Godclads

Chapter 29-11 Back to School (II)

//[Priority Cult Cast]

Source:

Inner Council

Beginning Transmission...

ATTENTION SLEEPER.

The Nether has fallen. The Hungers are no more. The Fifth Guild War is upon us. You have been activated. The time for secrecy is at an end.

The dissolution of the Nether is a lamentable, but ultimately inevitable, outcome. An outcome Ori-Thaum has prepared for.

Effective immediately:

• All Mirrors will be receiving new designations.

• All prior Cells have been dissolved.

Make no mistake, you are living in a time of chaos. But you also might be standing on the precipice of the final engagement. All those who have received this transmission have now been insulated from the anomaly spreading out of Scale. You have been marked by the culture. The only Culture that will stand at the end of this. The culture that will see all become One and One become All.

You will be receiving Cognisofts to replace your defunct Phantasmics. Attached is a tutorial detailing how each construct functions. They are meant to resemble your commonly used Phantasmics, so the turnover for mastering these new Cognisofts should be minimal.

Once you have conditioned yourself, access the following packet and proceed to complete your given task.

The Saintists are reeling.

New Vultun stands at the precipice.

This moment may never come again. We strike now, and we strike together. Unity is Destiny.

End Transmission.//

29-11

Back to School (II)

Deciding on Axtraxis as a destination was one thing, but reaching it was another. In the aftermath of Avo and Veylis's embracement, a great displacement swept through New Vultun, bleeding further with each passing day.

On the surface, the substance seemed but an anomalous metaphysical shroud sweeping through the tears, bringing with it deleterious tides upon all aspects of existent thaumaturgy. Under the surface, however, greater anomalies skinned the subdermal aspects of existence. Broken fragments of sequences and chronologies grew into each other, expanding like intrusive bones burrowing inch by inch across this discordant sub-reality.

All things were made possible by the entwinement of history and memory. By the laws of symmetry, the sub-reality overlapped with baseline immaterial superimpositions, creating parallel points of entry and departure, but only for those imbued by the strict favor of the sore seraph. For all others, they were intruders until they were internalized into the Soulscape, consumed by golden flames.

A series of images loaded in Draus's Metamind. They played as separate windows in the upper corner of her cog-feed, soft sim vicarities she didn’t fully immerse herself in. Ignorance was spreading his transparent tendrils across the nearby constellations, aligning sequences in progress.

HIGH SERAPH PRESENCE: 44.5%

GATEKEEPER FRAGMENTS DETECTED: 0.63%

IGNORANCE FRAGMENTS DETECTED: 2.9%

ECHOES OF ZEIN DISCOVERED: FOUR INSTANCES

"Zein?" Draus said, her senses sharpening. A battle-ready alertness filled her being. "See, she's got her echoes listed, but no fragments. She dead?"

Uncertain and unlikely, Ignorance grunted. If she is, she’s no more dead than me, or her daughter, or even the Gatekeeper, for that matter. I give those brutal brilliance to Veylis’s gambit. My cognition is unique, self-moving, self-restoring. Short of utter extinguishment, I don't think anything could achieve my full cessation anymore.

"Not even complete ego damage?" Draus asked. "Gonna be hard to put yourself back together when there's no sense of self."

Not the same for me anymore. I am Ignorance. I am the knowing of Avo's not-knowing. And when he breaks, I remain untouched. For I have never been known, but when nothing is known, I always am.

The Regular made a yawning noise in response. She was getting rather bored of this phantasmal glowy ghoulshit. She wanted to get back to the material world, take some scalps, try out her new guns and canons. That kind of fun.

Could pretend to be interested, Ignorance chided.

“Maybe use your brain-bending powers to be a better judge of character. Since when have I ever been the philosopher type, rotlick? Ain't nothing's changed for me."

A moment passed. A quiet chuff of acceptance escaped the Definement. Slips me sometimes.

“Yeah, well, you were always a bit of a theatrical sow, consciously and subconsciously.”

SEQUENCE SYMMETRY ALIGNMENT ACHIEVED

GRANTING USER ACCESS TO LOCALIZED BOUNDARY SEGMENTATION

A flood of mem-data packets entered Draus’s meta-mind.

"What's this?" she asked, mentally scrolling through the information. A DeepNav simulation loaded a representation of a district, one partially enshrouded by the substance.

This is your nearest access point back to the real, Ignorance explained.

A simulation materialized before her, and as Ignorance hadn’t been speaking to Vator or the Portrait, both the Instrument and his Heaven lurched back, surprised, at the sudden phantasmal projections.

"What is this?" the Portrait asked, scroll flapping responsively. Vator stood in front of his Heaven in a futile protective gesture and narrowed his eyes, taking in the details as well.

Welcome to Thronerest, Ignorance said. As he spoke, a general overview of key data points unfolded down the right side of Draus's cog-feed.

MILITARY SUMMARY: THRONEREST

• IDENTIFICATION: Thronerest
• DESIGNATION: Former Tier Purgatory Defense District
• ESTABLISHED: 39 P.F.
• SEIZED & REBUILT BY HIGH FLAME: 195 P.F.

• POPULATION (ESTIMATED): 120 Million
• ACTIVE GODCLAD CADRES: 342
• GOLEM KNOTS: 55,824 Units
• DRONES, ARMOR, & NON-THAUM COMBAT PLATFORMS (ESTIMATED): 890 Million Units

• TOTAL AREA: 3,143 Square Kilometers

A final few ghosts threaded into place, completing the scale simulation map. Draus frowned.

Thronerest. She'd spent six months in Thronerest during her time in the Regs. The final qualifying courses for those wanting to be Breachers were held here, specifically because of Thronerest's layout. Said layout also earned it the name “UrHell” among the regulars, short for urban hellscape.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Thronerest was shaped as an “L” due to being built against the sheer surface of the Tiers, running just below the Elysiums. Unlike most higher districts, it was not a place of leisure but war. Thronerest's airspace was dry of skylanes or aeros, and neither were there any ads pulsating between narrow alleyways with the overflowing glow of enticing neon blessed capitalism.

What characterized Thronerest were its blocks—uneven stacks of heavily interconnected bunkers, each one built like sections of ancient battlements, rather than architecture meant for civilian habitation. Rail-flung missile platforms, long-range fusion sites, and spatial displacement arrays for the rapid transportation of troops or emergency Rendbomb deployments choked the city. Each megablock was a neo-gothic beast, bright with golden alloys, symbols of a burning crown, projecting those same symbols of a burning crown, and fanged with countless weapons.

Draus remembered the first time she entered Thronerest. Entire portions of the city shimmered with semi-translucent bubbles, demi-planar defenses stacked layer by layer. Behind that was a swarm of high-yield, imminently expendable, and easily replaceable drone swarms. Their true purpose was to provide a defensive screen for the golem Knots and cadres that followed.

If by some mad miracle the enemy breached one of Thronerest's many megablocks, the true battle would begin. The interior was a claustrophobic maze of narrow hallways, lined with built-in choke points. Draus remembered the insides of those megablocks well. There was no comfort in Thronerest. It was a soldier's city. A Regular's kind of city.

The insides of the structures growled and shifted constantly. Metallic tethers pulled and adjusted the interior architecture on the fly. This meant that the layout was modular and there was no fixed map. It also meant one other thing: nightmarish casualties—something the Massists learned during the Third Guild War in vivid suffering.

Draus had run the gauntlet within Thronerest countless times, armed with a CQB-patterned reflex spatial-kinetic cannon, a fusion burner, three more secondary guns, rigged within an Carnifex combat skin, and five other Regulars under her command. They fought with a ferocity, velocity, and tempo few others could match, and with each push, their goal wasn’t to escape or eliminate all defenders, but to locate and capture the central control node for each block. But even that was only a temporary reprieve.

Every one of the 841 megablocks constituting Thronerest rested upon a stack of Rendbombs. The triggers for the bombs could only be found in their neighboring blocks. To take one block and not immediately seize the next would result in summary death.

Draus’s record had been three megablocks seized, 64 rooms cleared before her momentum finally ran out, her guns ran dry, and her body came apart beneath a tide of gauss fire.

The Regular smirked. Those were some good times.

These days, however, Thronerest was looking a little different. A massive trunk of some kind seemed to have truncated the city, splitting it down the middle where a good section of the megablock should be. Now, however, the massive trunk seemed to arc higher into the sky through the veil of Avo’s substance. This was where the DeepNav simulation ended. A ripple of ghosts passed over the trunk, and more details loaded in. As the strange object reloaded with higher resolution, Draus’s eyes widened. Vator’s head tilted in surprise.

"Is that a Cycler?" the Instrument muttered.

"Nah," Draus corrected him. "That ain’t no Cycler. It’s a goddamn dragon. But it ain’t no Cycler." She stared into the crenulations and saw ziggurats and old Nolothic cityscapes spreading far and wide. "This was a section of the Hungers," Draus muttered. "Part of the City Eternal had been impaled through a Highflame district."

Not impaled, Ignorance said. Infused. Mutated. It's happening all across places in New Vultun. Interplays of memory and history result in discord, displacement. Things don’t end up where they should, and so corrections are made—some of them incorrect. Me and Veylis, we remember different things, and consciously we struggle, so the city suffers for it.

"What happened to the people that used to be there?" Draus asked.

Silence followed as Ignorance contemplated his response. Uncertain.

"Well, if that ain't ominous or nothing," Draus said, just as a few million points lit up—not only within Thronerest, but also the dismembered section of the City Eternal.

A resonance pulsed through the regular’s frame. Her simulacra gasped in sudden surprise. Through its perception, Draus found herself peering out through countless reflections, gazing into the real from every angle. From so many places, Thronerest was a district embroiled in war.

Drones swarmed, firing upon strange chimeric beasts pulled from the depths of history before they were swept from the sky, cleaved down by freak weather occurrences that manifested and dispersed within seconds. The narrow hallways within the megablocks were filled with carnage. Combat mechs and screaming mobs of militia mixed with mech battleframes held the line against a charge of Woundhounds, while what looked to be a cadre of Bloodthanes. The Stormtree assets reacted with might and devastation, but they seemed lost—striking reflexively rather than working together in concert for a planned offensive.

Displaced as well. Few were prepared. Few were. Ignorance sigghed.

And then there was the dismembered section of the City Eternal. Warheads impacted the crenulations, bathing entire stretches of Nolothic cityscape in nuclear fire. It was a drastic surprise—the Nolothi were fighting back, and fighting back well. Their ziggurats, infused deep with locus loci and crackling with phantasmal energies, lashed out, conveying eons of trauma in the form of synaptic lightning.

Previously, all a trauma pattern could do was break one’s cognition, cracking wards and shattering egos. Now, to Draus's astonishment, an entire part of a Thronerest high-flame megablock simply ceased to be, dissolving into component aspects of entropy.

"What in the hells?" Draus muttered to herself.

Vator leaned in, his face lined with increasing curiosity. "Is this a simulation?" he asked.

No, came Ignorance’s reply. Told you before. Material, metaphysical, mental—all clapping now. All closer than they've ever been.

"Yeah, especially within your goddamn Soulscape," Draus grimaced.

The ghoul's Exo-Paracosm was making itself a problem for her. It was a nifty, if nasty, trick—aligning mentally created worlds with the physical one. But now, without a stable mind to wield it, disorder was the new norm.

"So can I do that too?" Draus asked.

With a Ghostjack, enough cognitive capacity, and a potent enough trauma pattern, yes, Ignorance said. Presently, you primarily have good wards, enough to survive a few direct impacts from a ziggurat.

"Specify 'a few.'"

Don’t get hit by more than one. Your Conundrum will adapt. But so will their traumas.

"Right. So. Not great."

"So what's my target here?" Draus asked. Her eyes drifted to the point where the City Eternal extended beyond the Substance. “Guessing that arc up through the substance is my way out somehow?”

Exactly that, Ignorance said. You want to use the City Eternal to mask your traversal. It’s an unstable point. We want to get you and Vator through without having her sense you or seize him. This manifested cogni-chronological rupture gives us our best opportunity.

"And then what? He gets to go back to school? What about me?"

They won’t notice you once you're through. Just stay away from their perception. Can sustain your stealth in the meantime. Can also pass you through Vator’s mind as well. Auto-Seances… might be capable of a bit more than before. Matter and mind. Running similar currents and patterns.

Suddenly, Draus felt her presence dim within this subreality. The best comparison she could make was to heat camouflage—Ignorance rendering her a patch of cold that could lurk beneath other memories and perceptions.

Vator will be our way into the academy. Expect most of Highflame’s most coherent assets to be there. As is Mondelles and others. It’s going be both a powder keg and a command center. Something we will delight in taking from Veylis before it can be brought to bear.

"Meritos and Chivalriics both," Draus chuckled to herself. "So we’re fleeing across one battlefield and planting ourselves in the middle of a civil war."

Know this: you will likely encounter other Flame Anchors as well—bearers of the Stillborn’s fragments. Just as I have chosen you, Vaelis has her own champions. A new shadow war is forming. Prepare yourself. And take my pieces back. I wish to be again. I wish to return as myself.

"Yeah, don’t worry, consang. You’re just in need of a little surgery. I’ll play Grafter for you."

And with that, Ignorance receded into the back of her mind—forgotten, but always present.

The Regular regarded Vator then as she plotted her impromptu operation. Her lay forays into Thronerest had been fun, but ultimately failures, per the gauntlet’s design. Now? Now, she was a bit more than just a Reg. "Alright, Greatling. I’ve got a question for you," Draus said as she filtered through the many reflections she had access to. The obvious option would be to start within the City Eternal, try to make a sprint toward where its length bursted through the substance’s threshold. But with the amount of Wren bombs constantly hammering its crenulationed surface, Draus doubted she could pass through without being stained with entropy. Considering Vator was of an even lower Spherage…

"More than adequate," Vator said, with a self-deprecating glint in his eye. "Alas, my specialty has always been more along the lines of intrusion and rearguard action. I suppose if I were to portray myself in Regular-speak, I would be a biological sapper of sorts."

"Right. We’ll see how cute you stay after you get this thing started."

But what started just then turned her focus away from the City Eternal and toward structures of greater concern—the surrounding megablocks constantly bombarding the immense dismembered arc of The Hungers. There were primarily twelve megablocks rounding the segment of the City Eternal, looping upwards into an arc. It was about a fourteen-kilometer stretch of area, but with each ringbone detonation, well over five times that expanse was flooded with entropy.

Draus suspected the blocks would be completely spent of proper Rendbombs by the end of the day if they couldn’t get logistical replenishment from the rest of Highflame. However, they probably still had plenty of Rendsinks and so on. Makeshift weapons went a long way.

There was no point in waiting. If things were going to happen in her favor, she needed to make them happen. Aggression. Firepower. Tempo. And thaumaturgy. All things she in spades and more.

With a blast of Soulfire, her Simulacra, now enhanced, materialized around her, looming over both Vator and the portrait. The Greatling blinked up, both hands behind his back. He observed Draus as well, faintly, with his lips corked upward.

"Yes, yes, I think I do like you better in this format. It’s far more aesthetic. Your legs, like those of a steed now. With your wings multiplied too! Wide as well as vertical—”

A shard broke away from the Heaven of Reflection’s armored helmet

"Step through, half-strand," Draus said. A massive cannon composed of revolving pannels and orbited by a cloud of lesser guns surfaced with the pallid depths of the Simulacra’s blade. "It’s time we go on a block crawl. We’re going to use this district to crack itself open. Your re-admission’s gonna come with a butcher’s bill.”

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