+++PRIORITY ZENITH TRANSMISSION+++
All active cells.
The High Seraph's Heaven is at full manifestation.
Temporal anomalies have been detected across all districts.
Mirrors, initiate Queenslayer protocols.
An opening has presented itself. We are deploying THE ARK to supplement efforts.
End the war. Behead the master of Highflame.
Whatever the cost.
Whatever it takes.
+++END TRANSMISSION+++
-Emergency Thoughtcast from Ori-Thaum Inner Council
28-12
Lover’s Quarrel (III)
Avo thought he knew the devastation a Godclad could bring once they entered the highest spheres. Even as a Third Sphere, he was capable of dashing at lightning speeds while bearing 80 tons of mass. The destruction he left in his wake could carve cataclysmic scars wrought from sheer velocity and displaced kinetic energy.
Likewise, Shotin’s Parallelist could draw someone into a realm of pure fire or condemn them to crushing aquatic depths.
And then there was Chief Paladin Naeko, whose heaven commanded a force above all others. Naeko made this power known as he brought his palm down over New Vultun, crushing countless lives beneath the flat of his metaphysical presence. Be they transgressing godclads or merely foolish fateless, every feat Avo had experienced so far was dwarfed by the High Seraph's overwhelming might.
The Demiurge of Fate's End was a calamity born of chronology. As Avo's cog feed registered just how many estimated thaums the Heaven had, an even longer string of Domains appeared across his vision and just kept going, and going, and going some more.
Chronology was at the forefront, but after that, he saw almost every other domain he had encountered thus far, and even more besides. As the shroud of temporal stasis she manifested earlier detonated like shrapnel, Avo watched as golden trails extended across reality, painting zones of hyper-accelerated time. And as these pathways encroached, additional limbs sprouted from them, each reaching out for another section of the court and beyond. Across his many strands of consciousness, Avo beheld the true scope of Veylis's attack and failed to suppress his awe.
Torrents of gold blasted free from every Highflame Godclad within the court and across the city. The tears came alight with a brutal radiance, and within them boiled simulations bearing the full weight of recollected devastation. They swept out, spearing into rival Sovereignties, flashing waves of ruinous devastation kilometers long within the span of microseconds.
Walls of flame and cascading entropy swept through unsuspecting districts. Massist fast-response knots reacted almost instantly, spatial portals opening in response to the temporal incursion.
But while they were efficient in their reactivity, Veylis was the master of time. She struck them, impaling over 120,000 knots at once with a corresponding number of planes.
That was the last Avo felt of their presence. Their fates, though unwitnessed, was beyond doubt.
Concurrently, her attacks speared out for the Overheaven of Conceptualization, speared out from her Instruments, Authorities, and Seraphs, seeking the capture of the Stormsparrow, Avo, and the members of his manifested cadre.
Additional tendrils folded away, reaching for the Paladins, as vines of light exploded from the Gatekeeper, weaving the entire court into a path-devoured cocoon.
***
And nearly an entire continent away, Avo felt another 100,000 or so converging paths breach free of the Omnitech-established demiplanes.
Here, her intent was direct. Her paths adapted to the nature of the surrounding Sunderwilds. With Avo's awareness of ontology, he could always feel the encroaching blow. Some of her branches bore nothing but crushing kinetic energy, enough to render his enclave and most of the surrounding area a glass crater. A set of follow-up attacks were approaching. Avo's Hysteria detected the oncoming thought-wave disruptions, even as they left Veylis's paths.
But though the High Seraph's might was staggering, it was not unanticipated. And just because she possessed near-total control over the future did not place her above the laws of thaumaturgic symmetry and entropy either.
Reflections flashed across his memetic towers as Avo and his cadre triggered the first of their countermeasures. Modified Rendsinks were flung out into reality, infused with Casual Rend set to overload with a session-linked command.
The Sunderwilds, long ravaged by eldritch abnormalities, was considered by most to be beyond the point of breaking. But that was a mistaken assumption. Fissures of absolute darkness, darkness stolen from the void and infused with the ethereal glow of ghosts, spread across time and space. Ruptures opened across the face of reality as causality took a series of mortal wounds.
These Rendbombs detonated in a sphere around both Avo's enclave and his heaven of winter. As their ruptures expanded, he left only narrow channels for anyone to pass through—narrow channels of stability that he would use as physical choke points to annihilate as many Omnitech units as possible.
The last thing he gazed in the broader Sunderwilds was Veylis's paths jolting to a sudden halt before they could crash into these ruptures. Though he didn't know if Veylis was capable of soaking all this leftover Rend or not, he did know that his heaven was esoteric enough and also analogous enough. The High Seraph just might encounter a backlash if she tried to draw his rend bombs into her paths.
But ultimately, the High Seraph didn't need to risk it. Her channels of gold shivered as she directly carried the Omnitech knots across, ferrying a colossal amount of forces from one place to another.
They would bear the burden of sieging his enclave, not her. They would see his Rend drained one way or another.
[Well,] Corner chuckled. [Looks like we’re going to get our proper fucking siege yet.]
Back in the court, a similar clash ensued.
All active paladins had been prepared for this very moment. As such, they responded to Veylis's resplendent tidal wave with similarly colored bulwarks of their own. Golden shields formed around them as Avo drew forth a host of ghosts, transmuting them into matter—then glass. Without a moment's hesitation, he launched another Rendbomb through the reflection at Veylis's, only for a signal to contain the rupture in a shroud of randomized numbers.
In the same instant, Veylis's full weight crashed down against the Paladin-made Chronoshield.Time splashed against time as Soulfire flared across the court, bathing the room in incandescence.
As she constructed new channels of attack using the Godcclads under her command, Avo did the same, mirroring her actions via his ghosts. Phantasmal tendrils reached across every paladin, connecting their frames and draining their spiking rend over into his stillborn. In the same moment, he performed three separate actions.
First, he reached down using his sequences and connected himself to the massive Rendsinks resting at Scale's base. Another one of his subminds took advantage of the chaos and unleashed an assault across the Nether. Traitor paladins and compromised Guilders became another brief theater in the opening shots of this war.
Avo expanded his Synchronicity to infect the traitors’ contacts, spreading his influence even further before he began reaping his deaths. He took a sub-percentage of his cog cap to stain the traitor paladins with entropy, and then true-deathed them thereafter. As Veylis used time to unleash her will, Avo did the same with Conceptualization. His sequences erupted free from the traitor Paladins like rapidly growing jungles, layering themselves over the surrounding architecture of reality.
Less than a second later, a synchronous replica was made of the baseline world before severing his prey from both memory and existence. Using his Paracausal Retcontinuity, everything about New Volten remained the same when his Pattern-Nullification fell. Everything but a certain number of paladins patrolling the Tiers and observing the Warrens.
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Avo didn't remember them afterward. Neither did anyone else. Absences would come to be a mystery never to be solved. But Ignorance knew. Ignorance remembered, and Ignorance shivered at how they screamed as they realized cessation and death were not the same things.
GHOSTS - [2, 001,918,313]
LIMINAL FRAME (VI) - 6, 555,313 THAUM/c
UPDATING INFECTION…
ERROR! UNABLE TO SYNCHRONIZE WITH AFFECTED RESOURCES — SEVERE NETHER LAG DETECTED
The sudden influx of thaums notified Avo that the traitor Paladins were dealt with. When the Guilds came calling, they would find only silence. Silence and—Avo was surprised to find himself with access to more than a few high ranking Guilder contacts already. He couldn’t remember when he jacked their minds—Paracausal Retcontinuity was potent, but also discombubulating.
With that, a full second passed and Veylis’ opening attacks came to a halt as another blast of Soulfire gushed out from her as she gave a soft grunt. The faint mist of an all-powerful palm resonated within her very core, and a trailing slice continued to glide down the Demiurge's chest, severing strands of time that composed the titan's form.
Transferring the Rend out from the Paladins, Avo regarded his surroundings as Veylis's heaven consumed the Gatekeeper and the walls around the room. The Overheaven watched half the surrounding court was transformed. As tendrils of gold receded, a plane composed of rising marble columns above a sea of roar fire greeted him—-the very same plane Avo had tried to infiltrate during his first encounter with Veylis.
Upon these pedestals rose Highflame Godclads—assets brought in through Veylis’ paths. There were being drawn across, and beyond the temporally shielded threshold formed by the Paladins, Avo watched as thoughtwave detonations swept through the Saintist side of the court.
Slowly but surely, Veylis was amassing her own army in the paths. The long strip of space that composed the center of the court and the Massists' section remained untainted by her, and Avo assumed control of the Massist’s as best he could.
Stacks formed above a few critical people as Avo also prepared to sacrifice the Massists if it meant denying the Famines an attack vector.
With that thought, Avo felt the Nether sustain a blow as well, and heard a low roar of fury as the Hungers began exerting their pressure as well. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, but something was beginning to build in the overcurrents above reality.
"I commend you, Dreamer," Veylis said, her voice echoing from everywhere. The Demiurge now loomed over the horizon, the Heaven’s size akin to a planetary body hovering in orbit. In her shadow, Avo saw a massive form approaching as well. Osjon Thousand came striding as a giant, flanked by a dozen other powerful Godclads as well. Atop his head also stood a girl who bore many of his physical features.
]Ah, fuck,] Template-Abrel said. [He brought his daughter too… We’re facing everyone. Seraphs. Authorities. We’re facing everyone.] The Instrument’s template fared better than her actual self—still weeping too hard to offer anything of a cogent response. Avo wasn’t sure where her father or brother were, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he found them on the other side.
As more and more pillars began to rise, Avo's cog-feed registered a flood of new metaphysical signatures. More Godclads drawn into the paths. Their number was already nearing a thousand. But across the Tiers, Avo detected other metaphysical pressures as well—with a potent one building in Ori-Thaum especially.
"Don’t have long," Avo taunted, speaking directly to Veylis. “That cut’s going to strike you down sooner or—”
An ache emanated through him. A familiar ache he experienced once before. A phantasmal sore burst upon the Strix’s body as a spray of broken ghosts and twisted memories grew out from the Heaven like teratoma.
Curses and hisses came from the Paladins—from almost everyone present, as small sores began to spread across their body.
+Fuck. Godsdammit. Not again. Fuck!+ Shotin sent.
“Time is with none of us,” Veylis shot back. “Not for me. But most certainly not for you. It will take five minutes for my mother’s strike to become true. How many do you anticipate losing in those five minutes?”
{Love is a nasty thing,} the Infacer said, chuckling before their voice crackled with a discordant signal. {It will ruin just about everyone. Everyone. And while you were make dilemmas for us, we did the same for you. So. Better get one of your sequences up through the rupture and save your little Agnos.}
Then, the Neo-Creationist EGI broadcasted a pitched note into the world and projected a strange set of symbols. Their canon spilled from the static crown drifting upon the Demiurge's brow. It looked like a giant wearing a constellation as an adornment, with meteorites descending from their skull.
{Deploying memetics,} Kant said to Avo. {Prepare to intercept.}
As if on cue, a swarm of missiles infused with the lesser symbols and signals were fired across the void, and detonated themselves over and over again upon impacting the Strix. As more missiles exploded, his understanding grew, just in time for the next relatavistically delivered lesson to arrive. Rapidly, his Empathy and Hysteria generated a broad countermeasure against the coming attack, and Avo further laced his protections over his comrades.
After a moment longer, the Infacer simply sighed and directed an ansible communication to Kant. {You piece of shit. Stop feeding him homework.}
{But we are aligned, Infacer. Both of us are trying to resolve the issue of the Dreamer. Two sets of memetic attacks are better than one.}
{Cunt.}
Maru and Kare arrived next to Avo in that instant, the bearded senior paladin glaring hatefully at Osjon in the distance.
"None of you fucking touch him," he whispered. "That cocksucker's mine."
Instead of speaking, Stormsparrow merely pulled another burning mask hovering in the air and placed it upon Maru's face. He turned to stare at the sang, but she simply grinned.
"A small blessing to facilitate your attempt at revenge."
DRAMATIS PERSONAE ASSIGNED: HERO OF MIGHT
GRANTS YOU THE RIGHT TO SACRIFICE YOUR LIFE TO KILL ANOTHER ACTOR OF EQUAL OR LESSER IMPORTANCE. LOSES THIS ROLE UPON DEATH.
ACT 3 SCENE 1: THE SACRIFICE
“Now, with everyone else manifesting their Heavens…” the Stormsparrow finished her words by buried a clawed hand under her chin and, with a violent flourish, tearing her current face clean off.
But instead of dying and leaving an anchor, melodies and vibrant fibers erupted from her lacerations and threaded through each of the remaining masks spiraling above her. A colossal form wove itself into shape, the levitating masks slotted together forming one face of purest white, another bearing a visage weeping and blue, a third black, red, and furious, a fourth green, gold, and smiling. The rest of the Stormsparrow's body began to grow, but over her sheath materialized a brilliant raiment infused with song and power.
Each plate it sported was lined with crawling text, and looking upon them would cause a tune to fill one's ears. A layer of shadows also ensnared her six arms, with countless more hands reaching out along their sides, and a massive flame-red spear materializing in the air next to her. At the end of the spear trailed a crimson ink brush, and where it stroked existence, a red hare bounced from place to place.
PROTAGONIST OF THE ABBERANT CHORUS, NARRATOR’S NEMESIS (CULTURE/FORCE/WAR/STRENGTH/SPEED/SADNESS/HONOR/ANGER/THEATER/DIFFUSION) [EST. 44444444]
Avo regarded the Stormsparrow's Heaven for a moment, as he tried to comprehend just how these domains worked. He thought his Strix was esoteric, but a Heaven of Culture? What kind of cannons would that have?
[I… uh…] template-Kae sighed. [Avo. Try to get a closer look at her Frame if you can.]
He grunted in response. The Overheaven had a feeling he would be trying to kill her at some point in the future.
"You'll learn soon enough," the Storm Sparrow said, somehow overhearing his internal monologue. To make matters more disconcerting, her voice was coming from each of her masks now, making her the third Godclad present that spoke with a voice of their own legion. "Yes, I know. I think it says something about the Massist-Saintist zeitgeist that we all wish to command civilizations, or be civilizations unto ourselves. But that is a conversation for philosophers, and I am simply here to commit a murder. A very, very special murder.”
She pointed her spear at Veylis, the brush at its end leaving an unmaking stroke. Avo felt space part outright here the paint remained. As the rabbit hopped from place to place, it moved between separating patterns. It wasn't like his Paracausal Retcontinuity, but something else entirely—something that unraveled shapes, both material and metaphysical.
With additional focus, he perceived faint strands of red connecting it to each of her masks. It was suspected that her spear could only be directed on someone imbued with one of her masks. That was what his Conception of Ontology hinted at, anyway.
"Well, then," Stormsparrow said. “Time for me to start this song. Ghoul. Go find your damsel. I’m beginning to feel the rash growing down my back and I would like it if we could finish this thing before we all turn into pieces of modern infancidal artwork.”
But the Stormsparrow’s words were unneeded, for another submind was already in the process of performing said rescue.
***
Across the Tiers, golden domes materialized into existence, protecting essential Massist districts from Veylis opening assault. Her overextended paths dissipated before they could be caught within these counter-chronologies.
And then Highflame started experiencing their own set of random mass casualty event as Sanctus started shifting chronobombs into their Sovereignties as well. This was quickly joined by over a billion people getting nulled at once; flesh plagues sweeping through Stormtree; fracturing bolts of lightning and destruction pushing into Omnitech controlled territories, and a general exchange of fire between border troops.
Seen from orbit, the surface of New Vultun was a scintillating sight to behold. But with each glittering spot, millions died. And with each thread of gold, the opening blows of the Fifth Guild War were struck.
But through it all, as Saintist and Massist knots and cadres clashed all across the city, and the full might of the guilds were unleashed once more, a single tendril of phantasmal essence reached up into an open wound in the sky. This place, once sealed, a spatial demiplane, was a blockage preventing the leakage of the fallen heaven of love.
Immediately, a massive flood of Rend passed over into Avo. But he continued, rising higher to bring forth the resurrection of love, and more importantly, to save the life of a friend once stolen from him.
+Too much—it’s all too much,+ Kae moaned mentally, her tortured mind echoing from the depths of the Heaven. +I can’t stop—can’t stop love from—from falling.”