I don’t know! I don’t know what’s happening to the rash! I don’t fucking know why it’s changing! We need to get out, we need to…

Oh…

Oh, I see now…

I see…

I… It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.

-Mem-Log of Agnos Nasu Kalimus

30-7

By Love Are We Bound

—[Cas]—

Uncertainty had been Cas’ life. Uncertainty about if he was going to be alive or dead in the next few seconds. Uncertainty with every word he spoke, every asset he saved or burned. Uncertainty, because when you played games in the dark with the Great Guilds of Noloth, you lost more than you won, and lessons learned came in the form of lives lost.

All that uncertainty couldn’t match what he was feeling right now. The Heaven of Love gripped him with a different kind of anxiety altogether—the cold dread that reminded him that he was just a demiurge and not an actual angel. That there were things twisted and unknowable even to him. Avo had been one of those things, but the abyss was easier to enter when you knew it was benevolent.

Well, as benevolent as a flesh-eating monster could be.

But as rippling tides of fire collapsed around Chambers—reshaped his fucked up Heaven of Dicks, two pressures clenched in Cas’ chest. The first had to do with the No-Dragons; no way they didn’t notice this. Trouble was going to be coming. And soon. The second was with Chambers. Cas trusted the former Enforcer enough, and no truly was ever too far in the dark to redeem themselves and earn the Lord’s righteous embrace. But the shard of Love was broken, and Chambers was just a man. A tortured man who, despite all his growth, remained less than an ideal candidate to hold so much power.

But then again, who ever was? The Godclads were all iconoclasts draped in the flesh of the eldritch beasts born of man’s fallen culture. From the flesh of Idheim, this Nu-Soddom given form, goodness fell as paltry embers amidst a sea of fetid black. None were worthy of their power. None should be able to wield the might of creation. And those that did so inflicted upon mankind their blackest age.

Shielding himself from the collapsing wavelengths of fire, Cas cried out to Chambers repeated, tried to use soundwaves to draw him in. All that to no avail. Chambers was someplace between flesh and spirit now, his transforming superimposing his debauched but noble Heaven over his body.

Around them, the twisted interior of the megablock was coming apart. The mangled nest enmeshed with fused bodies and half-formed births wasn’t so much collapsing as it was pulling apart at the metaphysical seams. Trails of Soulfire pulled the nightmarish architecture into Chambers along a million wires. They glided into him, and sprouted forth thereafter like a mess of briars from his Heaven.

“Chambers!” Cas called again. No response. The Columner tried using his ansible and found no success there, either. Without further recourse, he turned his connection to Thresholds most clandestine servers and sent out a wide-broadcast to Aegis. {This is Operative Canduir. We have secured a shard of the Remembrance, but Operative Chambers is… undergoing changes. We are located at Everpeace Tower—anticipate heavy No-Dragon response.}

Calvino immediate sent him a direct connection and Cas accepted. {What’s his condition?}

Cas paused as he tried to observe Chambers. The ontological presence of the man was growing, and the world around him was burning brighter than ever. Cas wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been consumed by the Soulfire was well. Perhaps it was because whatever remained of the Stillborn could differentiate him from the architecture of Fallen Love. Or maybe this was Chambers’ doing. Whatever the case, power was flowing into Chambers. A lot of power, and not just from here. Considering all the tunnels leading off into different directions, it wouldn’t surprise Cas if the infection was interconnecting several different portions of the city to the same liminal space.

{I got no fucking idea,} Cas finally admitted. {He’s not responsive right now but—}

A sudden tug cut Cas off. The Columner let out a surprised gasp as he nearly felt himself get torn of his manifested Heaven. The presence that pulled at him was something beyond force or space. It was a kind of inexorable pressure connected to how he felt given tangible gravity. He felt it earlier when the Fallen Heaven of Love drew him and Chambers across to the disfigured heart at the core of this place.

“Cas?” Chambers voice came from inside Cas, from all around him as well.

“Chambers?” Cas replied, speaking through his Heaven. Distant soundwaves pulsed over him. Cas caught the noise and isolated them quickly—buzzing wings. Scout bioforms, most likely. The No-Dragons were coming. They needed to get gone, and get gone now.

The shape of Chambers’ Heaven was increasingly changing into a tangled mesh. The wires passing from him into his manifesting demiurge were extending further and further, streching beyond the limits of this physical space. But a few burrowed into Cas. They didn’t hurt upon passing into his being, but he felt them there, and he felt the force gripping his emotions grow even stronger.

Do not worry. A third voice boomed within Cas. He knew this one as well—Ignorance; Avo’s subconsciousness. Chambers is changing. Becoming something else. Some he can find purpose in. Not lost to you. Not nearly.

“Yeah, but I need him—”

The No-Dragons will not be able to stop him. For they want. They feel. Their threads are obvious. Let them come. Let Chambers learn. But the road ahead… harder for me to see. Uncertain. Paths and imagined histories comingle. Love is broken. New Vultun has been made up of broken people chasing desires for so long. Wounds have been left. In this comes symmetry. They are Chambers. And he is them. Together might they create new bindings. Or together may they fall to the absence at their core. To indulge in lust and depravity deprived from their tastes for so long. Love is lost. Need you, Cas. Good man. Righteous man in this sunken place. Need you to be a shepherd. And a consang… for him… while I am not…

Ignorance’s words and existence faded from Cas’ mind like drifting wind, but even without the Definement, purpose filled him. The Soulfire around Chambers was dimming. The No-Dragons were fast approaching. But they weren’t his main concern. Chambers was. Chambers needed his help somehow—this Cas knew in a place deeper than his bones.

{Attention Cas,} Calvino said casually. {I’ve gotten a report that one of our logistical delivery capsules has “malfunctioned” and is currently on track to impact Everpeace Tower. We will see it dispersed into polyfoam to reduce any possibility of damage, though this might encase a good few blocks in fast-decaying cocoon-like substance for an hour.}

{Yeah?} Cas chuckled as he exposed his fully manifested Heaven to existence. The vibrating sphere he was elongated to become a cross-shaped guitar, with shivering strings and wood molded from quavering water. If they were about to make a fight of this, there wasn’t any point of turtling up. {Seems like someone up there is looking after us.}

Stolen novel; please report.

{Appears to be so. Get out of there as soon as you can, operative.}

{Synced on that.}

Beside him, the last of the radiance peeled away from the megablock into Chambers, restoring the interior of Everpeace Tower to its original state. Instead of being lost in down a canal of bodies and births, Cas beheld thousands of corpses strewn about a curved surface. From afar, it looked as if someone had carved the shape of bowl out of the once-immense structure, exposing a good three-fourths of its mass to the elements. Neither were they kilometers deep anymore. No, a swarm of drones and Whalequeens were coming, their bodies blotting out the neon-red warning lights veiling the exterior of the block.

Fuck it. Let them come. Cas began to pluck the Low E string on his Heaven. Been a while since he played something heavy; something angry with a tinge of grunge. They bugs were coming to make a mess of themselves, and he was than content to oblige. Soundwaves passed out from Cas and as they traveled they displaced matter outward by inches, compressing the exterior with the interior.

In about five or so seconds, the first of his notes would hit the coming swarm and from them would sound a series of pops. Cas would then amplify the volume of those pops and keep plucking away at his Dissonant Grumble, let ‘em break themselves on the approach.

“Kinda like that noise,” Chambers said. He sounded pretty coherent by now, and Cas found himself relieved. There, the two of them hovered at the epicenter of the gouged megablock, the residence now resembling a cleaved cauldron carpeted with human bodies. But where Chambers’ “special” Heaven had been an absurd throne of dicks before, now it was something else altogether.

Tendrils of soft, pale magenta composed the vagueness of a human form. With every second, the seams made up by these tendrils would throb in mimicry of a heart. Wide, misshapen fingers jutted out from the sides of the Heaven, and a thousand strings extended in all directions, connecting what once was Chambers’ Fucktopia to all corners of the world. He was the heart o a growing nest—a nest that included Cas as well—a nest that sought the oncoming bioforms. The supposed head of Chambers’ new Heaven resembled an open portal into a place filled with pulsating tissue, while a grand void-black absence left a deep furrow where his heart was supposed to be.

And through it all, the feeling of gravity that Cas felt only intensified. There was a pull here. A pull between all things, exerted through these growing strings, and all Chambers needed to was tug…

MEM-DATA UPDATED

HEAVEN IDENTIFIED

FUCKTOPIA > LOVEBRINGER (LOVE/CORRESPONDENCE/BIOLOGY/FORCE/LUST) [EST. 888,888 THAUM/C]

***

—[Chambers]—

Aedon Chambers knew what it was like to be connected with someone else. He connected with people before via shared vics, shard Ghost-Links, shared mem-cons, shared organs—usually stolen—and even shared needles in desperate times. With a Metamind, you could get pretty close to being an empathy if you tweak your settings, disabled your wards, and just dissociated from yourself for a while. But all these things paled before the sheer connectivity he felt right now.

Thoughts were only part of the whole. How people felt… wasn’t what Chambers expected at all. All his life, he liked to imagine the Heaven of Love as a strange fucked-up bucket of shit, piss, booze, kidney stones, and other stuff everyone used as a communal drinking well. How could that many people use the same thing without leaving it like a public shithole, after all.

But that wasn’t it. Love wasn’t some kind of spring to draw from. It was a weight that could wax and wane. It was a set of connections that bound things together, like some kind of mess physics system. It was all the things you yearned for and thought of, and would give anything to have, and how they connected to you. Love was a leash. Love was a series of interlaced fingers. Love was clinging. Love was a lingering gaze.

Love was an idea: apart, but also a new whole together.

A wholeness he was now a cornerstone too. Strings escaped Chambers—-the strings that composed his new Heaven, Fucktopia no more. They passed through all that could feel around him; those that were capable of love or want, and everything that could be loved beside.

“All yearns to be joined,” the Lovebringer sang. Their voice wasn’t that much different from the Fucktopia, but higher, lighter, and far more resonant. Manifesting the Heaven felt strange. Different than all the Heavens Chambers manifested before. He wasn’t just a metaphysical entity bound to one place anymore. Instead, he was constantly stretching, like an aratnid weaving parts of its own flesh into a web. It took what felt like an eternity for Chambers to claw his way through the nest of connections and strings, and now, as he assumed the mantle of the Heaven within the emptiness at his core, he perceived the world around him not with eyes but connection. Links. Tethers.

Bonds.

CANONSTIES THAT BIND (IV) (LOVE/CORRESPONDENCE/FORCE): YOU CAN PULL AT BONDS OF LOVE, LUST, OR DESIRE BETWEEN ENTITIES. THE INTENSITY OF THEIR YEARNING BECOMES THE STRENGTH YOU CAN APPLY. YOU CAN MERGE BONDS THAT SHARE EXTREME SIMILARITIES AND MAGNIFY THEIR EFFECTS.

HUBRIS: YOU WILL SUFFER VARIABLE BACKLASH SHOULD A BOND OF LOVE BE LOST BASED ON THE STRENGTH CONTAINED WITHIN THE BOND.

ABSENTHEARTED (LOVE/CORRESPONDENCE): YOU CHOOSE ANOTHER OBJECT, ENTITY, OR EVEN IDEA TO BECOME AN OBJECT OF YOUR AFFECTION. A REPRESENTATION OF THE OBJECT WILL FILL YOUR HEART AND FEELINGS OF ABSOLUTE LOVE WILL PERVADE YOUR BEING. THE MORE OBJECTS YOU USE TO FILL YOUR ABSENTHEARTEDNESS, THE FASTER YOUR REND WILL CLIMB.

HUBRIS: LOSING YOUR OBJECT OF DESIRE WILL RESULT IN EXTREME (70%) BACKLASH

C0–2NNA

[ERROR]

REPAIRING LINGERING DAMAGE

REVERTING REMAINING CANONS

Chambers jolted out from his euphoric reverie. Damn. The Heaven of Love was one broken sow. He could still feel the pieces drifting inside him. “You alright, Fuck—uh, Lovebringer?”

Wait? Lovebringer? Did he choose that name? He didn’t remember—

“It’s what I wish to be called,” his Heaven answered. The tendrils leading out from it were tightening. Chambers felt the bioforms shooting toward him—felt them by the faintest connections between them and the Whalemaws. And from the Whalemaws the bonds expanded even more, stretching all around the Chambers for well over three kilometers.

There were other bonds here too. Bonds between people. Illicit lovers working in the same area. Siblings. Comrades. The strength in these bonds traced thaumaturgical bridges across the skeletal cage surrounding Everpeace Tower and beyond. To Chambers’ surprise, his reach extended as far as their yearning, with binds traveling for hundreds of kilometers away. Yet, the tether was still attached to him. Yet, he could still pull on the connection, if he so chose.

“Oh, gods, what the fuck now? I hope my daughter is okay…”

“Ni Wa? Where are you? Where are you? Please be okay!”

“What the hells are we looking at? Are those Heavens? Did we get infiltrated by hostile Godclads? Fuck, if those are Godclads I don’t want to be here…”

Words filtered through Chambers. By the merits of his links, his ontology passed through them, aligned him with them, and allowed him a peek into their hearts and minds. The sursurring information was nigh-constant, as was the building hunger that filled his body. He wanted… flesh? No. These were impulses passing over into him from another set of strings. The bioforms. The Whalemaws. Some bonds broke as the first wave of bioforms slammed into Cas’s low-noted strumming.

Chitinous apes flattened into themselves. Hundreds of bioforms came folded inward in layers, matter displaced by wavelengths of space. But thousands more came. And the Whalequeens let out keening bellows. The deaths of the first wave of bioforms tightened the bonds between the remainder of their kind and their spawner Whalequeens as well.

“Chambers,” Cas said, voice reverberating from all around. “I don’t know what changed for you Heaven besides all the cocks getting turned into pubes, but you better do something, or we’re going to be in the actual shit when their Godclads show up.”

“Yeah, alright,” Chambers said, tentatively. Fuck, there was no Avo here to feed him insta-knowlege. He needed to figure out how to do shit the classic way. Too bad Chambers was always kind of a shitty student. “Here goes. Uh, pull!”

Chambers drew back hard. Hard on all the bongs connected to every being capable of love in his vicinity. And they promptly tugged on every bond leading out from them, and every bond after that, and every bond after that. Chambers’ cycler nearly filled with Rend an instant, but more harrowing, he felt the aftermath of his action in full loving detail as every single being connected to his love lurched toward each other regardless of distance, despite walls or other structures between, at varying velocities based on intensity.

Bioforms zipped back toward their Whalequeens and spattered against the leviathans bodies. Lovers, siblings, comrades, parents, children, and more slammed hard against walls and were flung off ledges. The words “inadvertent massacre” would’ve been an apt description for what followed, except Chambers prevented that by triggering his second new and functional canon, Absenthearted.

Filling the hollow in his Heaven’s chest with countless people was simple. They were paltry things that cost minute Rend. The problems came when new bonds were formed… with Chambers ontologically transformed to learn the full weight of love. And with that came absolute horror and sorrow at the harm he already inflicted.

“Nonononshitshitshit! What the fuck have I done!”

REND CAPACITY [LOVEBRINGER] - 4%

WARNING: REND SPIKE!