I don’t know what happened to them.
I don’t know.
They just started… killing themselves. Killing each other. They did… these terrible things and the laughing... They… they started taking their blades to their own flesh and… oh, gods–they started eating themselves! And the corpses of their dead comrades! I–I don’t–
I don’t know why. It just happened. It was like they were compelled or controlled.
Or forced by a will greater than their own.
-[Redacted]. FATELESS recovered from Three-Finger Crucible Designation: [Redacted]
15-8
Bonding (III): The Will in the Flame
The killing began without the surviving Three-Fingers ever even knowing.
Their aero settled in the crook of a partially hollowed apartment stack, then Avo spread his reach wide and wove a cocoon into shape. His blood was metal, biology, glass, and a hundred more things between, and where his Heaven grew, perception slipped away, festering like a counter-cognitive tumor that refused to abide within the realm of notice.
Leaving but a single mote of flame tethered to his physical sheathe, he rode the rails of his growing ontology as fibrous blood-made tendrils began to spread outward, crawling as both limbs and eyes. His awareness of his surroundings blossomed breathing crimson spores outward for miles. The gutters around him came into shape like a sandcastle rising atop his palm.
He could feel every structure that stood and all those that lay toppled. All that moved was known to his senses as the winds whispered their betrayal, and his reaching gore-made vines expanded into a vast nest to encircle the perimeter of the Crucible itself.
Seconds thereafter, thin, haemokinetic hairs rose into the sky in branches of ever-multiplying strings, and between each closing intersection spread a thin pane of red. Behind the growth came the flame, and within the flame blossomed a living contagion of thought.
His Heaven was to swallow the space of a small block, and his Incog would spare him from unwanted attention. More, though, Avo was a city unto himself. A singularity of matter and miracle fueled by minds many and memories multitude.
The better way of understanding his position was to see himself as the coating settled upon the Crucible. Where pipes and bridges extended in a triangular circuit between three clusters of short buildings flanking the abandoned Exorcist station, he regarded the encroaching battle lines between attacker and defender. Crude trenches furrowed the plascrete as rows of FATELESS fired at their unfortunate fellows in the buildings while the Syndicate types jeered and shot at them from behind. Implanted with mind-triggered explosives and motivated by random executions, waves of refugees ground against the defenses of the block and died in disorganized clumps.
From the lobby he was digesting, Avo knew this to be the first part of the program. The siege was meant to simulate war, and all a force of poorly trained, low-morale, and barely equipped flats could manage when thrown against a defensive hardpoint manned by equal but protected opposition was die.
Of course, the Three-Fingers also decided to leave the children of the station’s defenders inside with them so they wouldn’t be so motivated to abandon the ceremony via the ever-reliable method of suicide.
All in all, the first phase was meant to be a failure–a setback to arouse hope or tension before the enforcers themselves were committed in force, and if by some miracle the defenders endured still, the golems.
It was a pretty straightforward program, all things considered. Decent viewership before Chambers cut the stream–eighty million watchers and spiking. Just a shame they would never get to see what Avo and his cadre had planned. Godclad vicarities were usually worth a small fortunate in of themselves. Vicarities of Godclads in combat? Perhaps the stratosphere was where the benefits began.
“I got eyes on the golems,” Draus said as phantoms danced over her eyes, populating her sight with makers and icons. “Three knots. Twelve golems. Each at the heart of that complex of buildings they’re usin’ as mock headquarters.” With a thought, another shard of glass passed over her eyes and her perception poured through the gleam across a bifurcated point in space. “You cookin’ the jocks fried the damn drones as well. They all toppled out the air when you did what you did.”
He scried what she described and found her words apt. Pyramid-shaped las-drones littered the cracked plascrete by the hundreds and within them were but vacant loci boiled clean of ghosts and sequences. It wouldn’t take any effort to cast his mind into them and wield them as extensions of himself, but he saw little point and only trouble in conducting such an action.
“We have a clean shot at the golems,” Avo said. “Can hit them directly. Overwhelm them.”
“We could, but I think not,” Draus said. “We snuff one. Second we ambush but let them run a little. See how they do. Third we fight straight up. That’ll make for good drillin’. We gotta get used to different circumstances. Stress test our little cadre.” The way her glance flicked over to Chambers and Kae told Avo much.
“I’ll be fine,” Kae said, pouting slightly. “I know how Heavens work.”
Draus pressed her lips together and glared at the Agnos in the dark. “That’s just a part of it. What you don’t know is war, and what we’re about to do is enact evil on evil–we’re gonna funnel hurt and wrong on these half-strands who had it coming, but that don’t change the hurt and wrong we’re about to do. ‘Specially the ghoul here. That’s the shit you gotta get synced with.”
Kae opened her lips, but Draus spoke over her. “Don’t. Anything you say now is spittin’ wind. You wanna show me, show me by performin’. Ain’t no protected Agnos no more, so show me your teeth and I’ll see how I can set ‘em.”
Abrel groaned in the back of Avo’s mind. [Jaus, she talks like a literal Regular recruitment ad. No wonder mom decided to get a bunch of her kind killed–they’re unbearable.]
Rolling her neck, Draus pushed past the still-shaken Chambers and cast a ghost into her weapon stash. The plasteel doors of the locker retracted, and she began withdrawing inventory. “Seein’ as we’re ‘Clads and all that good shit, I decided to forgo the necessary armor arrangements this time. Next time, we’re deployin’ with exos or skins–and you all is gonna get used to doin’ it.”
“Can we just resurrect,” Chambers muttered, eyes still drifting as he slowly worked toward mastering himself.
She chucked a rifle at him–a GMR-88 Chemgauss Multi-Range Rifle Platform–and he caught it with a single hand in a surprising display of competence.
Sometimes, Avo forgot Chambers was an enforcer.
[You know, the longer I hear what you think of me, the more I feel like shit,] template-Chambers grumbled. [Catching guns is like half of being an enforcer. You drop it, everyone beats your ass after. You’d be the piss-carrier of the squad, and I don’t like piss, you synced?]
Draus continued distributing parts to a whole kit. “You’re each gettin’ one Woundhound injectable, one rifle, one multi-breather, one neuter mask–I know it looks like a piece of jade, just tuck it under your tongue or somethin’--”
Chambers lifted his hand.
“You swallowed it,” Draus deadpanned.
The half-strand nodded.
Draus just kept going without a hint of a care. “—one seeker grenade. We will be practicing with these here implements after the golems are dealt with to ensure our aptitudes are holistic.”
She handed the remaining pieces to Chambers before tossing a gun at Avo. He caught it with his Sanguinity and devoured the contents within its locus. With all his infused memories, he could literally reassemble the gun with a single hand, let alone load it. Still, he remained silent and let Draus direct things.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
It would be useful to glean what he could from her mastery and measure if there was a substantive difference between all the memories he absorbed and her life-long practice of war.
Kae had her items handed over instead of chucked, and Draus was wise to do so. The gun itself was almost too heavy for the former Agnos to bear, and a grimace of effort consumed her expression. “We have… husks of divinity inside us. We can alter reality. Is this really necessary?”
The response came in an instant. Draus blurred. Kae flinched. The tip of the Regular’s scythe-wing was tucked under the smaller woman’s chin. “See this,” Draus said, casually sliding Kae along the edge of her bio-rig’s appendage and slicing a thin gash across flesh. “This ain’t no Heaven. This is just surprise and good ol’ violence. You got power but no fundamentals. We gotta build you up and get you used to fightin’ and dyin’ if this is the life you want. Ain’t no other way about it.”
She folded her wing back with a flick and Kae clutched at her throat with a frown. “You could’ve just said yes.”
“Impressions matter,” Draus replied. She shrugged. “Could’ve been meaner. Hells, if it was Chambers askin' the question, I would have gutted him to make my thoughts known.”
“Totally," Chambers said, nodding. “She already did it a bunch of times too, so you’re getting the nice end of things.”
A deep breath ran up through Kae’s nose. “What even is my life now.”
“War,” Draus said.
“Fucking awesome,” Chambers added.
“Wasting time,” Avo grunted, impatient to begin things. Casting his mind out again, he watched as Three-Finger ghosts sailed out through the Nether blindly, searching for a lobby and minds that were no longer there. “Have golems to break. Have lives to collect. New Heavens to make.”
“Right! New Heavens! Let’s take a look at the golems! Maybe there’s a special model that you can remake here!” And just like that, the excitement was upon Kae again.
Maybe she was going to acclimate just fine after all.
***
They didn’t approach the first Knot using stealth or on foot. Instead, Draus created a passage using a piece of glass ebbed in the dirt, and with a flex of her hand, expanded the mirror shard she was spying through earlier.
The initial assault was to be conducted by Chambers and Kae through the manifestation of their Heavens while Draus and Avo held back.
Truth be spoken, Avo thought he could have liquefied all targets with a thought using the spread of his Sanguinity, but doing so would deprive his companions of valuable experience. There was something to be said about learning to achieve something on your own.
Still, if their performances remained inadequate and they asked for a more direct means of improvement, there was nothing that prevented him from obliging.
The four golems parked across from them were made up of three Sangeists and what looked to be a tail-knotted cluster of eight gargantuan snakes that each symbolized a particular direction.
His templates whispered to him, calling it a Snake-King, and its main capability was anchoring all objects around it in a fixed referential point in space. Movement was still possible, but your distance from the snake would never change once it spotted you.
A useful Heaven for locking down targets, Avo supposed.
Just a shame it couldn’t save its pilot from being burned alive inside by Chambers.
While Kae hesitated for a moment, Chambers launched himself out through the reflective portal rifle roaring, traumas lashing. He lacked both Draus’ cold precision and instinct. Each mind he shattered made him flinch just the same as the first, but in seconds he hit his stride. As the air combusted around him, swarms of insects began to flash over into reality, and from a column of rising fire emerged the crucified phoenix that was the Lushburner.
Tearing the heat from exo-rig reactors to fuel his propagation, Chambers compelled the air around him to ignite. Fireworks of combustion sparked, and so too did tons of aratnids and bees come flooding forth. Bodies were caked within armor as a constant supply of bugs manifested where there was space to fill, and more than a few tumbled as bioforms began to grow within the confines of their biology.
+Lick my holes!+ Chambers roared, cackling manically as traumas were switched over with moments from the Soft Master collection. +Eat my shits!+
As his warpath grew, the sloppily arranged encampment of enforcers and pilots was drowned by a landside of lifeforms birthed from anomalous occurrences of flame. Kae followed forth without firing her gun at all, instead weaving herself into streams of fluid using the sweat from her pores and funneling into the dormant golems one after another.
“Well, at least she’s got instincts,” Draus said, shouldering her gun and watching as the first stray bursts of return fire struck Chambers. “Ain’t gonna need to show Chambers any fundamentals, but he’s not much a thinker. He just kinda does things.”
Peeking at the situation using his Crucible encompassing vines, Avo watched as Specters from the other camps were already scrambling to raise the alarms.
They were going to get that head-on fight Draus called for soon, it seemed.
With a wave of her hand, Draus summoned another shard of glass from the inside of the aero and leveled the barrel of her rifle directly at it. As a flash shone across the glass and a new passage opened, the Regular began to fire. It took Avo a moment to ascertain what she was shooting at, but as he drew his gaze back, he traced stray lanes of gauss fire using his Phys-Sim and found snipers toppling from their perches with gore spilling from their shorn skulls.
As she began to squeeze the trigger over and over again, she turned a irksome glare onto Avo and shook her head. “Look at this shit. And people like bein’ a ‘Clad?”
“Too easy?”
“It’s not even real,” she said. “Like crushin’ insects. There’s no way to get our skin in this kinda of game unlesss we actively lookin’ to die. This feeling? That’s your fault.”
Ah. Back to this topic again. He was wondering if the allure of power had swallowed her completely, or if there was still a portion of her stubbornness holding out.
“Want me to reclaim the Frame?” Avo asked. He didn’t want to hear her answer for fear of her actually saying no, but her response came as a cutting scoff and he felt his worries dissipate.
“Nah. I like it. I like it a lot. And that’s your fault too: You got me addicted to bigger game. You got me into a better class of war–war that I thought I was done with.” She jabbed him in the chest lightly with a finger. “I could’ve had it easy. I could’ve just died fightin’ the trash and none of this would be my problem no more.”
An explosion of fire followed by a deafening hum of insects accompanied the splashing of rushing waters. Screams of horror and confusion rose through the ranks of the Three-Fingers while the outer perimeter made up of FATELESS “vanguards” and actual meatshields broke and scattered.
“Why do you want to die?” Avo asked. Part of him thought it was time to ask. The rest was assured that templates could help him navigate difficult conversations he didn’t have the patience nor want to chance in the past.
“I don’t,” Draus said, switching to her launcher and firing a micro rocket between her shots. “But I have to. It’s what Regs do in the end. We die fightin’.” She considered her response and let out a casual breath. “It’s just a… incompleteness, I guess. Lots of mine went out right and bloody good in the end durin’ the war. Their lives were wasted but hey, it’s the moment that counts. I was just huntin’ for mine in these here gutters.”
“And you wanted these vermin to have the glory of your death?” Avo asked.
“Yeah, but you’re lookin’ at it the wrong way.” Draus licked her lips. “This–all this–is about meanin’, right?”
“Meaning?”
“What does reality mean; what does history. The shit the Guilds are fightin’ for and all that.”
“Yes. Meaning.”
“Remember you askin’ me if I felt real? Well, I don’t think there’s anything realer than fightin’ your own kind without the touch of any god and just dyin’ for good when the time came. No honor. No glory. Just a good dog-gone war fought to the bloody end for somethin’ that mattered. It don’t need to change the city or alter Idheim. It just had to be a real end for a real fight.”
“How about now,” Avo said. “Do you hate me? For ruining your ‘real fight’?”
She lowered and gun and turned to face him in full just as a wall of flame enshadowed the faint grin on her face. “Nah. You just woke up old appetites again. Ones I thought dead and done. Figured I was finished with the Tiers and done with the Guilds. Figured my race was run.” The shard floated next to her head. “Guess I figured wrong.” She chuckled grimly. “I wish old mother Greatling was still alive to see what I have have now. That would’ve been a fight and a half.”
“Still have his father. Brother.” He was about to mention Abrel, but she was more his thrall than anything else.
“Yeah, we do have that, don’t we?” A beat of silence followed and Draus enclosed the helmet of her bio-rig. “Hey, you, uh, fancy a little game?”
She deviated deliberately, but he didn’t press. Instead, he followed, and felt his interest piqued. “What kind?”
“Big game,” Draus said. “Like the way we was when this started.” She cocked her head at Kae and Chambers’ warpath. “Let ‘em stretch their legs. What’s say you and I see if we can do one better than our run against vicious?”
Avo answered with a slow grin. “Why not? Be good practice.”