Godclads

Chapter 2-15 Apotheosis

Do you know why the Guilds banned the old scriptures? Redacted the canons of the old pantheons? To stop us from building our own Heavens, consangs. They’re trying to keep us in the gutters.

This was not the dream.

We were promised more than these gutters. When Jaus joined the Eight and crowned this city with his Arks, he had a vision. A vision of existence shaped by a new order. An order where divinity was made to serve the people, not hoarded by the elites.

This was not the dream.

We are the people. And we are starving. I say I had enough. I’d say we had enough. It’s time to take back what they’ve been stealing from us, what they’ve been using our lives and labor to fuel.

This was not the dream.

They drink our lives. They fuel their machines! They think they can take the future from us and that we’ll just watch? Fuck them! Fuck that! Let’s build our own god. A new god. A true god. Let’s take it to these half-strands one final goddamn time.

This is the dream. This is the new promise. This is our holy war. This is the Last Apocalypse.

-Cas eld’Canduir, Rockstar, Cult Leader, Terrorist

Apotheosis

RESURRECTION - 10%

GRAFTING HEAVEN - 44%

REQUIRED THAUMS - [20 thaums/c]

REVIEWING MYTHOLOGY FOR PARADOXES….

WARNING: INSUFFICIENT THAUMIC MASS

[HELL: FIRST CIRCLE]

SIMULATING LIMINAL FRAME

No memory carried Avo out from the jaws of death this time. No lull in time was felt between the moment of his death and his consciousness’ transition to this nigh-infinite expanse of nothingness.

Around him burned an inverse flame, brightness funneling into his being, drawn to him like a star spilling into a singularity. It was like no flame he had ever beheld, for it burned with a pellucid shine. No heat poured from its presence. Instead, the flames ebbed outward in shimmering waves, each pulsing emanation simulating a hue of radiance, stretching as if establishing the borders of all existence.

Avo tried to move. No limb answered him. The absence of limbs or even flesh struck feedback from his mind. Somewhere between isolation and tranquility, he languished. He did not know if ghouls were beholden to the frailties of the human mind. He was molded to be psychotic by design, in knowing this, he wondered how much more deranged he could ever even truly get.

Perhaps this was hell. A place of perpetual torment that he was predestined for. But if that were to be true, then why was he bereft of hunger here? Why did the streams of his thought flow free? Unimpeded?

Yet, as he cast his perception downward, he found an actual Hell greeting him. A single concentric ring that ran as far as his fire could shine. Two blurred sigils took up opposite positions from each other as they spun slowly. He knew those sigils–had seen concentric chasms with this very same symbology built beneath techno-thaumic reactors.

They were meant to expel the wastage of miracles. He guessed that what he found serving near-nonexistent bedrock beneath him was shaped for the very same purpose.

Within the Hell’s gaping depths, a spiral of darkness swirled, draining down nigh-endlessly to an end Avo found himself unwilling to fathom. The Hell was a strange, flickering construct. Ethereal. As if it was missing something, something to fully anchor it before it could materialize. A counterweight of sorts.

Staring into it began to disquiet his mind. Avo felt a surge of emotionless dread. Only his consciousness was struggling. Straining.

He forced it to still.

Long-buried words from Walton returned to him. A lesson: the first lesson. Accept to adapt. Lies can be unraveled once you subsume them and assimilate the facts. Reality, however harsh, could be survived as long as one did not cleave themselves between the pulling tides of want and necessity.

Pouring all anxiety, all distractions from his mind, Avo thought not of his most recent murder. He ignored the ineffable ache he felt at being used by Little Vicious to infect the flesh of the boy. He also accepted that the primary thing he felt as the boy wailed in pain was hunger, however much the situation befouled the palette of his ethics.

Instead, he faced this small cage of brightness around him and realized he could feel all that existed around him. Suddenly, the metaphor of this place being a cage was wrong. This place–this plane of existence–was him. Or perhaps was simply laced to his consciousness that he could feel the mechanisms of this reality.

If his mind dreamed at the center of this machine, then the flames were akin to his nerves and memory both. As far as they could ripple, he tasted the emptiness around him. A moment passed. The brightness of his fire spilled out again, disturbing the tapestry of nonexistence.

As the ripple spun from him, he felt an eldritch serpent molded from gleaming mercury circling him just beyond the flames. Within it, he heard the echoing minds of those he had killed, drawn into his being. They were whispering to him. Praying to him. Worshipping him.

With each cycle, they would dissolve beneath the boiling incandescence of the flame. Yet, they would manifest anew when arriving where the serpent ate its own tail, returning as sure as the passing of seasons.

Even as the serpent coiled around him, he felt it not as a prison for his fire, but more a spine. A pillar. Something to provide structure and eternal sustenance. Between its flowing scales, he counted the echoes he had taken in.

Twenty. That was how many lives he had supped the succor of existence from. Some of them by his own hand. Some of them by encounter or happenstance. He heard their voices clear and crisp but tasted none of their personality, nor their memories. That seemed to exist beyond this place, the realm of cognition parted from the realm of raw belief, of quintessential, primal will.

This, then, was the deconstruction of their self-awareness, the totality of their capacity to believe, to be conscious, now all dedicated to fueling the incomprehensible engine that he was.

Cycling and renewing forever, looping back into existence as fast as they were expended.

Another tide of fire washed out from him. It rippled out in eight cascades. Eight. Through them, his control of this space was absolute. Entirely bound to his awareness, his will. The reason why he couldn’t move wasn’t that he was trapped. The reason he couldn’t move was that the entirety of this plane was part of him.

It was as if a metaphysical shell had been grafted upon his very being, or that his mind had been injected into a divine machine that went beyond the bounds of his comprehension.

RESURRECTION - 35%

GRAFTING HEAVEN - 100%

REVIEWED - MYTHOLOGY STABLE

AVAILABLE ONTOLOGIC SLOTS - [0/2]

HEAVEN GRAFTED - [SANGEIST]

DOMAIN: (BLOOD/MATTER)

THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 20 thaum/c

HELL DETECTED - [FIRST CIRCLE]

DOMAIN: (MATTER/ENTROPY)

THAUMIC REQUIREMENTS - 10 thaum/c

REND VENTS ONL–

WARNING: REND VENTS OFFLINE - INSUFFICIENT THAUMS

Through the shrouded ocean of emptiness, Avo felt a strange entity sink past the folds of his brightness. From darkness, it materialized. The motes of his fire not only brightened its shape but also gave it a secondhand awareness of his presence. It drifted toward him. Yet, when it finally approached him, Avo felt like an ember in a maelstrom, fighting to stay composed as a mutilated leviathan tore free from the womb that was the midnight sea.

This creature–the Sangeist as he had suddenly become aware–unveiled itself to him as a beautiful nightmare. Like a tower built by oozing scars and bleeding wounds, it sank over him, seeking to crown his flame, drawn to the gravity of his being.

Its apex rose like the jagged jaws of a hound clenched around a chaotic pattern. As it drank in his brightness, however, the pattern shot open to reveal a burning shard of alloy. Suddenly, he felt it glaring down at him. Caressing the strange pattern with his will, Avo felt a familiar sensation. This here was a piece of plasteel. This was what the golem had alchemized with its blood.

The pattern, then, must have represented its structure. Molecular, perhaps? Avo pushed that thought aside as the base of the tower revealed its inner design to him. Within the tower, pulsing veins pumped cells bearing the symbol of plasteel. It mirrored his biology, in a sense. No organs. No heart. Just the blood, moving to surges from his mind.

The tower enclosed itself around him. But Avo felt no fear. No worry. He was the only will in this place. The alien tower was merely a vessel long hollowed. By now, he knew what he was graced with; had seen others like it burning and spasming through the thinness of reality over certain districts.

This was a Heaven. The hollowed corpse of a god long stripped of its soul. This was the instrument of his demise.

And now, somehow, it belonged to him.

RESURRECTION - 66%

Tendrils of blood began sinking into him, clicking around his serpent as he felt his consciousness expand. His flames, once an omnidirectional ripple, flowed through his new ontology. Two sigils flashed into existence beside him, churning around him as they whispered their trueness to him.

DOMAIN OF (MATTER)

CANON: ALCHEMIZATION - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW SUBSUME AND MIMIC THE STRUCTURE AND EFFECTS OF ONE PIECE OF PHYSICAL MATTER; ONLY ONE PIECE OF MATTER MAY BE MIMICKED AT A TIME UNLESS THE CANON IS ALTERED

HUBRIS: ONLY SOLID MATTER CAN BE SUPPED FROM. ANY ATTEMPTS TO MIMIC LIQUID OR GAS WILL RESULT IN THAUMIC BACKLASH

DOMAIN OF (BLOOD)

CANON: HAEMOKINESIS - THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN CAN NOW ACCELERATE AND MANIPULATE ALL BLOOD THEY ARE IN CONTACT WITH; SPEED AND FORCE OF THE BLOOD WILL MIRROR THE MASTER’S NATURAL LIMITS UNLESS THE CANON IS ALTERED

HUBRIS: ONLY UP TO EIGHTY TONS OF BLOOD CAN BE MANIPULATED AT ONCE

His will spread through the tower. No longer was he the faint ember beholding a leviathan. Now, he felt as if he was the titan itself, that which made the waves quaver.

Bones shaped from the light of his flame grew out from him, fusing into the structure of the tower as if a spine. His consciousness swelled. Feedback and senses returned to him. With a thought, he felt the interior shift as the layout of his new Heaven shifted, rooting over him. He peered out from slatted plates of crimson armor now. He could feel every drop of blood that comprised his metaphysical self for he was the blood, and he could channel the shape of the matter between his jaws, for matter existed to him as breath did for his lungs.

Eighty-tons.

Just like the golem.

Beneath the tower, he felt the spinning chasm of Hell he sensed earlier pulse momentarily and sputter. Disappointment filled above. The entropic chasm was spinning counter to the serpent bound to his Heaven now, but it wasn’t solid enough to manifest.

He lacked the thaumic mass–more sacrifices were needed for it to be grafted unto him.

All these sensations greeted him at once. He felt like a newborn festooned within the body of a giant. His quintessence flowed through every sinew, across every plate he could have, his fire forging trueness into the shape of his new frame.

So overwhelmed by all that was unfolding before him that he didn’t feel a rogue shard of memory snap free from the center of his awareness. What was that? How long had that been there?

Like a dagger, it plunged into the blood that formed his body, sinking deep before the shape of a man rose, breathing through the surface like a seed bearing the fruit of a ghost.

“Overwhelming, isn’t it,” A familiar voice greeted Avo even before the figure fully emerged from the hardened slats of crimson. Before Avo’s awareness was Walton, standing upon a turbulent sea of blood, he himself a facsimile of thaumaturgy and blood.

For a moment, Avo just watched on in confusion and disbelief. Walton was dead. He had died five years ago when all the cojoined Heavens of Love and Lust fell and wombrash consumed the city.

Still, here the man was, standing before him. Same face. Same coat. Same smell of citrus.

How did that smell linger, even here?

RESURRECTION - 85%

Walton? Avo asked. His mind rumbled like the voice of thunder here. His blood vibrated and shaped into letters in Standard. His control here was absolute. All-encompassing. Total.

Walton didn’t seem to notice.

“Avo, if you’re seeing me now, that means you’re dead. Like me. Good news is you won’t be dead for long. Better news is that you probably managed to get your first Heaven.Would be hard to simulate this memory I planted inside without a domain or two, I’d say.” The man shrugged sheepishly, the muted expression the closest he ever had to shame.

“I know it's a lot to...heh…take in, but I will be as I’ve always been with you, and tell you the truth: this is the beginning. This is as simple as things get. You’re now a Godclad of the First Sphere. The mundane will quail before you. The ones with power will want to feed from you. And…you might just lose yourself in all this.”

Avo didn’t understand. As was often the case when he spoke to Walton. Experience told him to wait. The memory of Walton played on. His father was always a mystery, but never obtuse. He always told Avo the objective. When something was withheld, it was for the sake of discipline or education.

This time would be no different.

“You might be trying to talk with me right now. Might not be. I don’t know the state you’re in, but I have faith that you are still unbroken. Still whole.” Walton gave a soft smile. “Your nature has given you a fortitude that most would envy. And, rightfully, I think my teachings have instilled in you the ethics needed for you to succeed.”

If Avo could whimper, he would’ve. Succeeding was not among the things he had been doing recently.

Walton rubbed his jaw and looked down. He was thinking of what next to say. “There are some things you don’t know about me. Some things that even I don’t know about me. But that’s not what matters right now. Right now, you need to know that this city, the ones who can’t choose, need you.”

Why? Why father?

“Right now, you need to go to the Easy Armistice at Light’s End. Depending on where you are right now, you’ll need to descend the Tier and go down to the Warrens.” His father pursed his lips and sighed. “I know that your…place of origin troubles you. But remember what I taught you. You are what you do. You are the choices you make. And you don’t need to be the same person tomorrow as you were yesterday.

“Once you get to the Easy Armistice, talk to Fredritch Three-Eye and tell him that you're with the Ninth Column, and that ‘the dream is broken.’ He’ll give you an engram containing…another itinerant of me. I…he’ll tell you more…but with this being said, there’s no going back now.” Walton shrugged his shoulders, the act almost mournful. “I didn’t want this for you. Wanted you to have a life. At least for a while.”

A million more questions swirled in Avo’s mind like a whirlwind. Ninth Column? Easy Armistice? Another iterant? He didn’t even know how he got cast down into the Maw? Was this Liminal Frame what allowed him to possess a Heaven? To come back from death? And how did Walton even know about any of this?

Just how dead was his father…

Avo’s mind screamed all those questions in unison at Walton. Around him, the red waves swept up in a grim reflection of the cataclysm brewing within. But Walton just stood, unbothered by the crashing waves of turbulence, and smiled as if there was nothing wrong.

“Avo. I might be gone. But the best of me still echoes in through you. I know you don’t feel it– can’t feel it, but I’m proud of you. Always have been proud of you. I chose you for this not as a punishment, but because I want you to be more. To see all the colors existence has to offer. And maybe change its course. You’re going to have to make some choices soon. Few of them easy. None of them are enviable. But you need to climb the Tiers. You need to ascend the Arks. You need to reach the Ladder and stop the Guilds. This utopia…this purgatory that they’ve made…it has to stop. Before they tear existence asunder, it has to stop.”

RESURRECTION - 99%

The inverted fire fused over Avo’s consciousness now, squeezing him down into himself as Walton began to dissolve.

Wait–wait!

“This was not the dream,” Walton said, an expression like steel even as came he apart. “I wish I could've seen--"

RESURRECTION - 100%

IMPLANTING NOUS

Avo felt his consciousness fold over the veil of his Heaven, surging forward into the light of existence, back to the place of his murder.