Now, I'm gonna say something today that might piss off all you circuit fans, but it has to be said.
Two auged-up chromers or a gaggle of razorgirls fighting in a small pit? That's not war. That's entertainment. Bloody entertainment. Hells, the fights might even be interesting, but that's not war. The same way what the Stormsparrow's doing isn't war either.
I'm sure you all cold-dived vicarities from past wars and got “second-hand” front-row seats to actual battles. Experienced life and death through the memories recovered from dead Guild assets. Fuck, the more connected among you consangs might’ve even tasted what it might be like to be a Godclad for a bit—risking thoughtscans and a nulling for the experience. This this still isn’t the full picture. You can never get the full picture from a single perspective.
When my time comes, one of the last memories will follow me over into the Big Nothing will be when Highflame's Seventh War Host slammed down against the battlelines formed by Akigami's First Spears during the Third Battle of Novonoi. Cursed godsdamned district, that one. Over 15,000 golems on both sides. One hundred and twenty million drones firing constantly, made the night brighter than day—blinding, even. And at the core of each army, 400 Highflame cadres came seeking the scalps of 152 Seeker cohorts.
It should have been a clean slaughter, but it wasn't.
The golems went in first. Formed forward operating demiplanes. Tried to achieve a breakthrough. Ruptures formed and Rend choked the world. And only after space and so many other Domains cracked on the surface of existence did the actual push begin. Because with the sheer amount of cannons, you don't just fling your Godclads into battle. You can be as high a Sphere as you want, but if they know your Domains, and they know your canon, you're going to get backlash, you're going to paradox, you're going to rupture, and you’ll cease to be.
At the end of the day, war isn't a battle, it's not a duel, it's a series of decisions. Choices for you. Dilemmas for your enemy. You try to stay out of trouble and keep your enemy in the pit. And above all else, spend less than they do. Fewer lives. Fewer resources. Less Rend. That’s the creation of a miracle. That’s why the Seekers managed to hold off the Seventh that day. That, and the fact that they had a few hundred Incubi cells with them as well.
There’s not much of a war to fight if you don’t even get to keep your mind.
-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens
28-14
Singularities (I)
–[Avo]–
War was the act of attempting to impose order upon the foundations of worsening chaos, and this was by far the most chaotic fight Avo ever found himself involved in.
Veylis’ drew more Saintist Godclads into her paths while manifesting calamities and flinging golems at the Paladin’s temporal shield. Avo countered by releasing two Spatial Rendbombs just past the threshold. The relative distance between objects and entities distended as if the space between them was elastic. Golems and drones arrived within ruptures, their attacks and movement trajectory responding as if caught in a tangle of falling ropes.
In the very same moment, over a thousand other patterns formed around the chamber. The paths shivered as miracles clashed. A living sea of time battled a network of mind. Symmetry clashed against symmetry as Paladins unleashed cones of extinguishing force against oncoming rifts of unceasing flame. Pockets of space formed—and were promptly compressed. Paladins backlashed and retreated—rotated out of the fight as Avo shifted them across the city using his gestalt.
He would drain their Rend as they recovered in the Warrens. Meanwhile, his war of Pre-Cognition against Veylis continued; he attacked, he defended; he shifted; he adapted. All this. At the same time, with such a level of complexity that almost no other Godclad could match.
Using his power over Continuum, Avo swapped both Green River and Cala with template-copies down in the Warrens as well. Template-copies that promptly detonated the tactical warheads they brought with him.
Lightning-carried projectiles of haemokinetic matter slashed out from within the Strix as tendrils of blood expanded from within its being. Coiling currents of crimson formed defensive barricades and armored shells around active Paladins and Massists. Ferromagnetic flechettes exploded out from the reflections in his blood—and the miracles contained within them mutated at an impossible pace.
A cadre Instrument attempted to form a spatial boundary to parry the shot. Only for the Fardrifter to burst forth from the round, its hydra-like body tunneling across Veylis’ paths. The High Seraph reacted. The area where Avo struck imploded in a cataclysm of matter and mind. But he was long gone—and so were Instruments.
Beyond space and time, an entire group of Instruments died wailing as a massive feline entity of impossible speed tore them apart. The Heaven that assailed them resembled a cat above all cats, with fangs that could rend any matter, with teeth that could pierce through any shield. Worse, yet, however, was the maze growing out from the cat, and the impossible alacrity it exhibited.
They tried to fight back, but they were all but Sphere Three Godclads: nothing more but prey for the Micemaker.
Soulfire spilled across the maze as Avo injected entropy into each dying Instrument. Seconds later, their ontologies and thaums were taken, and their consciousnesses ignited like blazing embers, descending into the burning ocean that was the gestalt.
Back in the court, a cutting edge pierced across the temporal shield and carved a bloody gash through half a dozen Paladins before it finally crashed against Avo’s Fortress of Luminosity. He counted three true deaths and nine anchors before sending the others a mem-data update. With his mind overlaid upon theirs, the Paladins were beyond fear, beyond moral; a perfectly synchronous organism that reacted, fought, and moved in perfect tandem.
And though Veylis’ power dwarfed Avo’s by far, she only wielded her soldiers like puppets, and so that was how they were used and spent.
A further edge was how Avo used his Definement of Pre-Cognition and exerted his Heavens with reckless abandon. Connected to the Rendsink below Scale and the border walls as well, the Rend passing through him was constantly in flux. Such rendered him a vulnerable target, and the entropy he channeled was still gradually climbing. But fighting with mind and metaphysics unfettered, he marked critical threats using his cog-feed, anticipated angles of assault no other could respond to, and impossibly, with all this support, fought back against the crushing might of the High Seraph herself.
The fact she was facing an even graver threat deep within her Heaven helped substantially as well. Avo could feel Naeko’s palm striking the paths, making the streams of gold tremble. The Chief Paladin’s hits were getting stronger now. Heavier. More. He wasn’t alone, and though the actual fight between him and the High Seraph had only lasted five real-time seconds, Veylis’ faced a terminal deadline before the way to the Gatekeeper stood clean.
And when the opportunity came, Avo would repair the Heaven of Truth, and turn its gaze and power against the High Seraph and her forces themselves.
Simultaneously, another two of his subminds resolved matters with the Massists as well; between Ambassador Kitzuhada, the Fatalist, Shotin, Empty Grave, Navigator Hosul of Sanctus, and Avo’s Synchronicity, non-combatants were pulled from the field via shifting demiplanes or phantasmal transference. In the very same instant, he also dealt with the D’Rongo’s as well.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
He didn’t even bother burning them. Too many of their number still trembled with dormant warminds. Instead, Avo just channeled directed disruptions to scatter their minds before a single flechette punched a clean route through each of their skulls. They died without ever knowing what killed them, while Elder Mwaba D’Rongo was casually nulled.
There was still something Avo wanted to get out of her, but he couldn’t risk the Famines emerging from her mind. And ultimately, she was expendable. The elder didn’t even get the chance to cry out before her consciousness shattered—Avo took special care to obliterate her Phylactery Phantasmic as well.
With the fronts of combat simplified, The tessellating stones that composed the Massist seating area peeled away, revealing cadres of Seekers, Fatalists, Bloodthanes, chronoframes, golems, drones, and more.
Activated Incubi cells emerged out from the mind of Ori-Thaum’s present Godclads, and Avo clouded all thoughtcasts they received to ensure their alliance with the Paladins. A tide of snarling Woundhounds assembled just before the temporal dome manifested by the Paladins, while Fatalists spewing every kind of entropy imaginable stomped forward in their Rendskins.
But while everyone was scrambling to get in position, while Avo and his gestalt were already engaging the enemy—tearing through every vulnerable target he could sense via liquefaction, Necrotheurgy, the gunfire, imploding genitalia, soundwaves, and more—a rousing wail exploded from the Stormsparrow’s many faces and masks peeled from her ontology like a barrage of missiles. They passed through the Paladin’s dome into Veylis’ vanguard without difficulty, marking them with her power. Then, as the Knots and wings battled to stabilize themselves, Avo felt the patterns of reality coil around them, growing tighter and tighter as if nooses around necks.
THE ROLE DEMANDS YOU DANCE TO THE ORCHESTRA OF FATE;
FULFILL THIS DECREE, LEST YOU LEARN DESTRUCTION’S WEIGHT!
The song blared, and the mask seared upon the hulls of golems and drones came aglow. And then, one by one, the patterns snapped away from them, and suddenly Avo felt the Stormsparrow’s Heaven invert with her Hell. The rabbit trailing behind the lance fused with the weapon, and a blossoming color dappled reality with cataclysmic energy. The plates of the PROTAGONIST OF THE ABBERANT CHORUS turned bone pale and screaming skulls burst out from her four heads, drowning all in a soul-shaking screaming.
Caught by the vibrations of her outrage, her marked prey trembled in place, and Avo noticed Veylis withdraw more of her paths. Simulated chronology receded. Patches of the court returned as golden streams splashed across tessellating bricks. 120 golems and ten times that in drones tumbled through a pocket of anomalous space—an anomaly that did nothing to impede the Stormsparrow’s following strike.
Strings fused around the Stormsparrow’s multi-hued spear. Strings signifying every Domain that clung to the masked targets a moment prior.
TO DENY THE CHORUS IS TO BE STRICKEN FROM THE STAGE;
FOR THIS ACT OF IMPUDENCE, I, THE HERO OF HEROES, WILL STRIKE YOU FROM THE PAGE!
The Stormsparrow extended her spear in a contemptuous thrust, and despite the fallen state of space, the strike arrived anyway, a crimson path created by the hops of a rabbit. The spearhead followed the blood-red route, zipping forth with a crushing weight of inevitable devastation. As it impacted, the golems and drones didn’t explode so much as they shattered to the ringing of a distant gong. And as they were destroyed, a faint imprint of their forms was left upon reality, causing more colors to well over into that unstable pocket of existence from a place unknown.
A layering of velvet curtains furled in front of the Paladins’ defensive shielding, and Avo felt a raw Destructive power nested within their thinness—a Destruction the likes of which he never felt before.
More, Avo’s Hysteria captured a cry of sudden alarm from Veylis, deepening his respect for the canon.
“Back! To me, my Instruments! Be away from her Stage!”
And the Stormsparrow’s odd miracle wasn’t done. From the bottom of the curtains expanded polished floorboards of glistening wood. Something of an odd stage expanded across the court, its width expanding across the center portion of the chamber, extending countless kilometers in less than a second. Avo felt the spatial ruptures get pushed away from him, as if that patch was space was different from what this was.
Rather than a changing of planar reality, the Stormsparrow’s miracle was an act of thaumaturgic alchemy. It overwrote the nature of present reality, expanded from her very being like a projected zone.
Seizing the moment, Avo imposed his will on the Saintists, and devoted a full [10%] of his cog-cap to Hysteria.
COG-CAP: [83.999%]
Where Veylis was a singularity unto chronology, Avo was a leviathan of the Nether. Time was her clay; consciousness was his, and though the Infacer veiled the Saintists with their power, the Definement of Hysteria would not be denied. He didn’t need a direct connection to sense what thoughts consumed them; what emotions ruled them.
Anxiety. Pride. Battle-lust.
These were the prevailing mental weaknesses that plagued Veylis’ forces, and these were the same traits he would amplify. The same way Emotion affected him during their encounter at the Flavors of the Deep.
At once, explosions of hyper-charged dread, arrogance, and near-feral fury swept through the mustering Highflame Godclads and Avo felt the barely formed frontlines of his opposition crumble. Only the most self-determined among Veylis’ contingent kept themselves controlled, and with this being just a boost to inherent, existing emotions, the Highflame war host was entirely unprepared entire chunks of their forces peeled away.
Heavens manifested. Attacks came, calamities forged from every possible Domain. Avo’s Conception of Ontology feasted as he took in the shifting patterns of reality, but nothing pierced the Stormsparrow’s thin, crimson curtains. Not physical attacks. Not spatial onslaughts. Not even enemy Heavens.
Whatever greeted that threshold simply broke apart. Popping violently into a splash of colors before leaving an imprint on the surface of reality.
A tidal wave of gold shifted as Veylis shunted her forces back. A series of Thoughtwave Detonations went off among them, popping their beguiled minds and leaving Avo with nothing to draw on.
Despite this, the Overheaven just chuckled. His Metamind registered at least two thousand mental signatures. Judging from the death anchors dotting the surface of the curtains, Veylis was likely already short twenty Instruments.
+Quite the canon,+ Avo said, hissing with envy at the Stormsparrow’s miracles.
+Right?+ The Sang said, cackling girlishly. Her stage only continued to expand, but already, Avo sensed a change building within the paths. Time beyond the Paladin’s shield began to slow as the patterns of Veylis’ Heaven changed. A feeling of alarm grew within Avo as Demiurge’s metaphysical pressure climbed—
Only for the paths encircling the court to dissipate with a splash of Soulfire, exposing the Saintist cadres. Streams of gold speared back toward the Demiurge, a small patch of chronology enveloping her. Tendrils of time burrowed through her being as she committed more of her effort to suppressing a foe within her.
A foe trying to burst free.
Vaporous fingers were slipping out from the High Seraph’s Heaven, and with it came an oppressive presence that choked force and unmade violence. For a moment, Avo thought the Chief Paladin was going to hatch free from his former lover, but the paths around the demiurge tightened, and a golden weaving thickened at the titan’s core as she turned her attention on Avo and the Stormsparrow once more.
Reaching inside herself, Veylis drew another Heaven free—but it was not Naeko that emerged. Not. The jingling chains of the Gatekeeper slipped out from the resplendent exterior of the Demiurge, and once more, it fully manifested itself.
A meta-cosmos spilled across the battlefield, painting everyone caught in the desperate struggle. But as it did, something else happened. The stars began to come closer and planetary bodies accelerated toward them.
PHY-SIM ALERT!
WARNING MULTIPLE OBJECTS MOVING AT 0.23C
Avo’s Luminosity flared once more as suns, planets, and collapsing walls of gravity collapsed down upon his forces like existential pillars. But before he prepared to endure the devastation—Veylis invoked a power that wasn’t truly her own.
“TRUTH! CAN LIGHT PREVENT DESTRUCTION?”
The Heaven of Truth groaned as if under impossible strain. Finally, it forced out a response. “False!”
And suddenly, Avo saw the Domain of Truth overlap with his Domain of Luminosity, its patterns now on a collision course with his canons. He barely dissolved his Fortress of Luminosity in time to avoid a paradoxing with the Gatekeeper, but the first star accelerated across the cosmos—
Only for the Stormsparrow to fling a blank mask into the air. At once, a painted visage detonated over everyone present, and as the Heaven of Truth denied Avo’s canon, the Stormsparrow’s Chorus likewise gave only mocking laughter as slamming planets, stars, and cosmic calamity only painted the once plain mask with newfound color.