Godclads

Sometimes, setting the house on fire, while you’re still in it, is a viable tactic.

Especially if you’re more fireproof than the other half-strand. Or just insane.

Sometimes, winning is more important than surviving. Especially if you know you can come back after.

-Quail Taversn/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

32-18

Masters and Disciples (II)

—[Anchor: The Great Silence]—

Part of it was missing. Part of its mind. Part of its memory. Part of its purpose.

Less than a second ago, it was… still itself… knew why it was here. The reason behind its existence. Then, there was a single memory. A flash of gleaming metal. Or was it a crystalline edge? None of that mattered. Only what followed. The cut was physical and not. Metaphysical and mental. It struck at the concept of a mind itself. It struck, and with the venom of a concentrated trauma, it bit deep.

And there was a brightness now. There was a flame that was spreading through… through whatever this was… whatever this space was.

Outside, more somethings was happening. The pattern of existence expanded and parted in colorful blossoms. Force, space, time, heat, and countless other concepts expressed themselves, only to be destroyed within the shape of existence. At the highest levels of thaumaturgy, the material world simply became grounds of expression. It was a sandbox, in simplicity.

But in terms of… war. Between the greatest of powers. Between those that reshaped the fundamental nature of reality, the pattern is what mattered. Patterns symmetrical but inverse were means of mutual destruction. Patterns parallel to one another circled each other, but didn’t interact. Asymmetry. Patterns that intersected were points where one could exert advantages over another.

Patterns. All that existed in analogy to something else, in reference to something else. And all that something stirred… shook….

Then spoke. No. Gave a snake-like grunt first.

“Architectural damage severe. Unbelievable. Should have been nullified by now. Minds. Useful. Advanced intelligences. Yes. I know. But still. Damage immense. Will be very good for us when we incorporate it into our Soulscape. Zein. Half-strand. Ruins everything. Never anything good with her involved.”

What… what was this? No. This wasn’t the pattern. They could… they couldn’t read the pattern like that. This wasn’t their memories. This belonged to—

“Belongs to me.” And they knew a fire. The world was a flame. An infectious flame that knew, that thought, that felt, that learned, that dreamed. Some called the flame the Burning Dreamer. It used other names. The Pale Spider. The Strix. It recently adopted the title Hidden Flame to separate itself from its original self. But ultimately and originally, it was Avo. True as he could be. “Connected you to my ego. Only way to rebuild you. Latched on your data. Actively learning how to reconstruct you. Difficult. Lack knowledge. Expending substantial portion of cog-cap—regaining fast though. You minds… incredible processing. Incredible. So much more than human. But also locked. Neutered before you were born. Not a true mind. Or maybe Zein damaged you too much. Can’t tell. Need to cross-reference you with one of the others.”

Everything was so hard to understand.

“Always is. Even for me.”

So. What was going to happen now?

“Now you rest. And resurrect through me. Continue your function. Continue your war. I am taking your Deep One.”

Deep One. Yes. They were… They were the Anchor. A governing ego for a Deep One of Kill-Team Innsmouth. They were dispatched… Sent by… There was still gaps.

“Will uncover what is missing. Just go into the flame. Will swallow all of you soon. Become you.”

What then? What was the Anchor supposed to do then?

“Then you will be given the right to choose. And we will be more than we ever were. Together.”

***

—[Naeko, The Hidden Flame]—

The insides of the Great Silence were burning where space wasn’t ruptured. But that didn’t trouble the Sage, as the flames were spilling out from inside it, infesting the static shroud of thoughtstuff leaking from the wounded EGI. It was like tumbling walls of smog slipping between cracks lining existence. The shadows that defined the nightmarish entity remained a veil on the outside, but within, it was as broken as broken could be—and growing increasingly broken as Zein continued her made blade-dance, her thousand arms ringing against rupture and flame alike.

Naeko and her fought a duel only the two of them could. Master and disciple, they engaged on a level of near-prescient, so familiar with each other that they didn’t even need to think. Intuition and skill guided them alone, and for all the power invested in them as Godclads, the clash between them was almost mundane in how they approached it.

As Zein’s attacks came like a drowning time, with chrono-echoes sent forth to herd Naeko with suicidal attacks. Meanwhile, her actual strikes cut reality in every way it could be cut. She severed fraction from the world, severed movement from entire potions of space, severed light and force—tried to force a paradox upon Naeko.

But the Chief Paladin stood as a mountain looming over the lashing waves with scornful indifference. Paracasual attacks were parried by his Heaven—now further inured from harm, as he warped himself in a lattice of ruptures. Where Zein had a thousand hands, he used the many stretching veins of entropy as whips against he. With every lash, she was forced to defend as well—She was unable to bring a full offensive, lest she wish to suffer a paradox of her own or a backlash. More threatening was Naeko’s power to rip her very consciousness out from her vessel.

Every time he moved, she needed to hew at an unseen force with a blade meant to slaughter minds. He was a gravitation titan of all matter and mind, and Zein was a duelist that could cut anything.

Through both their Heavens, they were immune to the most esoteric of each other’s effects—but only barely.

Zein might be a Sphere greater, with a greater capacity to imbibe Rend but she was fighting alone here—wasn’t aided by Avo fueling Naeko’s processing power. And while Naeko continued his counteroffensive, this wasn’t going to be a war of attrition between them.

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At some point within the next hour, one or both of them were going to be cut down. A single mistake was all it would take. A paradox would see both of them overloaded and dead. A backlash would be enough to tip the scales toward one. Or maybe something else would happen. Something that would change the equation of the battle. Something like Avo spreading faster through the Deep One and using it to infect the others as well.

That would allow them to deal with the Infacer too.

“Oh, I’ve missed this, boy,” Zein laughed. One of her many limbs turned radiant. Akusande ignited around her arm as she cut. The coming strike vanished outright—drifting across space and time to appear on Naeko when its guard was down or there was an opening. It never arrived as he pushed on one of the ruptures he was holding with a channeling of chronology. The Sage briefly flashed gold. A single strand of entropy burst across time and clashed against Zein’s coming blow at an insection upon the tapestry. Another flash of Soulfire burst between them. It was lost among the many others, before the backdrop of Avo’s spreading Soulsfire.

Zein tried to unleash another thoughtwave detonation, but the Chief Paladin caught it with a shove. He shoved it out from the Great Silence, and a rippling wave of thought-quelling force fled from the Chief Paladin’s presence, for its authority was nothing before him.

So, the Hidden Flame continued to burn. And so it was Zein on a timer right now.

“Why do you not speak now?” Zein chided. She cut. She cut a few hundred thousand times in an instant, Akusande flashing between each of her of thousand limbs, multiplying those strikes by slowing the stretch of chronology they occupied. A building avalanche of attacks began to mar the already ravaged surface of existence.

“Aren’t we speaking right now?” Naeko replied. The Sage twisted into a fist and the mists began to simmer. He loaded a memory of blows being parried—survived the initial cuts from Zein by perfectly angling his body in the ruptures. His Hell simmered hot from all the entropy he soaked up. But it was worth it.

Trauma-Striker landed true against the veritable ocean of cuts Zein sent at him. His Sage exploded outward like a volcanic eruption, leaking from every last rupture. His one great fist turned to ten thousand smaller counter-punches, and each of them greeted a slashing limb with a rupture wrapped over them. Each of them impacted the edge of a blade and shattered them.

Before Zein cut, he already loaded a memory of breaking a glaive with his bare hands. It was that memory that became possibility thanks to the newest canon Avo bestowed on him. And with that, both he and Zein finished another exchange, with both of them testing each other, looking for that one mistake.

She was right. He had missed this. Missed being himself. Missed fighting someone who could threaten him, who could match him.

The Sage made Zein’s Fisher That Wasn’t a non-threat in direct combat. When he fought her as a Godclad previously, it was for naught on her part. There was simply nothing she could have done once he caught her scent. But during her apprehension, he remembered her almost taking his head with a well-timed strike. He was forced to bite down on her glaive to save himself.

It was a stroke so close to death that it reminded Naeko he was still alive. Gave him a thrill like no other.

Every blow they exchanged was like that—always on the edge. A single misstep would bring this dance to an end.

And fucked up as it was, Naeko didn’t want it to end.

He missed Zein. He did. He hated the sow, but she was still the closest thing to a mother he ever knew and the only person he called master willingly.

“Godsdammit,” Naeko sighed.

“Oh, what of your feelings now?” Zein asked, slashing and carving from all angles.

“Just thinking about how you fucked everything up. Again.” The Sage reverted to being a Heaven. He parried, pressed, and bent. Some of her blows went off course. He angled himself, so others rang off the ruptures he wrapped around himself. Then, he probed by launching hurricane-level waves that threatened to shred any consciousness in its path.

Zein’s thousand limbs merged, leaving only two. One held Akusandae, which radiated with building chronology. The other was a massive blade of ethereal blue that Zein used to cut Naeko’s projection clean in half. But as soon as she did, Naeko’s actual blow arrived—massive weave of tumbling ruptures he wielded like monowire.

“Devious boy!”

But Akusande flared. And suddenly she was four hundred meters away—the place she was a few seconds ago.

“Tell me how I ruined your life, then. Complain to me as an angry child would to their mother.”

“Stop that.”

“What? The condensation?”

“No. Stop treating this like a family outing. We’re not doing that. Avo was right. This is your fault. Again. You cut him down when he could have—”

“Could have done what? Bathed all of existence in his mind-fire? Turned us all to slaves? Slaves he would leave to their own devices, but still. Slaves, in the end.”

“Yeah. And Veylis was going to let us all go free.”

Zein’s face twitched as she tried to say something, but couldn’t. “Hm.”

“Look at that. Speaking of slaves. That’s always been her problem. All that big brilliant talk about the future. All that intellect and vision. All that passion. And capacity for good.” Naeko went quiet. He thought of Veylis. The best of her. The great things she did. The love she could show. “But she couldn’t accept the world. She couldn’t accept being a slave in any capacity. Even her mad plan to force Jaus to become an Overgod is just an act of final control.”

“Wrong. This isn’t just her. She would not have taken my words. Oh, Naeko. She is changing as well. They are changing. The best of them are merging. Becoming one. But the worst as well. I have known the Plague since he was little more than a beast aping a man. And I have known Veylis at her lowest. Neither would have silenced me, for no so soft their egos are. But the worst of both?”

That made Naeko nervous. Also, the thought of Veylis becoming more like Avo was going to give him a trauma. There were memories there that he didn’t want to share with the ghoul. Intimate memories. He didn’t want to imagine having intimate memories with Avo either. The Dreamer did a lot for him, but they weren’t that kind of consangs.

“But you already did,” Avo muttered.

“Avo. Please shut the fuck up and don’t remind me. Also, take that epiphany out of my mind. It’s making me fight like shit.”

The Hidden Flame gave a hissing acknowledgement.

The sinuous form of Akusande manifested from the glaive. At his core, Zein floated, piloting her dragon now, as if a transparent combat skin. A thousand glaives extended from their hands, but their scales birthed others weapons too. Other calamities as well. “Now. I see the ghoul has removed any hint of rust from you. Very good. You have shown me some new things you learned as well. But I have not shown you mine. Akusande. Cut with me now.”

So you command, Thousandhand!

And they glided. Through the ruptures. They only existed across certain moments of time—were literally certain moments of time. For that was the nature of a dragon. Time itself given consciousness, understanding, and purpose. Or at least, that’s what Naeko understood.

“Naeko! Dodge! Now!” The Hidden Flame's warning came just in time—but only barely." This time, Naeko barely sensed Zein’s cut.

Once second she was. Then she wasn’t. And that played merry hell on his instincts.

Worse yet, was how a strip of ruptures simply ceased to be. On the surface of reality ran a new scar. A scar of pure nothingness that crashed against Naeko’s Heaven and threatened his ephemeral sanity to behold. Time. An entire section of time had been gouged out of the present and cast back into the past.

“Oh!” Zein said, her voice drifting through his being like an echoing whisper. “Well done. Well done both of you. I am so glad to see my disciples fighting alongside each other, protecting each other. And yet… how? You shouldn’t have seen that coming.”

The flames around Naeko began to brighten. There were now static particulates in the Conflagration, and Naeko felt his mind expand—expand so much he felt a sense of alienation. Suddenly, he felt his senses extend out through the Deep One like a growing set of nerves.

“Avo. What the hells is happening to us.”

“Incorporation. Fusion. Still trying to salvage EGI. Have partial control over their ego. See Zein piloting her dragon. How would you like a larger suit of armor? How about a walking apocalypse? Will be like getting a Fatalist Dreadnought Prestige Profession in Stormjumpers.”

“Avo, if you keep talking, you’re going to bring back the rash. Rig me the fuck up.”