Chapter 22-4 Among Giants

Chapter 22-4 Among Giants

[Operational Damage Report for Critical Sovereignties in the Spine]

Kainhal

Death Toll: Estimated 23 Million

Casualties: Over 120 Million

Damage: Decimation of all major Syndicates; operational members, active enforcers, associated gangs, activated golems

Suldananapt-Iadoir

Death Toll: 12 Million

Casualties: Approximately 64 Million, many missing

Damage: Major chrono-spatial launch sites damaged; mass drone-jock casualties

False Isle

Death Toll: 8 Million

Casualties: 63 Million, sections of city displaced. Need further review

Damage: Decimation of all major Syndicates; operational members, active enforcers, associated gangs, activated golems

Singhrids Kennel

Death Toll: 29 Million

Casualties: Unknown, thaumaturgic shielding for employed Syndicates ruptured

Damage: Organ-Breeder operation completely destroyed; all mod-slaves freed or euthanized

Meldain

[ENDING REPORT]

+Ive seen enough. Issue a cast: All tertiary assets must go to ground. Do not do anything to draw the Chief Paladins attention. Delay all overt operations and reduce noise for the foreseeable future.

Instancer Madrapu, set up a meeting with Convex Wallflower. Tell them we need Incubi support. Tell them we would like to make a proposal to procure more proxies.

Samir Naeko just shook off his fucking malaise by dragging the back of his hand across the citys face. The easy days are over. A storm of shit is rolling in over the horizon. We need to hunker down.

-Augur Nyretei Yaeglis of Sanctus

22-4

Among Giants

There were levels to power.

There were gods beyond gods.

And then there were beings like Samir Naekoa man bearing implacable power, seemingly capable of laying his hand upon all of New Vultun at once.

Avo beheld the devastation across his ever-spreading plague of splinters. He watched through cog-feeds on the ground, from drones crossing the sky, internalized damage reports flicking through mechanized combat platforms, and tasted the Rend spilling free of rupturing golems.Read latest chapters at nov(e)lbin.com Only

He witnessed Naekos fury in a perspective more intimate and complete than any other in the city. He was there. From the gutters to Lights End. He was there to watch Naeko finish his fight with Zein. He was there, watching the tumbling clouds that formed the Chief Paladins palm sweep through every Layer, pass through every being and building, press down upon every aspect of violence manageable across the tapestry of existence.

The coils within gauss guns whined. Missiles streaked. Fists landed. Miracles manifested.

And the shooters were cut down by their own flechettes. Explosions fizzled but the jocks guiding the missiles fried. Strikes folded in on themselves, arms and legs breaking, combat bioforms tearing into their own flesh. The golems made to break the world flinched, flared, and came apart physically and ontologically as their miracles were torn away from them.

Through dimming eyes and failing cog-feeds, Avo stole death after death, drank ghosts after ghost, and learned what it was to stand against Naeko as a mortal man. He watched from Lights End, the Throat, the Spine, and then the gutters. He bore witness from the perspectives of an unharmed bystander and an active transgressor.

The former merely walked on as embraced by a cloud. The others experienced the full retribution of their own actions. Magnified. Amplified. Their deaths justified.

GHOSTS: [44,035,283]

THAUMIC OUTPUT - 81,935 THAUM/c

Naekos Heaven thundered down against the city like it was an anvil he sought to break, and caught in the radius, Avo suffered a turbulence that made him feel small. Reminded him he had far to rise yet as a Godclad, and that there were beings in this city who dwarfed him yet.

Zein was contained. At least that scheme had succeeded, but watching them fight, watching her use everything she could, but be rendered little more than impotent by his sheer powerunable to even kill him with a future-stuck thrustwas humbling.

And more than a little thrilling.

The Godslayer was contained. A problem for the Paladins to handle. Perhaps Naeko would finish killing her, but something told Avo the Chief Paladin still wanted to keep his former master alive, loathsome as she was, and enraged though he was. With all she knew, she could offer her memories. Give Naeko insight into Avo and the others. Reveal truths about Ninth Column. But such a thing would do more harm to her vaunted paths.

As things stood now, his Soul was about to be twenty-six Heavens stronger. Twenty-five donated by the Paladins and Exorcists. One that was the Heart of Noloth.

Not a bad final

WARNING: HEAVY TEMPORAL DISTORTION DETECTED

The coming shock slammed down on him just as the last tickles of darkness slithered into his crackling Soul. The palls cast by the nearby foliage stopped clawing at the enshadowed matter, but a swelling of gold tore across existence, striking Avos Frame with a ringing impact.

Where Zein was a river running the course of time, where her Fisher That Wasnt dove across non-linear streams, what was coming for Avo now was something akin to a continental avalanche. The metaphysical weight couldnt be ignored. Greater than Thousandhand. Greater even than Naeko.

Distant as it was, its coming was like the fall of a titan, the clouds displacing to announce its arrival, tectonic plates parting as they greeted the surface.

More significant perhaps was how it moved in relation to time. Zein leaped forward into the future. Skipping and skimming the surface of progressive chronology. This was something else. This was a parallel tide to existence itself. A second ocean of reality simulated from the first.

It washed through Avo, and he felt his Domain of Chronology rattle. His Frame lurched, and for a beat, he thought it was going to be torn from his sheath entirely. He stumbled as the world around him fractured into splitting stacks unto itself before resplendent threads stitched them back together.

He knew who this was. He knew what this was. The memories he consumed from the locus pillar sang out to him. A single name escaped with his breath.

Veylis.

Leave. Leave now! Shes reaching out for you! Shes reaching through the paths! She felt you!

Avo removed the urges of greed and gluttony from his mind and abandoned the golems he was planning to consume without effort. To stay here any longer would expose him. Give the High Seraph to tear him across time.

But it was still overwhelming. How fast she came. How fast she found him. How easy it was for her to remake entire sections of existence.

Zein was right. He wasnt ready. Not even close.

But he could run. He could escape.

His triggered Haemification on himself and burrowed through Draus session. A splatter of blood blended with the crimson grass on which he once stood. Only a single submind remained active in New Vultun, diving the Nether, spreading splinters for the coming days. Physically, Avo was gone. Utterly vacating New Vultun before it was too late.

He thought himself quiet enough. He thought Naeko a good enough deterrent and his time apple.

He thought.

He thought.

He couldnt just think anymore. He couldnt leave anything to chance. Not with his enemies capable of turning time itself against him.

He needed better counters.

Protections.

[Paths] of his own.

Time to have another conversation with Kae.

***

A second later, a reverberation pulsed through existence, and a second layer of reality snapped away from the first, vibrating even though it bore all the same aspects as its source.

The Paladin golems and courtyard where the minor disturbance originated were unspooled from baseline reality and taken.

And then just as fast as it came, just as fast as Naeko felt its presence, turned his palm back upward, it receded like a fleeing wave, collapsing back upward through the Layers, back upward at a speed unfathomable, back, back, and back to the apex of the Tiers.

In the span of a heartbeat, the streaming waves of gold crossed thousands of kilometers, and around them were the paths broken and rebuilt.

Within its grip now was a collection of golems and a space and moment in time. The paths twisted together and rebuilt the extracted portions, golems coming back into shape, the biothaumically designed garden walkway unfolding into shape. Jutting trees of pearly white protruded from swollen nubs of red. Bone ran on as walkways lined the fecund ground.

Brushing across the patterns of existence, Veylis found it then. A smear of blood coating a patch of flattened grass. Intriguing. Fascinating.

A lesser echo was spawned. The entity materializes in the scene and through it, she touches the blood and strains her Heaven to turn back time. As much as it can before the nothingness.

The contours of a figure come into shape, but she can see that its death was immediate. Sudden. Unspeakably violent. A death only possible via thaumaturgic means. But still, there was no anchoring. No hint of death in her scenes or baseline reality. When her canon reached its limit, she studied the figure and found herself entirely at a loss as to who she was facing.

They stood too tall. Too thin. The blood spraying free from its parting body left it masked by an obfuscated facade.

But even with her ignorance of the subjects actual identity, she was already certain of one thing, a truth she vocalized, this reassembled world speaking in her stead.

My mother, you most certainly are not. So, mystery, who might you be? If you are not my mother, who might you be?