things. Souls. Cyclers. Heavens.”
The Regular’s features brightened immediately. She wasn’t so easily swayed by bribery, but resistance wasn’t immunity. “Shit. You could’ve led with that.”
“And miss out on mocking you?”
She smirked and began to chuckle darkly. A cool pit opened inside Avo and he felt his insides squeeze, instincts warning of potential violence.
And extreme lust.
That which he took from Chambers hardened in ways Avo immediately suppressed.
[Gross! Fucking gross!] Abrel gagged.
Thinking back to Reva now, Avo thought himself a fool to ever compare the Bloodthane to Draus.
The Shatterborn Godclad was a woman of iron will with an honest disposition. Bloodshed and conflict were familiar constants in her life, but there was something about her that suggested she was enduring these trials rather than relishing in the lifestyle.
Not so with the Regular. There was some facet of humanity missing inside her. Something that made her radically acceptant of death and horror, severing her from fear and hesistation entirely. War was like breathing to her. Nothing special. It just was.
She just was.
Draus shrugged a shoulder and Avo found himself dipping over into Chambers’ memories. Only when he confirmed the man was clean of Rend before he let the tension leave him. Good. The only risk they suffered now was death. Checking on Chambers’ ego again, Avo found him listening along to the conversation, his new skill enhancements already out of his mind.
Avo made a few more adjustments to his distractedness. That was going to get him nulled more than once. Some iterating for his habits will likely be required, but he still wanted to keep Chambers as himself, if possible.
The point here was augmentation rather than alteration. Chambers’ death formed a finer vintage if he greeted his ends led by his own choices. In each life, there was a unique brew of culmination.
Like he was potentially facing right now.
“You should kill yourself,” Draus said. Her words caught Avo off guard, but they weren’t uncharacteristic. “Let Chambers have his own body. He’s wretched enough on his own. Don’t need a cannibalism habit too. You didn’t pick up any of his mind contagions, did you?”
“Trying not to think about that.”
She just shook her head.
+Alright, guys, come on. Come on.+ Chambers sighed. +My mind’s not that bad.+
Avo let Abrel speak to him.
[You rotlick fuck! Don’t put me next to the rash risk–you don’t talk to me! I don’t want to know anything about Dannis Steelhard.]
Confusion surged through Chambers as he found himself taken aback by Abrel’s sudden appearance. +I–+
She was promptly banished.
+Not going to be popular when I claim your template.+ But there was nothing for it. Avo burned it. Now he would know him. But it wasn’t so bad. Truthfully, all Chambers wanted was to be wanted, and knowing that made him the perfect vessel for intersecting under Avo. +But I accept you. Don’t have a problem with you.+
That struck a touched pause in Chambers, and across Avo’s consciousness, many of the snuffers he claimed began to gag in an exaggerated fashion.
Then, with but a nod as an indication, Avo liquefied his body for the second time within minutes and felt Chambers’ prime ego die. The template, however, remained synced.
[Not gonna lie, that felt weird as fuck,] Chambers said, mentally shuddering as he regarded the disintegrating mist that used to make up his vessel. [I’ll be back right? I mean, actual me-me. Not me-you. Or you-me.]
+Should be fine,+ Avo thought. He turned a cast on Draus. +Bodies not enough for me anymore. Need to be disrupted now.+
She regarded him with a nod. “You wanna do the honors?”
+Yes. I’ll do it. And call the others. I wish to speak with everyone. Tell them I want to start a cult.+
Draus’ nodding turned into a double-take. “What?”
Avo’s answer came in the form of a Thoughtwave Disruptor activating from the core of his being, and a ripple flensed his ethereal presence from existence.