Chapter 17-3 Random Encounter

Chapter 17-3 Random Encounter

+Proxy-ID Sintaker to Mirror-Convex. L-213382 is compromised. We just got hit by an unknown hostile. Serpentine was nulled. Shell be resurrected in thirty seconds. Cog-cap overloadenemy cracked her Incog with a Skimmer.



Convex, do not bullshit me right now: do we have any assets operating in the area? Because Skimmers arent standard issue-scrying phantasmics. Yeah. Because theyre ours. Exclusively.

I think I caught a glimpse of fire in the Nether too. Not a lot of other shit that can be, is there.

Im gonna drop the act now, Convexdid you get the order to burn us? Are we burned? All this for the Instrument?

Yeah. Instrument Mondelles is still alive. Hes the one who made the kill while the rest of us were incapacitated, so hes got that to hold over us now.

Not that the fucking Gold wasnt smug enough of a shit already

Ah, shit, I see an anchor forming Fuck. Unknown was a Godclad. Repeat, confirmation that the unknown ambusher is a Godclad.



Theyre resurrectingestimated time, a hundred and eight seconds standard.

We need answers, Convex. So Instrument doesnt snuff us all once he gets back in the drone.

And so I dont null you right now and pull the mem-data from your wreck of a mind if I get the feeling youre lying to me.+

-Sintaker, Ori-Thaum Godclad

17-3

Random Encounter

Death came at you fast in New Vultun.

Things had been going too well. Overstuffed by new opportunities and easy victories, something changed in the makeup of Avos mind: he stopped thinking of himself as a member of the city and started believing himself to be above it.

Well, he was above it in many ways, considering his unfettered consciousness and Soul, but the poison was expecting perpetual dominance at every turn. Such anticipations were a corrosive agent, wearing away at the mindset that ensured his survival for so long.

This was good for him. A good refresher on his place in this world.

Idheim was a wellspring of madness, and across its expanses were predator and prey alike. He was fortunate enough to be considered among the former now, but there were other beasts in the deep as well, swimming alongside him, always ready to take a bite.

A temporary setback, the Woundshaper cajoled. Fortune is but a fleeting advantage for our like, master. Their advantage has faded. Their counterattack left you slain, but now prepared. They do not know their deaths are soon coming. Soon, we feed anew.

As the Heaven of Blood shivered with rising laughter, the entropic miasma filling the reflection that was its Hell roiled and danced. There was but a trickle there. Only five percent Rend. Not even worth channeling yet. The Rend of his Datacaster was even lower, peaking at just over three.

Turning his focus to studying the misshapen entity comprised of imagined virtuality, Avos perception danced along the metaphysical cables and fibers making up the Datacaster. Nonsensical codes flowed through the Heaven of Signals even in the fires of his Soul. From the willowing branches of the Heaven rose a field of glitching static, enshrouding the area around it in a protective veil.

Below the Heavens fibril architecture, twitching cubes comprised of junk code metastasized within its Hell, the nature of the entropy expressing itself as an anomaly of spatial reality.

DATACASTER - 335 THAUMC/c

DOMAIN (SIGNALS/SPACE)

CANONS:

(SIGNALS)

->CROWN OF VIRTUALITY

Canon: Converts the environment (100 ft) around the user into simulated mirror-reality made out of raw data supported by Sprites; user can convert all inorganic parts into temporarily stored data (reloads back to their original position in reality after miracle ends)

Hubris: Organic material will result in a [system-collapse] for the user; thaumic backlash will follow

(SPACE)

->HARD-CAGE

Canon: Stores physical (up to 10 tons) matter within a coldtech data-storage device grafted onto the user (1TB per terrr__Fff1001); data must be released back into the real when miracle is no longer in use

Hubris: If the coldtech data storage is damaged, thaumic backlash UNDOUNDOUNDOUNDOFOLLOWFOLLOWFOLLOWTHECHILDRENPROTECTTHECHILDREN

HELL [3 CIRCLE] - 335 THAUMC/c

CANON:

(SPACE)

A shockwave tore out across Avos Sanguinity. The eight unknowns burst like sacks of gore. Blood splattered the passenger compartment within the dronethe purple tones and soft velvet decor came as a surprise. The viscera of the one in stasisAbrels former instructor, Instrument Santanado Starsinger Mondelleshovered in place.

Of nine present within the drone, only three were still alive.

Two more than Avo expected.

The counterattack came at the same time Draus reconnected with his deck and Calvino started talking. Multiple indicators flashed in Avos HUD just as two enemy Godclads recomposed themselves, bodies knitting back together as if bands of rubber snapping back across the surface of time.

Manta: 821 Meters [ETA 6.4 seconds]

Six seconds was an eternity in a fight between Godclads.

A sudden force seized Avos flesh as he felt his bones shatter in an instant. His Domain of Biology shuddered. A screech of pain escaped him as he casually wrestled his blood back from the intruders control.

[Specificity trumps generality, motherfucker,] Abrel hissed, enduring the pain better than Avo. [Lesson twelve.]

He fused haemokinetic replacements for his flesh and hooks to struggle against his shredding skin. The Godclad revealed herself to be a face-painted Sang nested with a rig sprouting wings molded from bone. Avos Conflagration roared out to consume the survivors just as the second of his foesa figure hidden masked by orbiting arrows of softly glowing silvermade their own move.

The arrows rushed through Avo and accelerated through the body of the drone as if there was nothing there. An inch away from devouring their minds, the world sped up around Avo as agony tore through his shredding sheath. Something hit him. Something faster than he could perceive. The sheer impact should have punched him clean through the vehicle, but the Sang held its flesh tight.

ARMOR INTEGRITY CRITICAL! {2%}

Glass, leather, plastic, and silicon filled the air around him, the drone shattering as his Meldskin somehow kept him alive, parrying the kinetic energy of the impact away from him.

More vicarious understanding filled his mind. The knowledge came from Corner this timehe was enchained by a Heaven of Speed; damned to always be slower than his attackers by a magnitude. Only by killing the user could he be freed. The only problem was that Corner had no idea how this Heaven worked or what its limitations were.

The potential problem was promptly solved by an unexpected victory: the Sang struck at him again using her trauma patterns.

And unlike him with his flesh, she didnt have any means of holding her mind together as her cognition succumbed to his flames.

New understandings materialized in his mind. He knew what they were doing herewhat the objective behind this entire affair was.

More important to the present, however, he had means of freeing himself from his current entrapment.

Controlling the Sang Godcladnamed Elegant-Moon, descended from the line of ChenAvo restored his own flesh and eviscerated the Godclad of Speed in the same second.

The Heaven of Speed ceased its miracles and his mind screamed once more. His skin seared and he found himself tumbling from the rapidly decompressing drone alongside Elegant-Moon, falling between pylons carrying traveling electricity.

WARNING: MELDSKIN INTEGRITY COMPROMISED

Recomposition in progress {4%}

Fusing a shell of blood around himself, he noted the Sang healed faster than she burned, steam rising from her eye as her flesh defied the surrounding temperature.

{Avo. Were here,} Draus said, voice calm and unworried. {Bringing the Manta in. Ill open a passage for you.}

The stealth ship was forty meters away on the Neurodeck and one hundred and thirty-one on the DeepNav. Grunting, Avo aligned the metrics to the former. He was going to be using voidtech anywayhe resequenced his mind and was

Something brushed his Domains of Space.

Multiple templates screamed from inside his gestalt. He didnt think. He reacted. Wrapping himself and Elegant-Moon in blood, he speared toward the Manta as a bolt of haemokinetic lightning, peeling internal supports and auxiliary pistons working within the Layer.

Behind, a colossal serpent the size of a megablock skimmed the surface of real space before diving back out of existence. Avo considered diving into the darkness before Abrel responded.

[No! Thats a Path-Hydra,] Abrel cried. From her shared knowledge, he understood what it wasa specialized golem made to paradox geometry, spatial, and correspondence affecting Godclads.

With Elegant-Moons mind fully siphoned into his gestalt, he reviewed the situation.

She was in a cadre under Mondelles, and they were here to discuss the travesty behind the Conflux arrangement that saw Jhred Greatling dead, a cell of Incubi and their handler nulled, multiple districts devastated, and Stormtree and Highflame on the verge of open conflict. They arrived prepared for a fight, but things proceeded diplomatically despite the active tensions.

What she didnt know, however, was trouble. With most of her team dead after Avo managed to break himself free of Mondelles planar prison and surprise the party, she found herself fighting alongside an unknown Godclad, and the Path-Hydra proved to be an unexpected guest as well.

+So,+ Avo said, +No idea about who our unknown consang is?+

As their bodies recomposed, Elegant-Moon offered but a shrug with her vessel and template both.

[Ghoul,] she sighed. [If youre asking me, who am I going to ask?] She paused and noticed Abrel. [Wait? What? How is she here?]

+Same way youre going to be staying,+ Avo said. Switching over to his ansible, he sent a message to his cadre. Through the glowing haze within the Layer, the accretions of his team shone, coming into view. Twenty meters away now. He looked around and felt nothing. They couldnt stay. They needed to go. {Draus. Got a new guest out here. And a new friend. Think we should call it before the other Clads resurrect. Ambush them later if we have to.}

{Synced,} Draus said. A low noise of frustration rose from her throat.

{What?} he asked.

{You got to have all the fun again,} she grumbled. {And who the hells that earlier? Think I remember seeing those light threads some} Was as far as she got before the Manta was swallowed by a surging mass of scaled obsidian.