Chapter 5-6 Immortal Architecture (II)

Chapter 5-6 Immortal Architecture (II)

Do you know what I think curtailed the gods during their long reign over us?

Reactivity.

Worship

They were like... like Parasites! They fed from our deaths, and our deaths shaped them. It was like they deliberately shackled themselves to the design which we bestowed upon them to better feast from us; to better rule their corners of reality.

As they shaped us, so too were they shaped by eating us. Ha. It's... it's a bad diet! Ahem. Sorry. I... this isn't funny to anyone else but me. Oh, no Kae, you're apologizing to yourself now...

Anyway.

A common blood slave meant to be meat for the eldritch in years yonder had such parochial dreams compared to that which festers within the slavering bloodlust of us New Vultunites.

Do you think a slave dreamed of chrono-chain bombs and spatiokinetics? We did! And by fusing our dead gods, we made weapons that could squeeze excess time into ingots of matter from the shine of a star! We could build planar fortresses not bound by structure but by disjointed flows of space twinned to running streams of water!

I suppose in a strange way, the chains between us and the gods ran both ways...

Like... Chains from chains...

-Mem-log of Agnos Kae Kusande,Musings

5-6

Immortal Architecture (II)

Learning from the mind-shattered Agnos reinforced Avos gratefulness for Waltons tutelage. Where his father was concise and focused toward practical application, the Agnos was a leaking cauldron: filled with knowledge but leaking, and always trying to grasp at vaporous theories that had once been solid to her.

...S-so. This. This place around us? Its another realityreality. Kae strained momentarily, trying to keep her mind and words running on the same track. Butbut as you can tell, itsits not that large. Not compared to the totality She drifted again.

It already felt like she had been talking for days, but his resurrection was still stuck at twenty-one percent. The little Agnos liked to lecture. Avo strangled his annoyance. She was broken. Possibly more than that.

With how utterly ruined the outer shell of her mind looked, he wondered just how much lingering damage Ori-Thaum left festering within. It would not be beneath or beyond them to pour viruses into her memory chains, to eat away thoughts before they could manifest properly.

He wondered what she might've done to incur such a wretched fate.

--The totality of existence! she suddenly declared. She gestured toward his Soul again. Yours its differentdifferent, yes, because its more like software and hardwarehardware? She clutched at her head and gave a frustrated moan. II used to be able to tell people thingshold onto my wordsmemories Took so much from me Broke mebroke me for doing the right thing.

He couldnt tell if she was sobbing or just lamenting. Through her False Heaven, she had been crying this entire time so her anguish came masked. But her moment of self-pity did not linger. Sighing, he watched as something steeled inside of her. A thought perhaps. A new approach that she could try.

She clenched her fist as if trying to grasp his Soul. Soul. Its not an engine Its everything. Simulation of another a reality under a reality. But also something that can overwrite prime reality. Understand? The Soulfire burns to spread swallow... usurp existence with with your own reality and then layer your Heavens over it. Hells too."

Avo halted her. "Wait. Summation. Soul is a subreality? One that can grow larger? One that can swallow parts of the... main?"

"The... the technical term is overriding," Kae said.

The simplicity of his words made her face contort with discomfort. Strangely, he knew the feeling; the bitter taste one gets when trying to convey the full magnitude and complexity of Necrotheurgy to someone of the laity.

Still, what he needed right now wasn't theory. It was understanding. The academics of thaumaturgy could come later. Right now, he needed to comprehend its design as a weapon.

"I suppose you can see it as that..." Kae said, sounding slightly disappointed that her earlier lecture has splashed against him, rather than filling him. When... when the Soul over-overwrites, reality Rupturesbut your Heaven pulls it back inside. Inside. Then then counter-miracle. Your Hell. The anti-Heaven. Inflicts opposite Rend. Inverse damage. Rend plugs Rend. Entropy leaves the system. Equilibrium is maintained.

And finally, a flash of clarity. Insight caught flame in the corners of his mind as he began to understand. A Liminal Frame was a metaphor for many things because it was many things. It was supposed to be a system unto itself, but still capable of spreading the fundamental laws that ran the confines of its enclosure over reality.

She spoke of this, then. The progress coming hard, but even drips could fill the bottom of a bucket.

The assembly of his form came in three major aspects. The Soul. The cycler. And his Nous--a construct she best described as the melding of his mind and willpower. Two things left dismantled from a person's being upon death after the Godsfall.

Once, Souls could not grant themselves ever-sustained succor. Hence the need for mass sacrifices and hyper-inflicted dogma. Like tyrants festering beneath your mind and flesh, the gods had taken to ravenous feasts to fuel their needs. Empires rose and fell at their whims, the history of this period a calculated slaughter in the great game between the eldritch lords.

Idheim was a slaughterhouse. The gods were butchers and feeders both. And humanity was the meat. Wasn't hard to see where the Guilds got their habits from.

Sometimes, your abusers can still inflict their power over you. Even long after their passing. So was Avo reminded by the constant burning violence that boiled through his every sinew while he was still clasped in his living flesh.

"You... your Heaven, then is like a... a living coat over... uh... an element. Or concept." Kae was getting slightly better at holding herself together. Her growing focus might've come from the narrowing of her topic. "Gods... gods used to be purely elemental... you know--very interesting... but with there being many Gods of Fire, they started eating--"

"Focus."

His interruption startled her, but she took no time getting back on track. "Your... your Heaven. The Sangeist you're using right now... has many parts. The first.... first is the Domains. What... what aspects or concepts in reality it alters... It's..." she chuckled as if fondly remembering something, "something shaped by us. To narrow the throne of a god."

"... Not... usually the way it's done... at least one Domain needs to match. otherwise," she gesticulated, pushing the fingers of one hand into the palm of her other, "it's not lined parallel. Perpendicular Domains are asymmetric, and... and the Rend doesn't cross over right. Subrealities aren't aligned that way."

Symmetry. Sequencing phantasmics relied much on the concept as well. Necrothurgy and Agnosticism were both studies under the school of thaumaturgy, by technicality, but the nature of the latter was deleterious to reality, while the former was like scaffolding--affecting only cognition.

On the topic of Hells though, a problem yet remained. He was generating too much Rend and wasn't soaking it fast enough. "Hell. I'll need a new one. Where?"

The way he asked it knocked a stutter into Kae's dais. "I--uh, do you have a... a chronologically accelerated plane? Or prison?"

He judged her expression to see if she was mocking him, but found only confusion. "No."

She winced. "Could... could claim one from an enemy Godclad. Or... or..." She blinked. "You have a Meta-Factory. You can... you can unmake Heavens... deconstruct them?"

"Yes."

A smile spread over her face like a growing fire, savagery briefly glinting in her eyes. "Good. You can... can build a Hell then. Break down a Heaven. Fold it inward. Link it to your Heaven... Heaven of a shared Domain."

A location of interest sparked in Avo's mind. Each district had at least one techno-thaumic reactor contributing a local Heaven or two to the overarching Sovereignty. Ten districts made up a Guild-taxable Sovereignty; that was the case during more reasonable times, but after the war, plenty had been left fallen. In disrepair.

Like Burner's Way.

There was a Fallen Heaven there. Right across from Scalper territory, but there was a promise...

"How can a Rupture be stabilized?" Avo asked. "A Fallen Heaven?"

The Agnos' response was all reflex, slipping free before she even fully realized what he was implying. "Should the... Heaven's system be returned to equilibrium you can... you can break it down without..." Her voice trailed off. Her eyes widened in dawning comprehension. "You want to harvest a Heaven from a reactor?"

No sense in hiding it. He would need her to help him understand how to conduct the stabilization process properly. At least for the first time. He should also make a vicarity of the operation for the sake of being thorough.

"That... it's..." she stuttered.

"You object."

"It's a great... I love the idea! Fu... fuck the Guilds!"

Unexpected. Again, a shine of that hatred there, but it dissolved fast along with her thoughts. It seemed that the only thing keeping her mind together and not a blank mess was the external cortex she had implanted. His prior curiosity regarding the damage inflicted upon her sprouted seeds of genuine interest now; hers was a story he would delve into once he claimed a Ghostjack.

"You... you're going after one of the Fallen Heavens right... right?"

His Sangeist warbled blood in a loose approximation of a grunt.

"Okay. Right now, you have a Heaven of Blood. Domains are matter and blood. Hell is tied to matter... Matter--I recommend you keep going for matter if you can. If... if you can. If... if you can get a one-to-one ratio in terms of thaumic mass... or more in favor... favor of the Hell... you can have... keep your miracle-vent cycles minimal."

"Equilibrium is primarily based on mass? Of the same Domain."

"Y-yes. From... uh... from one aspect of subreality into a parallel one. Like... like an abacus.

Avo thought he got that, though he didn't fully know what an abacus was.

"I--It's mostly thanks to your Soul, you know," she smiled, and this time, there was no hate tied to it. She was happy; a creature in her element. "Yours... it's the most advanced subreality I've ever seen. It's... it's nearly alive and it's... it's entirely integrated with your Nous. No... no core-tuning needed... at-at all.

But if it was so special, how did it end up with him? Why wasn't it burning inside some Ark-top Guilder?

Unfortunately, Avo had a guess for this question. Walton. His father had something to do with this, despite being dead. Whatever Ninth Column was, he would not meet them unprepared and ignorant. His continued survival could not be left to coincidence.

"So. My system has a Meta-Fac. And is more reactive. Can break down Heavens internally?"

"Automatically... is what I'd say," Kae said. "It's like a condensed system of self... self-worship. No need to throw in sacrificial prisoners to modify or rebuild."

She sighed, looking on in admiration, the expression matching that of a wager leering at a new aerovec. Your flame. Its specialspecial. Its inverted. Also, it's rippling. Expanding. Other patterns of Soulfire older ones, yes, those theythey dont ripple. Its an external furnace built around a... a cycler. Fixed size. Dismembered from a god. No growth. No Meta-Fac. Like... like dead matter."

Wait, Avo said, halting her questions. Mine emits. Others cant do that?

A strain spread through her features. Her hand sifted through her hair again, her lips counting as if she was passing prayer beads through her fingers. Its its like yours is a sea. Itswater. Deep. Growing. But remembers as well. And also more than water. Cancan shape things. Older ones are are like a container. Uh... you have something like... like a full-spectrum nanosuite. Normal... normal Souls are just... just cybernetics. One Soul. Heavens. Hells. Fixed build. Needs sacrifices to tune.

And that, then, was also why he was gaining ghosts and thaums with every kill. At least when he made physical contact with them. He was pulling them into himself. Drinking them empty, and snatching them away from the Guilds through the act of killing.

"There's... there's more but..." Kae turned and looked at the Galeslither again. Behind her, the horse-heads stared on blankly, the stuff of their skulls a swirling mass of storms centered around their eyes. The fissuring ribs of lighting at the chest remained frozen then as if the bolts were not allowed to flow--were not granted enough stay in the local reality flow.

"I want to conduct an experiment," she said. "I want you to switch Heavens."