Chapter 14-17 A Seizure of Gifts

Chapter 14-17 A Seizure of Gifts

It wont take much for everything to come apart in battle.

This is why you cannot rely on the Nether when the fighting gets rough. Things get disrupted, and even Ori-Thaums Weavewrither Counter-Suppressive Intelligence Network can be suppressed by prolonged Thoughtwave Detonations.

As such, a Godclad cannot fixate on a single tool alone. You need to open additional options for yourself. You need to create openings and stay aware of the situation, or youll find yourself lost and soon to be dead.

Remember the sequence of battle. Perception and awareness are everything. Establish and control your perimeters. Shape the situation. Prepare your necessities. Engageand do it quickly. If you stay locked in combat for too long they will zero in on your canons and rotate specialized Rendbreaker units to see you snuffed.

Tempo. Tempo. Tempo. Play to your rhythm, and get out before you culminate.

And if everything is already going to hell, and you dont have a clear overview on your situation, break, retreat, survey, and then assault.

If you juvs want to keep those Souls you got, you need to use your heads. Not knowing what kills you isnt an acceptable excuse when the Big Nothing comes calling.

-Santanado Starsinger Mondelles, Combat Instructor to Axtraxis Academy of Highflame

14-17

A Seizure of Gifts

The scene portrayed by Revas aeros visual sensors made it look as if distant stars were flashing into being over the assaulted block. As bright as they burned, so too were they quick to dim and fade, as if the flames torching them from within were pulled away to another place entirely.

Something about the incomprehensibility of it all made Revas stomach turn.

+Holy shit,+ Raldi breathed. His aweand terrorwere palpable. Never before had she seen him so captured by a sight, and never did he allow so much emotion to leak through his thoughtstuff.

Whatever the creature was doing, it was enough to shake a veteran Necrojack to his core.

+Whats happening?+ Reva asked through their shared session. +Whats he doing?+



Raldi didnt respond immediately. Instead, as his ghosts leaped and twisted to and fro from his mind, he connected her to his cog-feed and interfaces loaded into her minds eye. He was creeping through the districts surveillance systems.

+Hes nulling them. All of them. Jaus, its like someone firing a fusion burner down an interconnected. He must be tearing through their lobbies. This Jaus, I have no idea how many people hes nulling by the second.+

As if to compound his words, the ghosts once transmitting their warnings over the block sparked and promptly vanished, and with their banishment followed the light as well.

An entire patch of the district went dark.

Beside her, the ghoul clicked its spear-like fangs together and chuffed with artless glee. The unseen massacred pleased him, but his disposition was that of a connoisseur observing an art pieceno; he was the artist himself, marveling at the greatness of his own skill.

Slowly, he turned, and the writhing flames that crowned his accretion discharged a splash of ghosts and burned ever thicker. Between the undulating folds of the blaze, she caught sight of screaming faces and ethereal memories breaking and forming like the steam that cloaked her body.

Her instincts screamed with anxiety, and she understood what she stared upon immediately; these were the memories of his victims, fed into his ghosts and stripped clean of their consciousnesses.

A subtle shift of his posture made her jolt, and she reached out for her Heaven

And stayed her hand in the last instant.

You are forgiven, Avo said, low hissing mirth escaping him. I cannot blame you for being afraid. It is appropriate. Now more than ever it is a proper response. You are a real person, Reva. It is good to treasure your own life. Understanding your kind more now.

Reva felt her nerves tighten with every word the monster spoke. Her blood was rushing like before a battle, and it took all that she had to refrain from attacking him.

She had to.

For all the hubrises he was certain to possess and the paradoxes she could strike if only she knew all his domains, but of his absolute weaknesses there was one avenue. Yet, what would follow would certainly be her endand possibly Raldis.

She had been a Bloodthane for years, and in that time she told herself a single story, that she was the huntress, and her foes the prey.

Not so at present. Not so.

An old truth revealed itself to her thenone long known to the wolves, wargs, and beasts which dwelled in the deep and deeper of the woods.

Unfortunately for her, his evolutions came radically. Even now his mind swam with new words and whispers and wonderings. With all the jocks and Necros he consumed, his consciousness was a small township unto itself. Knowledge and recommendations fed themselves directly to his notice, his new templates organizing by seniority and relevance for each situation.

He had learned the true reasons behind the assault in a near instant and withdrew before the lobby began purging itself after he devoured all the protecting Necros. His mind shifted between euphoria and annoyance at his vulnerability; his flames could brand all the Nether into him or the other way around, but he would be snuffed like a paltry candle when the disruptors went off.

The tradeoffs were extreme either way. As such, he already devoted a good percentage of his mind to coming up with a solution.

Regardless, he approached the sieged block in silence, shuttling the aero with Reva and White-Rab toward confrontation. He hadnt fully manifested his Galeslither, but he wasnt far off with how much of he was invoking his power over shadows.

Speeding toward the structure itself, Avo regarded the situation with precision.

He had jumped from mind to mind while spreading his cognition, and using the penetration already achieved by the attackers, he disabled critical functions within the defending blocks protections. Most of the loci he left untouched so as to not alert the attackers of his coming.

Of course, with their logistical and information backline slaughtered and the nukes entirely silenced, they'd soon be aware that all was not well for this operation.

Surfacing within the ground level of the blocks lobby, Avo pulled himself and the aero out from the darkness as if he was crawling onto shore. Warning klaxons sounded around the cavernous lobby of the block, and lights brightened and dimmed, basking hundreds of mutilated bodies in throbbing oscillations of neon.

A cold wind ran through the open gateways leading beyond the block, and with a peek into some of his new memories, he understood the scene.

Ashthrone and Sanctus Necros managed to breach the blocks systems and removed major parts of the lockdown before local Highflame personnel caught on.

By then, however, it was already too late. The attack was on, and the blitz came in a storm of bullets and monofilament grenades. Bodies large and small, male and female, of every make, shape, enhancement, and aesthetic were left as ruined mounds of meat toppled over each other.

Open faces and empty eyes told Avo the residents were entirely unprepared, and the wounds on some revealed that the raiders found amusement in blowing the legs off their victim and watching them crawl.

Sometimes, man was not so far from ghoul.

+Its done.+ White-Rabs thoughtcast emanated from within the aero, and Avo found himself surprised. Had his cog-donor already managed to instill the necessary fabrications to distort Ashthrone and Sanctus theories? If so, Walton trained him well.

He would be a most useful ally for clandestine situations. So long as Avo needed a softer touch, White-Rab might just be the one to deliver.

Good, Avo whispered and spread his Sanguinity outward. His tactile awareness exploded out from him to sweep for any details he might have missed with his cog-feed alone, and he accessed his newer templates to track where each assault team was heading.

Five hundred twenty operatives were deployed into the block depths supported by a multitude of drones and war wights. Some already lay dead among the innocent in the lobby, gauss wounds telling of return fire.

[Eight kills for a massacre. What a disgrace.] Abrels template snorted with derision, and apart from her, even the minds that had a hand in this atrocity flinched at her coldness. [What? What, you assholes? If they were gleam enough, they would have repelled the assault instead of getting cut down like this. We need to improve the combat training of our smallfolk. Ori-Thaum and Stormtree are one thing, but the Blues and Grays? No. Thats just fucking shameful.]

A chorus of offense roared in the back of Avos consciousness, and he asserted his control again before everything tumbled into chaos.

With how many voices his mind was channeling now, he needed better means of having them address each other. Right now, his open gestalt resulted in constantly triggered conflicts between his legions of templates. Perhaps he needed to form an alternating line of representatives? Something to allow the more level-headed of his generatable intellects smoother interactions with each other.

A flow of ghosts promptly entered his accretion, and his cog-feed populated with over eighty markers.

+I got a mem-lock on all the snuffers too,+ White-Rab said. He sounded more than a little pleased with himself.

Thanks, Avo said, infusing his reply with as much gratitude as he could. This didnt need to be faked. He had all the means needed to locate his prey, but having White-Rab do it was far more circumspect.

The doors of the aero hissed, Reva stepped out and frowned at the massacre. Sloppy. But thats not what she meant. In her quietude, Avo sensed flashes from Nu-Scarrowbur pass through her near-term memories. She had gone from one mass death event to the next, and now her mind was making patterns where there should have been none. So. Are we going hunting, or did a particular body catch your appetite?

Her words caught Avo by surprise. Hunger. The hunger was still there but crushed. Contained. With all these minds surrounding him, he was but the heart in a massive organism that shifted and changed between the passing of moods and whims.

He had more control than ever now. More control over himself than he ever did in his life.

Truly, he owed the Low Masters more than he could pay.

He would just have to make do with murdering them when the time came.

No, Avo said, filtering the nearest group. There were just on the floor above, and the mem-data White-Rab injected into him, they were trying to cut their way into an intra-block entertainment zone. Forgot to feel hungry. Thanks for the reminder.

He released his leash on himself and let his base mind expand. All the flavors of death came to him at once.

But he wanted premium flesh. He wanted struggling deaths.

His days on carrion were done; now, he would cut himself on harder meat.