Chapter 10-1 Within the Glass

Chapter 10-1 Within the Glass

Sangeists x8 - 340,000,000 imps

Shadowcrawlers x8: 400,000,000 imps

Fulgerhunds x8: 300,000,000 imps

Micronuclear Warhead x8: 8,000,000

-Purchases Made by Jhred Greatlings Proxy Identities

10-1

Within the Glass

+How long,+ Mirrorhead said, Even through the Nether, Avo could feel the hot breath of unsated rage. The anger coming from the Greatling clung, its bitterness clammy and sick. Losing control had brought a feverish quality to the mans thoughts.

How pitiful. Jhred Greatlings Frame was wasted on him.

Holding merely ten tons of blood in his sway, Avo considered the Syndicate boss question. At this pace, the conversation still ran fast enough to follow, but slow enough for thought as well.

Avo didnt even need to sift through Mirrorheads mind to know what he needed to say.

+How long have you been in the ghoul?+

+How long have you owned that batch of ghouls?+ Avo asked, using a question to quell a question.



+You had no right+

+Right?+ Avo asked, adding a mocking cadence to his tone. He modified his voice in the same fashion the benefactor had, but even more so, he had a backdoor into Mirrorheads mind. The mem-data betrayed Jhred before his thoughts could even pour over. +No. Its not about right. Its about keeping my investment secure. You know this Greatling.+

Combining that with the fact that Avo could accelerate and decelerate his reactions via how much blood was under his sway, and the conversation was clay to be molded.

In the back of his mind, broken chains of Mirror-Convex's memory flashed and fused into place, his Metamind filtering and adjusting for each word spoken playing the part of the benefactor. Of that which was nulled and unknown to him, Avo still possessed other options.

The worst case would be to lose the identity and worsen Mirrorheads paranoia. It would make the task of manipulating him harder, but Avo had enough assets close to the source.

The frustration within the Guilder swelled. Good. Anger made Mirrorhead sloppy, cut his focus out at the knees.

+I said I would handle it myself.+ Mirrorhead spat. +That I didnt need you and your Stormtree allies assisting me.+

Ah. There was something the nulling had taken away. Mirrorhead thought the benefactor was associated with Stormtree. Made sense considering where they arranged the meeting, but there were blindspots in why the benefactor was ostensibly helping someone from Highflame. And how. Relations between the two Guilds couldnt even be described as being poor. Not even in the vicinity.

A shame Avo had to play the part of the confidant. It would have been so delicious to shatter his preys ego right then and there. +Mirrorhead If I didnt handle your situation, how did you think this would resolve?+

A petulant snarl slipped free from the other man. The mask of control was slipping, and beneath it was the face of a hurt child raging at the world. A child incapable of ever avenging his mother. +I said I would have handled it!+

+And you could have,+ Avo replied, trying to instill as much humanity into his voice as possible. A shame the Binarist was infested with mem-cons. Without a phantasmic simulating and predicting the specific emotions he was supposed to be feeling at that moment, Avo grasped blindly. +But this isnt about what we can do now. This is about what needs to happen. Youre out of time. Your sister is clearly+



+I told you not to mention her!+ Avo paused, watching Mirrorheads anger spike to new heights. The shout came carried by ghosts swelling hot with steam and fury. Press more and he risked the Guilder losing control completelypossibly even ending the conversation. +You didnt offer me proof last time. I will hear no more about her. No more.+

But Jhred Greatling had already revealed his wound. To react like a stung animal when the topic of his sister was broached presented numerous avenues paths of conversation for Avo to herd him.

Best to keep things simple. Uncomplicated.

+Fine. I trust that you know her best,+ Avo said. +However, there is the issue with the signing of the treaty+

Traveling under the cover of internalized hatred and tumult made it easier for Avo to jump from one sequence to another. Checking Mirrorheads estimated awareness in the visual display, the Guilder was distracted more by the task at hand, of the decision to accelerate his long-planned revenge.

Regardless of what anyone wanted, Avo had no desire to see this ended at The Flames Height. With all the Guilders in attendance, it would be wandering into a nest of violent Godclads.

It was with such a realization that Avo understood AbrelMirrorheads taller wiser sisterwas right. This was a suicide run. Even if by some miracle he suceeded, to face what was likely millions upon millions of Guild-level forces using a moment of surprise, Syndicate fodder, and whatever else was still in reserve, wasnt something to walk away from.

The deepers Avo sank, working with care to twin the memories necessary for the spoofing, the more he soaked in the sobering malaise bleeding from Jhred Greatlings mind.

Mirrorhead wasnt planning on coming back. This was solely about avenging his mother. About hurting Ori-Thaum and spiting Highflameespecially his father.

In a twisted way, the Guilder had been looking forward to his finale for a long, long time.

Sneaking through the sixteenth and seventeenth layers required a mix of timing and speed. Again, much of this was made possible by Avos newly imbued speed. The more he used his Heaven, the more he felt unable to return to the old ways, that sequencing at baseline seemed crippled. Broken.

But that was the mutilation that came with going from obsolete to apotheosis. For a Guilder that had only known promise and power, such was to be expected, but to give the blind sight and make them consider losing it again

Mirrorhead did not know what he would be surrendering should he greet true death.

Suddenly, the Nether-lag spiked. Ghosts quivered and twisted around Avo, straining to keep him connected.

HOST AWARENESS: 3%

They were shifting across a twist in spatial reality. After a moment of evasion, Avo sank a ghost into the waters of Mirrorheads perception, accessing the world outside through the perspective of the other Godclad.

Around him, all was an expanse of twisting fractals refracting treads of curving light. Intriguingly, Avo found himself able to see through each brightened shard of glass, his perception jumping from conduit to conduit, like light striking a point of symmetry expanding his network of awareness.

Avo was unsure what domain was in effect for the canon on display, but if he had to guess, it appeared that luminosity or light of some form was allowing for these effects. He took special care to keep a special sequence of this memory. Kae would need it later when examining the Twice-Walkers capabilities further.

Ahead, an archway formed, with broken sheets of glass intersecting and melding into a reflective surface. From the wings of the Twice-Walker shone forth a coruscating radiance that painted brushstrokes of color and shapes into another place.

Features to a new location flashed into shape. Narrowing from the eldritch leviathan, a dollop shot free from the titanic form as Mirrorhead collapsed the mass of the Heaven back within his Frame.

The entire process felt disquieting, as if reality was being stretched no longer. Something occurred to Avo then: It had been some time since his wards groaned before the gaze of another Heavenagainst the naked form of a god.

Was he somehow acclimating? Or was it just an attunement, his own increasingly eldritch nature parting him from the trauma of beholding another of its kind?

Such questions slipped from his mind as surprise widened a leak within his thoughts.

Riding as an unknown passenger behind Mirrorheads eyes, Avo found himself in a shadowy domed structure. No doors or portals of any kind greeted this place beyond, only curved ceilings and flat walls made of glass.

Three hundred loci signatures populated his visual feed, drones flying to and fro, all connected to a central memory matrix. Ghosts flooded the darkness here, a near twenty-thousand in number by the estimates of Avos Metamind. Through them, neon phantoms danced and simulated a miniaturized version of the Sovereignty itself, with a spectral line connecting the Conflux megablock from Mazzos Junction in the Spine to Nu-Scarrow at Lights End.

Additional glowing waypoints lined the stormtree rooted at the heart of the Scalpers district, and the passages through Layer Two and Layer One.

With a wave of his hand, Mirrorheads Metamind rippled. Commands spilled free, washing over all the ghosts from the final and innermost layer. Phantasmal mass built within the Syndicate boss as countless ghosts took root within him.

There was a strangeness to the moment. It was as if Mirrorheads body was a trunk now reknitting with the rest of the tree, branching off elsewhere.

And suddenly, as a flash of light ignited within Mirrorhead, the space around them changed again, like a facade collapsing. The glass around them shattered.

And then, there was light. The sunshine of a holographic sun.

Avo found himself frozen by sheer aesthetic whiplash. Banished from a sterile chamber encased in glass, phantasmal neon, and darkness, this place was its antithesis.

Beyond the expanse of a smooth reflective pier, a small wooden bridge extended out in front of him to a tropical island that crowned the dancing tides. Foaming waves lapped over golden beaches. An impossible collection of trees, nu-birds, and drones formed a perimeter as if awaiting Mirrorheads approach.

And there, bobbing atop the softly swirling waves on magnetized platforms, were thirty-two signatures. Thirty-two signatures from thirty-two loci chambered within thirty-two different combat platforms

It took him finally noticing one of said platforms was a Sangeist to realize the rest were golems as well.This chapter was first shared on the Ñøv€lß1n platform.