“So…”
“No, Zein—why must everything be turned into a blade? What purpose does it serve?”
“The idea of beheading someone when they fall in love or get intimate amuses me. It will serve as a sublime assassination method as well Imagine—”
“I can imagine that, dearest, and it sounds horrible. This, I expect from the Infacer, not you. There’s no duel in this.”
“Yes. But it’s amusing.”
“No… it is amusing to you. But that’s not what we’re trying to do with this… Love is a terrible thing to wield. It bends the wills of man. It bends our thoughts. It is like a singularity—you’ve stopped listening.”
“Hm? Apologies, my love, I felt the urge to practice drawing from the hilt.”
“Who have you killed now.”
“No one that matters. But please. Continue speaking. I do like it when you prattle on about philosophy.”
“....Love is a brittle blade. Strike with it only when you wish to break, and do not fear breaking yourself in the process.”
“Mhhm. Were those the fancy words you were putting together in your head all this time? The ones your whole speech was building toward?”
“...Yes.”
“They were very nice. Have I mentioned that I love you?”
“Yes. Zein… who did you kill?”
-Zein Thousandhand and Jaus Avandaer
30-10
Post-Heaven Clarity
Chambers stared at his own reflection bobbing at the center of his half-empty cup. He focused on his own face, studied his bloodshot eyes, sniffled a trail of snot back up his nose. The silence was good too. Silence was awesome. Silence meant that he didn’t need to deal with anything or talk to anyone. If there was a problem, his copies in the Council of Fuck could intervene on his behalf.
He didn’t need to look at Cas—who was just a seat away from him, tearing into an entire chicken on his own. Or Marlowe, who changed out of her previous clothes and put on a neon-yellow body glove that didn’t help the situation. The Council of Fuck was having its own discussion, with Ghost-Links connecting the twenty or so other Chambers as they chained their thoughts together. Every now and again, one of the copies would eye Chambers or Cas or Marlowe, the thoughts would rush between them at a higher tempo.
He didn’t tell them shit. He didn’t want to tell them shit. He knew how his other “selves” would react.
“Oh, you got cum powers? You got ultimate cum powers and you’re moping? What the fuck, half-strand!”
“Shit, if you don’t want the Heaven I’ll take it. Are you sure you’re the original? Maybe Avo hid the actual Chambers-Number-One somewhere else. We’re supposed to be the ultimate half-strand! Unbreakable! Hard as steel!”
That, or they might just start insinuating he was a sow, and the Heaven needs someone with actual girth to use it. Might even ask him to increase their cock sizes a few times while playing around. If they did, though, Chambers might just kill one of them in a fit of rage.
“I didn’t mean to be,” the Lovebringer whispered inside him. “I didn’t mean to be this way. I just wanted to—”
“Me too,” Chambers thought, replying to his Heaven. He took another sip from his drink to press down on the weight building in his throat. “But I wasn’t enough. You’re a god. Your… your shaped like what you are. But me… I’m a junkie. And somehow, after all these good days, after turning into a Godclad and what Avo gave to me, I forgot about that. I forgot about who I was.”
“But you are more as well,” the Lovebringer replied. “You felt the power, you wanted to do well.”
“No. I just wanted people to feel good. ‘Cause I wanted to feel good. Because I never felt that good before and tasting true love and true lust ate me from the inside. Like fire. You’re the Heaven. I’m… I’m like my dad. Him with his drinking, me with my vics and fucked up fetishes. Broken pieces of shit survived too long because of chance, getting too far because someone else felt bad for us.”
The Heaven paused, trying to parse his final words. “How odd that you compare your mother’s role in your father’s life to Avo’s place in yours.”
“No. He should have never been a dad. And I’m not much of a Godclad.”
“No, Chambers,” the Lovebringer sighed. They tried to pull at the Ties That Bind—grasp the connection running across the world around Chambers—but he stopped them. “I seek only one bond. One bond that is missing.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“The one between you and yourself. I felt your envy for Cas. Your near hatred of what he had. Dannis told you what you need to do. But being hard for yourself isn’t just pushing through suffering. You’ve done that all your life, Chambers. Everyone can suffer. Some people just drop before you do.”
“Then what the fuck is being hard about?”
“Being hard is surviving what breaks you. And that’s living. That’s moving away from what numbed you before. I hurt you with love because you never knew its flavors, and you drowned in the taste. I broke you with lust because that’s where you run when all you’ve known is pain.”
Despite the kindness in the Heaven’s words, a rage built in Chambers. An important rage. He wanted to tell the Lovebringer to go fuck itself. He wanted to hurt himself. He wanted to fight Cas, or run away, or turn on a vic and hot-sim a torture porn session. Anything. Anything other than rotting in his own sheathe right now.
He clenched his glass. His hands were shaking. Chambers looked at his own reflection again and watched his lip curl. Bitch. Was the bitch about to cry? Was he going to be a sow now? No. And he wasn’t going to deep-dive into his own Meta right now either. Even if his body was screaming for it. He couldn’t risk feeding his lust right now—not when he had the literal God of Lust and Love burning inside him.
“Fucking pussy,” Chambers muttered at himself. His thoughts turned back to the moment when his father shoved a hot gun barrel under his armpits. The sizzling. The screaming. Yeah, there it was. Misery. Trauma. Nothing sexy about it. That’ll keep him centered. With a surge of anger, he threw his drink back, felt the alcohol burn down his throat, and centered himself after.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
It took another eternity before he finally found the strength to stare at Cas or Marlowe, and when it did, it started with glances and peeks. Then, he coughed as he watched the Columner pull an entire chunk off a chicken leg. “So… that shit was kinda fucked, huh, consangs.”
Cas chewed slowly but didn’t look at Chambers. When he finally swallowed, he breathed through his nose and closed his eyes. “We’re not talking about it.”
“You’re not; I am,” Marlowe interrupted. She spoke casually, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. A full inversion from how she and Cas were at the start the matter. “So, you two found pieces of Agnos Kusanade’s corpse, a shard of Avo, and that shard—and the corpse—apparently chose Chambers to bear the Heaven of Love.”
“Part of it.” Misery boiled inside Chambers as he thought of Kae. Right. Fuck. Couldn’t have made things even worse if he tried. She trusted him and he immediately—
“You know that Heaven was never meant to be used by a single person, right?” Marlowe continued. “Jaus had it modified to suit all of us. If Avo picked you… well, he must’ve anticipated something like this might happen.”
Chambers stared flatly at Marlowe. “Avo wanted me to make over twenty-five thousand people orgasm themselves to death?”
Marlowe threw up her hands and shrugged. “Fuck, maybe. Maybe they were Sleepers. Maybe it’s part of his grand plan, or he saw something in the future with his ultra-mind powers. I don’t know—you know him better than I do.”
“No one really knows Avo anymore,” Chambers replied softly. “I did. Can guess what he might do but… he hasn’t been just a person for a good while.”
“That’s a high-end estimate, too,” Cas joined in.
“What?” Chambers said.
Cas plate was empty aside from a neatly arranged set of bones. “The deaths. Threshold did a preliminary analysis. You’re thinking worse case—”
“I felt them die, Cas,” Chambers answered. “I felt the bond dissolve.”
“Yeah. I saw the backlash hit you. Listen, you need to vent your Rend at some point, so…”
“No. No, I’m not—I can’t use it. Not right now. It’s too much for me, I might—”
“We’re not going to have a choice soon, Chambers,” Cas said, sinking into his chair. “Yeah. Terrible shit happened. Yeah. This isn’t what you wanted, and your hands are covered in blood. But guess what? That’s the way things go when you’re in a war. We’re not perfect. We aren’t angels. Not you. Certainly not me. Fuck, if I got that Heaven and did what you just did… I don’t know. I don’t want to know what that might do to me. But if not us, then the Guilds would have claimed it, the No-Dragons would have made it into a weapon—and had a shard of the Stillborn as well.”
Everyone fell silent at that. Until one of the copies tried to open their mouth. Chambers summoned his Bioigniter’s fleshwarping miracles and fused a layer of flesh over their moving lips, leaving the copy mumbling babbled nothings.
“Anyone else try to butt in gets their dick folded inwards,” Chambers threatened without any particular gusto.
Marlowe gave Chambers a light frown. “Seriously, though, I know this has all been kinda fucked up. Snuffing so many people always is but… Can’t you just, I don’t know, activate your Lustaway and just practice?”
“It’s too much for the Lustaway,” Chambers said. “Strongest thing I’ve ever felt. It was perfect, Marlowe you… I don’t want to fight it when I use the Heaven. It’s like I’m a druggie with an unlimited supply of premium shit I can use at any time, and I can force everyone else to have my high too. Fuck, I might need to find a mender. Might need to see if they can sequence my mind and make me someone who isn’t me. Should’ve had Avo give me that rather than a massive cock.”
“What?” Marlowe blinked.
“Fine,” Cas said. A beat followed. “Actually, I support you not using the Heaven’s miracles for now. It’s a good idea. Not till we can figure out a way to keep you under control while it’s active. But we’re still going to need to find the other shards scattered around the city… and there’s another thing as well… With the Nether down, communications are fucked and everything is a mess. Correspondence isn’t limited by space from what I could see…”
“Yeah,” Chambers said, sniffing. “Pretty nifty, huh?”
“Pretty useful. Chambers, we have a rare opportunity here to gain absolute thaumaturgical dominance over the Guilds. We can know things before they do, coordinate our attacks better than they can, affect them without being affected. Your Heaven is one of a kind right now with the Remembrance’s destruction, and even if you don’t manifest it, we need to be using it. We need to.”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Chambers groaned. “But… I don’t know. I’m just afraid. If you didn’t have your faith, I would’ve made everyone ruin their pants, killed them with overflowing pleasure and love, then overloaded eventually from backlash. Wasn’t a chance for me to get out of that.”
Cas snorted. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“You’re an addict and a fucking mess, Aedon Chambers, but you ever try to take a needle from a Joyfiend?”
“The half-strands will try to bite you and shit.” Chambers nodded.
“Exactly. And I talked you down. I managed to get you to let go. Words don’t work on addicts, usually. So. Whatever you’re saying to yourself right now? That’s bullshit. At least part of it. And so you should trust what I think of you more than what you think of yourself right now.”
“And what do you think of me?” Chambers asked, somewhere between encouraged and intimidated.
“That you’re an imperfect vessel. No worse than Cyrus who came before you. And also: fuck you, I liked those pants, and I want to jack you in the sack for forcing me to ruin them.” A disbelieving series of chuckles escaped Cas.
“Sorry,” Chambers winced. “You can jack my sack if you want.”
“Fuck no. I’ve seen the kind of shit you like—that’ll just hyper-charge your sadomasochism.”
“Well, genital mutilation is pretty tame for the Low Master Collection—” Marlowe interrupted.
Cas bent the vibrations carrying her words away from them, making her voice seem like it was echoing in from afar. “You… be quiet. We’re not going there. I don’t want any details about Dannis or whatever nightmarish sex-hell-torture he experienced.”
“Dannis is the only reason I could stop earlier,” Chambers muttered.
“Yeah? And he’s also most of the reason you started in the first place.” Cas shook his head.
“I’m going clean,” Chambers replied. “I’m going to stay out of the vics.”
“Yeah. Good idea. I’ll see if I can requisition a neuro-mod from Threshold too. A reconfiguration might be good for you right now.”
“Right,” Chambers blinked. Fuck, he was so deep in his fuck that he didn’t even think of that. He was still part of Aegis. They had all kinds of sweet coldtech shit that could make him better. But right as he thought about Voidwatch, a call came through his exo-cortex, triggering his ansible. Seemed Calvino was thinking about him too. But strangely, the caller ID was entirely void.
INCOMING []
Chambers winced. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Across from him, Cas frowned. “Chambers, you getting a call from a blank ID too?”
“Yeah…”
Uncertainly, Chambers answered. But no avatar loaded into his cog-feed. No greeting came from Calvino. Instead, a deep, thunderous voice spoke, and with every syllable, Chambers felt his gut and asshole tighten with animal terror at wrong the voice sounded.
{Good afternoon, Operative Chambers. You have secured a fragmented part of the Remembrance—the Fallen Heaven of Love.}
“Are you two getting a Voider-cast again?” Marlowe asked.
Neither Chambers or Cas replied to her. The thoughtcaster threw up her hands in frustration.
“Probably,” one the Chambers copies cried out from the far end of the room. “Probably getting his ass creamed by Kant or something for mass murder. They were always uptight when Avo accidentally did some collateral damage. Well, a lot of collateral damage. Shit, Avo snuffed and nulled a whole lot of people, come to think about it… Meh, we’re probably fine. Whatever we did.”
They were, in fact, not fine as the unknown EGI continued. {In confirmation of our successful mission, we congratulate you for your success. But what followed cannot be allowed to happen again. The Heaven of Love has been rated as a Threat-Level [Black] construct in the danger it represents to the polities should it be used improperly, and I am here to ensure that things to do reach that point.}
{Right….} Chambers replied. {Listen, it’s nice to meet you and all, but Calvino—}
{EGI IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A WANDERER has been reassigned. I am Contingency Bleak: Refusal. And there are a few things I wish to inquire.}
And in the real, a single word escaped Cas’ lips as he sank against the table. “Fuck.”