Chapter 20-22 The City Eternal (III)

Name:Godclads Author:
Chapter 20-22 The City Eternal (III)

+This is High Agnos Jakuta Ajayi.

The Heaven of Truth has been triggered.

Someone must have tried to manipulate memories from a restricted zone of Scale. One of your number must be compromised.

Get me Chief Paladin Naeko.

I do not care about your excuses. I do not care about where he is or what you need to do to get him. Use technology, use your Heavensuse anything. Get him back here now!

Since we are talking right now, we can assume the Heaven is stable, despite the Nethers continued instability. The affected seem to be recovering with little issue aside from memory bleed-over, but we must continue monitoring things.

And we must review the state of the Nolothic Ark. Yes. The one thats stored in the [REDACTED].

I have already dispatched Agnosi for an emergency inspection. Im sharing their FATE Skeins and details with you right now. Let them in. Let them do their work. And again: get me Chief Paladin Naeko.

The last time something like this happened, the cults of Noloth were on the precipice of unleashing the Uprising.

We must be prepared for the worst.

Oh, that reminds me: summon the Guilds' representatives before they start a shooting war in the chaos. Things are already uncertain enough without them starting the Fifth Guild War. Lets make sure that doesnt happen.+

-Thoughtcast from High Agnos Jakuta Ajayi to ScaleThe original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

20-22

The City Eternal (III)

Directing [101,301] ghosts all at the same time was a taxing act, even for a rapidly evolving thoughtform like Avo.

In the best of times, it was like sprouting new limbs and linking them to new channels cultured from stolen memories.

Now, with Deep Nether bathed in thought-shriveling chaos, the ether around him boiling as if exposed to an impossible heat, the Famines of Peace unbalanced but responding, their disruptions rippling from sequences stacked in layered arrays, and Emotion fused over the Hungers in a layer of phantasmal lamellar, Avo had little time to practice finesse.

He had to attack. He had to push his advantage. He had to compromise the priesthood before they musteredbefore the Hungers twisted the Nether itself to strike him down.

Everything moved at the speed of thought. Existence screamed at him from every corner. Sequences mottled and parted, bursting as he consumed their ghosts to manufacture his diversionary assault. The bulk of his splinters tore through the space between the Famines of Joy and Peace as a forest of lashing tendrils. Avo closed, his ego comprised of countless knife-tipped missiles, most expendable, requiring only one to strike a desired target.

The only forewarning for what followed was a sudden feeling of gut-churning terror.

Shift everything away from the mindscapes.

Do it now.

Do it before.

Avo had only begun diverting ghosts from the sequences in the Deep Nether over to the tendrils he grew out from Joys wards before the sorrowful priests began to unravel.

Their unmaking was signaled by some kind of radiationan emission that was outright deleterious to any conscious mindand they all shattered with impossible force, sequences comprising their minds whipping out like monowire grenades, ripping through all that was around them.

Avo remained unaffected.

Attuned to the Nether, he was as if flowing steam, enveloping and becoming the passing sequences as memories, artifacts, emotions, and sensations flashed through him before he allowed them to slip past.

All the while, Avo accelerated onward, seeking to plunge himself into the nodes of Peace.

Then, too late for him to notice, the sequences slipping through him slotted into each other, conjoining with impossible precision. The synchronous destruction of the Famines of Joy had birthed something. Something Avo was utterly unprepared for.

A pattern tore through the fabric of the Nether, wounding this layered world deeply. Then, something pushed through the clefts beyond.

Ghosts: [70,331]

When his awareness returned, Avo felt his ego drastically dismembered with every ghost and splinter he left outside the Famines utterly annihilated, and where they hid, entire portions of the Deep Nether were shorn clean, sequences reeling, constructs pouring out into the phlogiston as if phantasmal viscera.

The damage resembled severed tendons desperately clinging to bone.

Another warmind. But you made them do it too soon. Were fine. Well be fine. Keep going. Get to Peace.

Hurry!

He was a thought away from the nearest cluster of Peaces nodes when the first of the disruptions hit him. Avo had hoped the Low Master would use the targeted variant of the phantasmic, but it had been too much to hope for.

The Famine of Peace was no novice when it came to matters of combat, especially when the Nether was concerned.

As Avos splinters closed, bubbles of thought-shredding force exploded out from Peaces arrays.

In an instant, Avo lost another fifty percent of himself.

Ghosts: [34,772]

Not all the arrays were prepared for his approach, however. Fifteen had been occupied. Lancing the memories below to clear the sequences of constructs, their focus occupied by his diversion. These were the ones Avo would strike at.

Or would have if the tides of the Nether itself didnt shift to expand the gap.

No! The Hungers cried.

Words failed to convey how it felt to be in the vicinity of the entity as it moved. Imagine swimming beside a colossal serpent larger than your world. Imagine that it moves at impossible speeds. Now imagine that your world is little more than a limb to it, that it can thrash and move your existence as much as it desired.

Something told Avo that if he had been flame, he would have been extinguished in a heartbeat. His ability to entwine himself with the Nether was all that kept him from absolute dissolution.

But it didnt protect him from Peaces counter-attack.

More Thoughtwave Detonations followed. More splinters were dissipated in an instant.

Fifteen viable targets became ten, then eight, then four.

Avo almost managed to close in before it became three.

And he was down to ten percent of what he was again, cognition narrowing, templates vanishing as he adjusted his cog-cap accordingly.

Ghosts: [11,009]

When the first of his ghosts struck the first node, he thought it was all over.

His elation rang against Peaces unfettered rage, the edges of their thoughtstuff ringing like twin shields slammed together during a joust of steeds. Thereafter, the nodes wards expanded into a network of layered studs.

The sheer complexity of the construct's sequencing left Avo baffled. It wasfranklya staggering piece of art, as if an organic shelladaptive and reactivelined with protective shells, each supporting each, the other layer a flat defensive line made to detonate after destabilization, the protections thereafter actively resetting themselves to handle whatever trauma they faced.

PHANTASMIC DOWNLOADED: [CONUNDRUM]

It was more advanced than even the Quicksand, though far less replicable.

Ori-Thaums thaumaturgy shone throughanyone could download their defenses if they had the sequences and builds downloaded. What Peace possessed was a novel creationmillions upon millions of counter-traumatic constructs created from all the memories it collected.

And this is only his secondary defense. Joy is supposed to be first. He is supposed to stack himself over the others and turn brittle. Peace wears him as armor, and Emotion directs them both.

However, despite the masterful skill that went into its creation, it was worth naught against an assimilating thoughtforman entity could melt into your structure and claim you as its own.

For the first time, Avo shifted forms, centering all his remaining ghosts within the splinter that structured the node, and the steam he embodied ignited as if gas kissing fire.

He swallowed Peaces nodes, pluming outward to take them for his own.

The thrill in him was beyond measurement. This had been a moment he had yearned forcoveted, despite his doubts.

Claiming a Low Masters experiences and template would give him an understanding of the art beyond even that which Walton distilled in him. It would be

The nodes he was burning detonated just as he ate through the last layer of their wardings. Their egos burst from within, mental palaces collapsing inward into broken fragments, chipping parts of Avo away in the process.

A feral cry of dissatisfaction escaped him as a hiss.

No. He had them. He had them!

They were his to tasteto plunder.

Again, he was denied! Again!

Avohakten was a child between worlds. Walton had desired to ensure his immortality under the city eternal. But the boy was more his mothers son, more naturally faithful to an actual god than some post-humanist dogma.

So, he sought to reveal the Hungers.

So, he had to be handled.

So, Walton remembered looking down at his murdered son, his sharp blue eyes gleaming with tears, face stricken with despair, pain, hatred, and horror. A trail of citrus dripped down his chin, the lemon he was eating discarded by the wayside. Bloodstains brightening a pale-white toga.

That was the moment that formed the spine of Peaces being. The root of all his hate. Against his son. Against the gods. Against himself. Against even the Hungersloyal though he still remained.

Two minds fractured that day. Wahakten, faced the death of his son, and came out broken.

Which made his reward and punishment an easy thing to give.

The Hungersfurious by betrayal but proud of their high priests resolvehad the rest of their servants executed and broke Walton into four facets.

Emotion was the first to be separated, one stripped of the human weakness that brought this downfall.

He was supposed to govern all the others. Direct them. Protect the Hungers himself. Uncompromisable. Beyond the temptation of impulse.

Joy was pain distilled, all Waltons hurt, all the ruin, all the shattering, all within a shell that was little more than a bottle for mind-rending trauma, with little left to break.

Peace then was his inverse. Hateful. Bitter. Willing to destroy the world for hurting him. Directing his traumas externally as a shaper of weapons and a breaker of minds. He understood but was too colored by his own rage to do anything but destroy. That was just as well. For who better to craft a weapon than a knowledge engineer with nothing but ruination to give?

Finally, there was Defiance. Walton as Avo remembered. He was the idealization of the original priest. The hope of acceptance. That he could overcome and survive. He became the spy. The knife in the dark. The diplomat. The poisoner. The explorer. He alone was allowed to interface with the outside world, for he could take all the stimuli and let them pass through him with no chance of succumbing.

Such was the assumption anyway.

Let it not go unsaid that the Hungers were not boundless in their hubris.

As everything hardened into shape for Avo in a near instant, he noticed that most of his fellow nodes had already complied, each collapsing themselves from within using the traumas built within their sequences.

Approximately ninety percent of Peaces palace was lined with constructs made to break and destabilize. All it would take to unravel himself was a thought. A triggered blast. Then nothing of him would be left.

But somewhere along the way, the Peace that was became the Avo that is, and the latter had come too far to die now.

Not when escape was still in sight. Not when he could finally strike at his oldest abuser.

As the first node in his cluster detonated himself, leaving only three other Famines of Peace, Avo considered his options and manifested his templates.

There was little time, but he had a plan.

Well. It was more of a hope.

[Its gonna be close,] Draus muttered. [We aint got that many ghosts left. Emotions staring us right in the face too. Cant burn or claim him easy either.]

Memories detailing Emotions capabilities followed. It was good he didnt manage to subsume the Famine back in the Oversec. If Joy was like swallowing poison, Emotion would be like eating an anvil.

Abrel considered his plans and called Kassamon, Kare, and Corner to her. Each of them swept the scene beyond and tried to find the best opening. A pulse flashed in Avo's perception. He saw the course they were plottinga mountainous wound lined with jutting scales, the gouge between leaking oceans of golden nectar.

[There,] Abrel said. [Thats your best shot. If you can get through the Famines of Emotion, you can ride the blood back down. I think.] She sighed and threw up her hands. [Honestly, Avo, I have no idea what the fuck were doing. Axtraxis didnt have a course on fighting mind-cultists in the Deep Nether.]

[Were all making it up as we go along here,] Corner snorted. [But I gotta be honest, the chance we might light a dragon up from the inside is giving me a kick.]

Avo filled the node he wore totally and checked his ghosts.

Ghosts: [5,446]

Not great. But more than enough for a Thoughtwave Disruptor phantasmic. He couldnt make that many splinters this time.

But he could compromise the other three nodes. Not fast enough to take them over. But detonate them. Use them as cover.

+Peace,+ Emotion said, waves washing over him. +I have spoken. It is for the greater good. Certitude must be ensured.+



Drawing on his new memories, Avo steered his avatara ruined effigy of Walton coated in hardened blood and stinking of a coppery tangto sneer at the elder Famine. +Yeah. Always our lives for the greater good. Our nodes.+ He looked to the Hungers then, and a smile passed over his features. He had a feeling that Peace wouldve liked to speak the following words if he were his own man. +You werent worth my boy. Not yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow. I know you now. I know you.+

All as one, the dead owls lodged within the exposed chests of each Famine of Emotion twitched as if a pulsing heart.

Just as Avo spoofed his way into the other Famines of Peace.

They knew.

He knew.

And he started the fight once more by detonating the three nodes around him, shrouding himself in cognitive shrapnel while peeling their wards to use as cover.

Streaking constructs came at him from every angle. He spent ghosts of his own forming a mindscapelayering himself in protections as he closed in.

Three thoughts.

His hastily made protections shouldnt have been enough, but the fact that he layered Peaces wards beneath each of them allowed him to endure.

Still. There was a cost.

Ghosts: [5,099]

Two thoughts.

He ejected free from the node he was wearing, leaving only a thin plaster of ghosts as he began ejecting parts of his protections like chaff.

The waters of the Nether were alight with traumas, aglow with tides of force, of crushing waves of perception projected by the Hungers themselves.

Avos protective cocoon held impossibly against a Sovereignty nulling onslaught for a heartbeat. And then disintegrated.

But he wasnt there anymore.

Ghosts: [4,510]

One thought.

One thought and they were all distracted again.

One thought, and everyone fell to a lapse in focus once more.

For the second time, a nourished warmind inside Avo activated, and he lost himself but kept to the path.

Ahead, a chasm of gleaming gold welcomed him, its borders policed by a disoriented lattice of nodes, struggling to recompose their thoughts.

They dont see your approach.

The rest are too busy destroying your shelter.

You are too desperate to think.

Everyone is in disarray once more.

But the Hungersthey shift, the target moves past you.

But still, you strike its flesh.

Still, you impact its metaphysical existence, rattling it with your own.

Still. You descend into its inner world like a meteorite falling to devasting a city.

Were off-course, Avo. Find the wound. Find the wound and get out.

And hurt the Hungers before you leave.

Were close to the end.

Were close to getting free.

Do not fail now.