Godclads

Chapter 29-3 Chronoframe (II)

Chapter 29-3 Chronoframe (II)

It don’t matter if you’re me. It don’t matter. I have to get to the Ladder. I gotta make this count. This world is broken. Ain’t no difference between echo, template, delusion, and reality no more. I am. So I wish to be. So I have to be.

Ain’t no other way about it.

I need to make it out. I need to make it to the tower.

Even if I have to snuff my original self to do it.

-Jelene Draus, User of the Stillborn

29-3

Chronoframe (II)

The first thing Draus did to shape her assault was to expand her pathway junctions. She went horizontal and vertical at the same time, expanding her influence along windows, puddles, passing arrows, and drones. She vitrified the tops of megablocks, creating panels of glass she could shoot or depart from, and then finally dispatched thin shards high up in the air and created a subtle encirclement of the entire district. The borders of her Liminal Paracosm now stopped only a few inches away from where the substance enshrouded the space. For twenty kilometers in all directions, Draus widened the expanse of her demiplane, and only when she was done did she start trying to line up the perfect shot.

The pulsing, phantasmal disturbances from the memory tower were intensifying, and ghostly lightning leapt out in pace to the rhythm of a climbing heartbeat. The Chronoframes were at a loss as to how to handle the situation, but it wouldn't be long before they attempted another thought-wave disruption. With the memlocks provided by Avo, she would be able to track them from almost anywhere in existence, but there were other things to consider as well. There were sixteen operational knots within a ten-kilometer radius — thirty-two within the full twenty kilometer expanse. After that, the substance saw her blocked off from the rest of New Vultun.

Additionally, it was getting to be a pain finding all the cloaked Sanctian weapon platforms spread across the airspace, and Draus didn't want to risk her aerial shards in the form of a fly-by and end up giving away her presence.

Finally, it was the issue of dealing with the Chronoframes. She fought Sanctus plenty of times during the war, and what they lacked in firepower, they more than made up for in maneuverability and spatial-kinetics. She knew her first shot wouldn't see any of these frames destroyed, even if it shattered their forms. It would simply shift, reform in another area, and then skip back across time to the place they were destroyed, effectively counter-attacking their ambusher. Chronology-charged Rendbombs were one of the few things that could destroy a Chronoframe instantly, but without access to the assault and severed from the rest of Idheim, Draus needed to do this the hard way.

But when wasn’t that the way of things. Regulars played the hand they were dealt. More than once, she had to make a shiv out of undigested shit. Right now, she had a hell of a lot more than shit to work with; fate was practically grinning at her as far as she was concerned.

The plan was straightforward: engage the Chronoframes, engage the local drones, engage the golems as well. Creating an alignment of overlapping mirrors, she designed a metaphysical kill box around the Chronoframes, allowing her to pump out a direct stream of firepower and tear through all four enemy targets at once. She attempted to do the same thing with the other targets in the area, but with how spread out they were, and without knowing what miracles the Knots possessed, it would be presumptuous on her part to think that she would experience an easy victory on this day.

"We are to fight as a symphony," the Simulacra spoke to her. Already, the Heaven of Reflection gleamed with luminous brightness. Crackles of breaking glass sounded from within its resplendent form. When the battle began in proper, the glass-made knight would divide into a legion unto itself. She would tear through the district, an army of one, the ringed wings of the Arsenalist firing all the while behind her, shooting through the glass, shooting through the Simulacra, shooting and giving her enemies countless false targets to focus on, while she herself navigated her metaphysical pathways.

If this was to be a battle of maneuver, then she’d ensure her own advantages as well.

Draus let her mind bleed dry of everything but focus. One mistake, and that was all it would take for a certain triumph to result in demise. The thinking was done. Time for the killing to start.

A spiraling ring of battleship-derived rail cannons poured out from her projectile launcher and joined the other guns spiraling at her back. Each cannon was the size of a small building, and the mass of tungsten-strike spikes slumbering within their barrels possessed enough kinetic energy to core a mundane megablock. From them, a few hundred Phys-Sim trajectories were simulated, and one by one, the firing lanes went from red to green. As the last shift in color arrived, Draus glimpsed down at the ambush she designed.

A dense web of crisscrossing firing solutions was what she beheld, and a series of racking bolts and whining batteries heard from this Arsenalist: a sign of the Heaven's pleasure. "This is purpose, this is beauty, this makes existing worthwhile."

The Regular signalled her accord by lifting her projectile launcher and firing the first shot.

All hell broke loose across the district. A storm of metal blasted out from windows, from puddles, from panels, from all sources of miracle-infused reflection. From the thinnest of pathways emerged massive pillars of tungsten and streaming bullets, slashing out in defiance of spatial reality. Shock waves of kinetic force scattered unbolted objects and warped all fragile matter within the effect radius. Projectiles zipped through patrolling drones, slipping over and between thousands of halted aeros as the Arsenalist elevated Draus’ aim beyond the limits of mortal possibility.

Tons of superheated matter impacted unsuspecting golems, and they came apart by the dozen, entire Knots ceasing to be.

But the brunt of Draus' firepower was reserved for the Chronoframes. Fusion lances, particle beams, rockets, ferromagnetic projectiles, lasers, crude slugs, and gyrojet munitions collapsed upon the Chronoframes, granting them no room for escape.

The lighter Chronoframes disintegrated immediately, barely having any time to respond. A golden oscillation emanated from their forms, sparing them from the first shots, but the devastation followed disintegrated them entirely. They came asunder, parting into vanishing echoes of fracturing gold; the ordinance that devoured them continued on, seeking the heavier frames thereafter.

Draus felt the mem-lock assigned to those two Chronoframes jump. Both of them were now fifteen kilometers away, settled within a surviving Knot of golems that put up a defensive demiplane before they could be destroyed. As more vectors of fires crashed against the heavier Chronoframes, the initial salvo passed through a reflection layered behind them and before passing through a pathway and emerging from a translucent panel of metal at their feet.

But as Draus’ attack slammed into the Chronoframes from all angles, the memory tower roared with cascading energy. Bolts of ghost-laced lightning rained down on the Chronoframes once more, and again folded along the outlines of their bodies. But this time, instead of splashing away from the Chronoframes and warping the environment more, it became as if an aegis of protection as Draus's ordinance dissolved into phantasmal strings of memory.

The sky above came asunder with a few hundred spreading ruptures as anomalies of displacement spread across existence. Suddenly, the lighter Chronoframes blinked into being right next to Draus, and they tore into her Arsenalist, slashing through her guns with their blades and melting her down using fusion burners.

She loosed several shots at them, but her flechettes kissed only fading imprints vanishing from the surface of time. Temporal displacement was miserable to deal with, and the Regular went from reacting to anticipating.

The lighter chronos would always be faster than her. Her ambush was the only reason she got them earlier in the first place. But she didn’t need to outdraw them, she just needed to get them ahead of time.

Instead of shooting at the Chronoframes, she turned her guns on each other, and they all fired at once. Her enormous railcannons blew apart from scything beams, and her lesser guns turned to slag from spreading balls of fire. But through this act of calculated self-harm, the Chronoframes fell victim to the carnage as well. They arrived just in time to get caught up in the blast radius. The Arsenalist generated from guns; but the light Chronoframes were cast aside.

One was shredded utterly, the gold shimmering for a moment before vanishing altogether like an extinguished candle. The pilot’s body emerged from a cocoon of gold as little more than a spill of sloppy viscera. The other lost an arm and a leg. Draus could tell they hadn't been killed, at least not yet. Before they could escape, she hit them with a thoughtwave disruption, and they managed only a single skip across a hundred meters before a rainstorm of bullets carved them down to nothingness.

From there, she doubled her acceleration toward the final Knot where the last two chronos waited. As she closed in, she saw a chain of Rendbombs get teleported across every intersection, every avenue within the district. They went off. And the cityscape below as engulfed in chaos.

The Regular simply sighed. Classic battle tactic. If you couldn't hold operational control, deny it to everyone. Except that killed your own citizens. Scorched earth was supposed to be done to your enemies. The godsdamned half-strands didn’t even know where she was, considering the fact that no new bombs went off in the sky. She vitrified a small bullet within one of her guns and fired at the last demiplane.

As the glass-round left, she Shotjumped into it, the Arsenalist disappearing into the small projectile entirely. She circled the air for a few moments as she watched the district come apart. After a minute of waiting, the Knot finally dropped their plane, exposing the golems and the two larger Chronoframes holding a defensive posture.

The Regular scoffed internally.

“Cowards,” the Arsenalist declared.

Ain’t even worth the tungsten, Draus agreed.

“Let us give them glass instead,” the Simulacra suggested.

From that single glistening bullet, the Heaven of Reflection burst into being once more, sporting enormous shard-like wings lined with a thousand protruding barrels. A stream of fire drilled down through the Knot before they could react, and the heavy Chronoframes were caught in the crossfire as well.

The Breaker-golem overloaded immediately as a fusion lance struck its paradox. The air around its petal-like head grew hyper-heated. Soulfire detonated thereafter. Two other golems and a chronoframe were caught in the blast radius, and all ceased to be at once. The Porter lasted perhaps a moment longer before an enormous spike impaled it through against plascrete below.

And finally, the last of the chronoframes skipped ahead into the future. Without assistance, without a proper plan, without anywhere to run, their fate was sealed. It emerged two kilometers away, and the pilot dismissed their time-forged avatar, choosing to feel down a narrow hallway inside a megablock on foot. They thought Draus wouldn’t be able to track them now, quiet and small as they were.

Well. She saw their hope, and she sent out a single shot in response.

A single hyper-accelerated shard skipped along the side of a building, ricocheted down a panel against a weall, passed through an open window, bounced off a door frame, impacted the ground, left through anther window, skipped off the ledge of a building, passed into the doorway the pilot just fled, rang against the walls behind them, and finally snapped out through their throat. A welter of gore sprayed free from the wound, and pilot managed three more steps before the last strand of glistening sinew finally untangled. The dead Scantian collapsed. Their ontology shifted twice. On both of their alternative bodies, their head was barely attached to their body.

For a moment thereafter, Draus simply scattered her surroundings. Some collateral damage, no hostiles, nothing except—

+Draus.+

Her name was spoken by a thunderous whisper, passing through the entire district, and a turbulent storm began to build from the memory tower. That didn’t sound like Avo. That was all Veylis.

“Shit,” Draus muttered to herself. The Regular wasted no time, moving towards the tower in anticipation for what was to come. She didn't think; she acted, she prepared. Rows of Replicas formed, materializing a defensive wall, her reflections surrounding the ziggurat.

And as it rumbled with crashing one more time, a bolt carried a new pressure across existence, injecting something into reality just before Draus.

UNKNOWN SOUL DETECTED

ERROR: SYNCHRONOUS ONTOLOGY DETECTED

JELENE DRAUS OF THE STILLBORN, DELIVERER OF FINALITY