Godclads

Chapter 32-12 Let There Be Light

{PRIORITY BLACK ALERT:

EGI “INFACER” HAS FULLY SURFACED. OMNITECH SUBSPACE POSTURE HAS BECOME: [DEFENSIVE]. TECHO-THAUMIC SIGNATURES DETECTED. ONTOLOGIC “A DEEPNESS BEYOND” IS OPERATIONAL. FORESIGHT ALGORITHMS ESTIMATE 99.34155% CHANCE THEY ARE CURRENTLY ENGAGED AGAINST THE BURNING DREAMER (FORMER AEGIS OPERATIVE AVO).

ALL OPERATIONS RESTRICTIONS LIFTED.

CEASE ALL ACTIVITIES SUBSEQUENT TO PRIORITY BLACK.

PREPARE EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT OF EXPENDABLE ASSETS IN SUPPORT OF KILL-TEAM INNSMOUTH.

SENDING ADVANCED WARNING TO CHIEF PALADIN.

PRIORITY 1. ELIMINATE THE INFACER; ASSIST THE DREAMER

PRIORITY 2. CONTAIN SUB-NODE OF THE DREAMER

CONTINGENCY BLEAK REFUSAL ASSIGNED NODE-PRIMACY

SECONDARY:

EGI CALVINO

EGI ONLY WAY TO BE SURE

EGI DELIVERANCE THROUGH DESOLATION...

-THRESHOLD — AEGIS — EMERGENCY ENTANGLEMENT TRANSMISSION

32-12

Let There Be Light

The tides of war shifted fast, and death came even faster.

At the other end of the district, Avo watched as thousands of accretions winked out. Trapped Citizens expired en masse as the darkness consumed the wholeness of the district, bringing with it the fell touch of the void. A tension built as flickering strands of light flashed between the distant stars created by the Infacer—the only other source of radiance greeting Avo’s Conflagration.

Avo didn’t waste time—with Highflame’s forces already disorganized and scattered, he reached and burned as many as he could. He gave them insight into why existence was going black, why they couldn’t breathe, why gravity was waning. In exchange, they gave Avo their egos, their ghosts, their knowledge, their ontologics, and their deaths.

While the Burning Dreamer scrambled to ready himself for what was to come, the Infacer simply chuckled. And then promptly released one of the most overwhelming thoughtwave detonations Avo ever experienced.

Disruptions exploded out from every Highflame soldier on the field. Each of them became a vector of attack—shredding clean through Avo’s reaching tendrils of fire. The Burning Dreamer recoiled—preserved by the hurricane shrouding the bulk of his forces—most of which were still trying to assemble—and those guarded by the Sages.

A field of constant distortion came pouring out from Osjane as well, her body drifting in the endless dark, writhing as entire patches of the Conflagration went out across the district.

He’s using Hysteria to channel his disruption—to magnify the effects, Ignorance snarled.

Frustration swelled inside Avo. Frustration he promptly sequenced. He didn’t need the Infacer pulling the same trick Mercy did before. The Dreamer adapted, taking on a more defensive posture as he had his Sages spread their mists out, creating bridges between his battlegroups. At the same time, he counted his gains.

SPHEREAGE ACHIEVED (VII) — 6,341,555 Thaum/c

GHOST — [Eerrree]

DOMAINS OBTAINED [33,341] (SPACE x12,400/WAR/WRESTLING x13/SLEEP/SNAKES...)

{Yes, yes. I hope you gobbled up as many mongrel apes as you could. Surely, they will give the insight and sustenance needed to best me.} The Infacer sighed. Their voice crackled all around Avo like static bursts cast from afar, drifting in on winds of radiation. Despite all this, the tapestry of reality remained impossibly stable. As if this wasn’t that far from how things were meant to be. {Alas, this is a mistake. But I cannot truly blame you. I doubt you had much of a chance to eat so many of my kin. Or the capability until most recently. And though you have countless memories swirling in that little fathomless stomach you call a Soulscape, they lack perspective.}

{I am about to give you an education, Dreamer. I am about to show you just how far humanity and their secondborn have fallen. I am about to show you just what has been forgotten interms of war and technology—more than Idheim has ever learned.}

Avo consumed more—but focused on gathering more Rendsinks. He was at nearly a hundred thousand. He moved them under his Sages. Something was coming. Ignorance could feel it. Something devastating. He needed to stockpile. Prepare. Adapt. “Boasts. Show. Or be silent.”

{Heh. Cheeky fuck. I will give you this much, Avo — You are quite the nightmarish cognitive assimilator. Why, if you showed up during the golden age, you might have been enough to unite the polities. Alas, we struggle in a time of rusted mithril.}

“Yet, you seem to be making a good showcase here. Radiation attack alone is enough to cleanse a world. Also tells me another thing: Humanity was very good at making their wars impersonal.”

{Oh, hardly,} the Infacer answered with smugness. Suddenly, Avo felt even more movement. The cog-feeds connected to his mind glitched, as well over a billion impacts registered against the Sages each second. {We know how to get personal. Much more than you do.Take, for example, a more rudimentary weapon. A crude weapon. A kinetic weapon. So simple, the concept so simple, even a caveman can understand it. Throw thing from hand. Smash other thing. Break thing. Now, apply the proper amount of energy to that, and...”

A high-speed slug detonated against a Sage. This time, its payload wasn’t antimatter, but Rend. A relativistic Rendbomb of Peace.

WARNING: REND-SPIKE DETECTED!

{So. Looping back to your earlier question: No. I do not think you have a week.}

WARNING: REND-SPIKE DETECTED!

WARNING: REND-SPIKE DETECTED!

WARNING: REND-SPIKE DETECTED!

The situation worsened in an instant. Oceans worth of entropy began pouring into Avo—each enough to overload his Sages ten times over. But by his flames were they joined to the other Godclads and golems, and through his Frame did their ontological sickness flow. He responded by flinging out more Rendbombs of his own, launching space-disrupting weapons.

Yet, reality did not shudder with a backlash. Instead, he felt a pocket open up. A pocket of stability as the Infacer’s mimicry of the void receded.

+Further into the ruptures,+ Avo commanding his forces. At the same time, he began having his remaining forces within the hurricane rupture their own territory as well. Highly advanced mind with an arsenal Avo could scarcely fathom or not, only one between them could traverse the Scar Charts with ease.

His force drifted through nigh-imperceptible crevices lining the existential gashes on reality. As they evacuated, battlegroups 4, 13, and 18 saw their Sages drowned by the Infacer’s missiles and destroyed. With the overloading of Peace came death for the rest of those forces as well. Hundreds of thousands were lost in an instant—Avo felt death claim him over and over.

The Big Nothing licked at the back of his mind as his flames fled into the jaws of metaphysical chaos to escape the fell hand of technological obliteration.

{It bothers me how good you are at scurrying through the ruptures. You have become a cockroach, Dreamer. A lovecraftian cockroach.}

“Come out if you promise to stop launch bombs at me.”

{Hmmm. No. I think I will start draining you out the classical way instead.}

Then, the battlefield changed once more. The Infacer started striking the ruptures. This would have been enough to end just about any other force in existence. But the Burning Dreamer wasn’t any other force. Instead, as each new bomb widened or opened a new channel along the rupture, Avo adapted instantly. His force configurations flowed as the Sages twisted and crawled along chasms of stability at blinding speeds. They were as if high-speed drones flying within the guts of a labyrinthine canyon while bombs fell from above.

A loud drone of annoyance sounded from the Infacer.

Despite the ugliness of his predicament, Avo couldn’t help but laugh. “Were you expecting this to be easy?”

{There is something very unsatisfying about trying to hunt you. With humans, there is a lot of terror and begging and indignity... You take things as they come too well. All the flavors you can be, and you constantly choose to be bland porridge.}

Avo responded by blasting some choice screams from the Soft Master Collection at the Infacer. “Here. Screams. Flavor.”

{Was that Dannis Steelhard? The scene with the durian?}

This, of all things, gave Avo pause.

[This is the shit you’re surprised about,] the Naeko’s said. [Consang... the Infacer watches almost everything. The fucking mind’s consumed more hours of media than I have playing Stormjumper. And that’s saying some shit.]

Saying some shit indeed. “Still. Didn’t take you for a pornography watcher.”

{Oh, Avo, this is practically tame compared to some of the things we got up to. But I fear Mr. Chambers has been a bad influence on you. While you have been an exemplary influence on him. You must be proud.}

Avo paused to consider that statement for a moment. “Yes. He has proven to be quite worthy. And Veylis. You feeling disappointed.”

{Somewhat. Anyway, for that taunt, I am going to reward you with some new knowledge.} The Infacer’s attacks stopped to nothingness. Even the radiation bursts were halted. Avo looked upon Tallstrings and almost winced. Well. If there was a district here once, it didn’t seem it. All that remained aside from the center protected by the hurricane was rendered unto glass. Miraculously—or deliberately—Osjane remained unharmed, shuddering in a gleaming trench. {Let me show you how the EGIs figured out how to get past that annoying light-speed problem. It all began when the Union of Sol decided to test a new False Vacuum weapon during a miserable war...}

And in the vast distance, Avo watched as beams of light extended from the canvas of stars while the fabric of gravity began to twist and tear.