Chapter 20-23 A Purgatory of Dragons

Chapter 20-23 A Purgatory of Dragons

{EGI Only Way To Be Sure Generating Report}

TO: Citizens, Friends, NON-MIL Minds, Assholes from Guilds (Eavesdropping Parties)

FROM: AEGIS

SUBJECT: Dragon Incursion, Fun Times in History, and Strategic Countermeasures

BEGINNING REPORT:

Citizens

Friends.

Minds.

Assholes from Guilds who are listening in.

Shit is looking a mite-bit fucked.

Currently, Im detecting a whole lot of dragons spilling over into existence. Just gliding into reality with the passage of time across various cycler farms and plenty of places in the Sunderwilds as well.

Current projections are at {1.3} dragons already, so for all you Godclads down there, break out whatever nightmare equivalent to champagne you enjoy and start doing the glug-glug.

Because you know what this many dragons popping at once means.

Yep. Thats right, kids. Were living in interesting times again, so reset the clock. History has just been affected. Idheims culture is about to experience a shift.

Its with that said that I would like to officially propose we move to a strategic defensive posture and start formally dispatching forces to occupy the Warrens under agreement section A.VIII 12 of the Accords.

That, and I would like to request access to restricted munitions, such as the anti-matter missiles {REJECTED: WILL DETONATE IMMEDIATELY DUE TO PATTERN DEVIATIONS IN REALITY}, implosion fields [REJECTED: WE KNOW ABOUT THE ASSASSINATIONS YOU ARE PLANNING; PLEASE STOP}, and quant-point molecular editors {REJECTED: NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT}.

The futures looking hazy and things are not in the least bit stable.

We'll just get our raincoats out beforehand so that were not caught off guard like last time.

It would be a shame for things to get out of hand again. Like during the Uprising.The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

Maybe we should reactivate the Deconstructors in the Penumbra again. Just in case.

{APPROVED}

-EGI Only Way To Be Sure

20-23

A Purgatory of Dragons

--Master! Rouse yourself! Rouse yourself, they are upon us!

The Woundmothers cry tore Avo from his stupor and the world around him loaded into detail.

Tingles danced down his nerves, but it was only when he noticed the countless warning icons flashing across his cog-feed that he realized he was back with his body, mind nested within his sheath.

Something shifted in the air. The Fardrifter felt the attacks imminence while the Woundmother was left ignorant.

The air grew taut with lashing threads. Clouds burst into a cawing murder, crows streaking out from all sides to shred the descending ghoul.

His reflexes flared. Time slowed. Lightning and radiance erupted out of his veins and arteriesthrough the cracks he left upon the flesh of existence. He Boltstrode, leaping to the very edge of his Sanguinity, the flocking shadows passing feebly through a haemokinetic afterimage.

He tried to shift a second time. Move in the opposite direction. But as blood turned to lightning, Avo found himself anchored in place, accelerating, but unmoving.

Within his Frame, his cyclers jolted and pulsed, grinding against an unseen counterforce.

The darkness around Avo roiled. The clouds twisted as more wings stretched out from writhing clouds, spawning more murders to the hunt. But a sudden gust swept through them, peeling their forms and smearing shadows into nothingness.

His Metamind warned of no Heaven. His Frame brushed against no domains. Strange. Disconcerting. Something to figure out later.

Coiling typhoons drilled out from the space where the ghoul once was. The surrounding cumulous strained and broke, lifeless crows spilling free. Nine forms of city-dwarfing immensity slithered through the sky, resembling bastards born of steeds and serpents, gouging tears into the darkness with their teeth, the mantle of their manes darker than night and dancing like flags caught in a tempest.

With a strain of effort, the Fardrifter sank into the surrounding darkness and pried. The surrounding world screamed, struggled, and then tore.

As it stood, the unified use of all his Heavens, warnings cast from his templates, and the Skin of Virtuality canon from his Techplaguer were all that kept him alive.

It was like facing Shotin again. The world around him was constantly changing, with whispers of ghost arriving as altered memory constructs, their manifestations possessing all their original forms capabilities.

Anomalies, effects, scenes, places, and hostile Heavens simply kept coming, every pattern in this existence hostile to Avos intrusion, reacting as if white blood cells facing a virus. Thoughtwave disruptions filled the air as a constant stream, but Avo pressed on, his body temporarily converted to raw data.

Explosions, artillery, cataclysms, and oceans slammed down against him, but his Fortress denied him physical harm, his Fardrifter carried him through wind and shadow, and his Boltstride pulled him to the edge of his influence, cleaving blastwaves of fiery displacement with this final jump.

Destination: [12 Kilometers]

Glistening threads of rising gold called to him, were close enough for him to touch with his Sanguinity. But as bolts pulsed out from him, as fractures of lightning spread out once more, as steed-serpents made of coiling wind swam wide and ahead, a final obstacle appeared.

And promptly stopped Avo dead.

As he strode once more, his haemokinetic lightning was parried by another, the force he felt perfectly matching his own. As his winds pushed, so did a counter-gale, gust driving against gust, absolute against absolute, canon against canon.

Avos velocity stalled. He found himself faced with an entity perfectly suited to deny him his escape: a snapshot of himself shaped from the Hungers' newest remembrance.

He felt a rival will reach into him, try to seize control of his blood. But such a thing was impossible. Against the laws of his subreality. Just as him doing the same was taboo for theirs

Paradox: Domain (Blood/Air)

Soulfire erupted from his Frame and Avo found himself falling free as an ephemeral, his Woundshaper and Fardrifter recoiling and disrupted inside him.

REND CAPACITY [WOUNDMOTHER]: 81%

REND CAPACITY [FARDRIFTER]: 97%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

REND CAPACITY [TECHPLAGUER]: 22%

With his Techplaguer still in play, he opened walls and slipped through structures across the city as he tumbled down. His reflexes were still surging, initiate still in his corner, but the bitter tang of desperation was returning once more.

His two primary Heavens were out of commission. Would stay that way for the next few minutes at the very least.

He needed to keep moving. Maintain what speed he could and get out. Twelve kilometers wasnt far, but with how the Hungers could casually spawn new memories within the confines of its inner world, he was a beat of hesistation away from death.

Glimpsing the simulated map he made earlier, he triggered his Phys-Sim and saw that he was on a collision course with the side of a ziggurat. Expanding the holo-map further, he looked through the structure's interior and constructed new routes.

If he used his Techplaguer to pass through directly, he would doubtless be cut down by one of those emerging frost-sunsor a manifested memory of himselfin a blink. Exposure was bad. Moving in the open without his greater Heavens was suicide. He considered passing through the surrounding precincts, using connected parts to mask his movements, but their on-site defenses felt potent as well.

That, and a better option presented itself in the tombs that lined the underground of each ziggurat. Those were interconnected as well. And from what Peace recalled, the site remained a place of extreme importance.

The Low Masters templateonly just realizing where he wasbegan screaming at Avo from inside his mind as Avo tumbled down in freefall.

Spreading his sporelings out, Avo relied on his sheaths capabilities to ensure his safe descent. Bioelectric currents passed through him. His Echoheads expanded into shifting stacks, orbiting him as rings. Hissing beams snapped through the air, slicing clean through one of his legs. The voltage in him spiked, and using his magnetism, Avo fired his shards.

Eight fragments from his Echoheads tore through the air, sinking into a flat angle on the side of the temple.

Another disruption passed through him, but his Skin of Virtuality kept him unfazed. Clinging to the anchors he made, he pulled hard using his imbued magnetism as he manifested his Techplaguer fully. He opened shifted blocks of inorganic matter side, drawing inward as stored data while he guided himself through the chasm.

And just as he passed through, just as pressure built from close behind him, Avo filled the gaps behind him with a thought and began digging his way down through the structure, seeking the lowest level to broaden his chances of survival.

Halls lined with ghostly torches and filled with fleeing people caught the periphery of Avos notice. He felt the pull of the metals they wore, flung an Echohead shard through the head of someone aiming a crossbow behind him without looking as he fell from floor to floor.

No unwanted miracles manifested. No act of devastation ensued.

The Hungers mightve been willing to engage him in the open, but these places were significant to them. Places they were outright unwilling to damage.

This had been a good choice.

While he descended, in the back of his mind, a note chimed as flickering strings of data flowed across his perception. His Neurodeck was coming online, and in the back of his mind, he heard a distinct and distorted groan.

{What wonderful hellscapes you bring us to Avo.} Calvinos voice crackled. The EGI soundedand lookedexhausted. Particulates spilled from a dripping nanomolecular ball.

Despite his circumstances, Avo couldnt help but smile. +Calvino. Glad you made it. How do you like the home of my former masters?+

{Its terrible and we should glass it from orbit.}

+Yeah. I feel that way too.+