Godclads-Chapter 23Book 35: Strix Ops (II)

So, here’s the thing about running multiple, high-risk runs at the same time:

Don’t.

Fucking don’t.

Even if you’re a Guilder with all the sources and support in the world, you want to keep the things you need to worry about limited and the operation simple. Because when something goes wrong—and things always go fucked—a basic snatch-grab milk run might end with you jacking the schematics for a long abandoned megablock as you delve into its gutter levels while Guilder CorpSec forces chase you down. Only to discover that it’s an abandoned No-Dragon bioform farm filled with nightmares.

I came out of that one alive with one arm and a torso. Twelve other Squires didn’t.

But if you’re in a bad situation and you gotta eat some shit… well, the best way is to go hard, go fast, and cede decision authority to everyone on the ground. That way, you can succeed and extract—or fail and burn your Squires quickly and move on.

The right chrome and phantasmics might make you a monster. Having a Frame might make you a god. But you’re not alone there. Whatever you got, someone else got—and probably more.

Don’t push your luck. Don’t linger. Don’t hesitate.

-Quail Tavers, The School of the Warrens

35-23

Strix Ops (II)

—[Avo, The Hidden Flame]—

Avo split his focus three different ways to monitor three different runs—but he didn’t stop there. Instead of simply twisting the patterns of his mind, he exploited his newfound dominance over time itself, and began to extend the passage of time around him using a mimicry of Draus’ Liminal Paracosmos.

Fire and gold intermingled. The shape of his mind spread like a growing blaze, fusing under the bones of time like an arm sliding into a sleeve. At once, That Place Above began to shift and dance. Dice, Lucky, and the Sang were injected back into baseline reality via needle-thin beams of temporal substance. The Woundmother expanded her crimson shape, crusting over the district which she pulled over from baseline reality as she pried and whipped at limbs unseen, trying to latch the Trinary Melody’s grasp. Finally, the Techplaguer was launched in along another vector, flung outward into the void like a screaming comet into the void.

And at the heart of this place, a spherical bubble formed—the present behind the separation holding the bulk of Avo’s mind, its progression far slower than everything beyond. This granted him time to think, to observe, and adapt to old mistakes.

The Ashbringer’s virus collapsed Avo both mentally and ontologically. The experience was drowning—humbling. It was a reminder that even if he was a God of the Mind, that didn’t mean he was omniscient or omnipotent. There were still flaws in him. Vulnerabilities. But that meant he could still evolve—and it wouldn’t take much to close out the gaps.

For too long, he treated himself like a singularity, and he was in a great many ways. He could reshape the tapestry like no one else, and his very presence could warp consciousness itself with but a whim. But it made him foolish. Vulnerable. Too easy to hit directly. He would have never made this mistake back when he was but a meager Necro, hiding in fear from the Incubi.

“Was stupid.”

+I disagree,+ Walton said, lingering next to his flame. +You were evolving beyond your environment and, like a child being reborn constantly, yearned to experience and stretch your arms out.+

“Made me vulnerable. Ashbringer… without my original self… Maybe the Pathborn could have broken me. Finished me for good.”

+Perhaps. But you live. And now we learn. So what are you going to do?+ Walton smiled at Avo, his being wrapped in shadow and thoughtstuff. Avo let out a quiet chuff of contentment. He didn’t expect this to ever happen again despite what he knew about the Three-Eye… Living in New Vultun did things to one’s optimism. But Walton was back. He had reclaimed the Low Master of Defiance and saw them merge with Mercy. Now, Walton was more himself than ever before, and Avo felt a hidden loneliness lessen.

It was a loneliness he didn’t know was there.

“Depth,” Avo said. “Need more of that.”

He began to spread his Conflagration out—filling the space within his temporally dilated space. Time circulated faster within the small sphere of existence containing the core of Avo’s Soul, and thus everything beyond moved slowly. The best part was the lack of Rend—this realm was constructed from time, harvested from dragons, and held up by the ontology of the Sang. There was a limit to how much he could modify time so far, but that was mostly limited to how many Sang he had, and right now, he was working on harvesting more of their males, and incorporating their body architecture into his Beloved.

It was within this dilated sphere that the next stage of Avo’s development took place. He wove his mind into dense layers. Instead of keeping himself like a singularity as before, he began to slice himself into thousands of thin ego-stacks. Each stack would act like himself—and he could drastically reduce the cognitive capacity it took to run each stack by making most of them mirror each other aside from a few specific minor differences.

These minor differences would be subtle—like slight separations in temperature or an almost invisible mirage. It would incur some amount of cog-cap to keep this constantly simulated, but it would be worth it if he had to face something like the Ashbringer again.

Or the Dyad themselves.

Between each of these stacks, he reconstructed and ran varied simulations of his templates across various Soulscapes. The layering would amplify their learning as well—exposing them to a variety of scenarios and experiences. Entire simulated dimensions would be dedicated to various focuses, such as in silico thaumaturgy experimentation zones for Kae, slaughterhouses for Naeko and Zein, battlegrounds for Draus…

Pairing this with how fast he could accelerate his own mind, his capacity to alter time, he forecasted drastic improvements he could soon bestow on all of his active agents.

But at his innermost depth, in a place deeper than all other places, Avo created a small haven from his memory of Noloth. There, he summoned the small pieces of the City Eternal he managed to secure, along with his loyalists there. Slowly, they were building new shapes, new structures, clearing out rubble, and on a distant hill watched them with Walton.

Just like High Priest Wahakten did with his son Avohakten countless ages ago.

“I must admit,” Walton said, opening and closing his hand, a faint smile playing across his face, “I don’t think I can offer you much more insight into the art. Your control over the mind itself leaves me dwarfed and humbled.”

“Is fine,” Avo said, speaking to Walton as the beast he once was—the ghoul sheathed within a Bone Demon. “Would have never been able to achieve this mastery without you. Without all the memories you bestowed on me. Wouldn’t be at all without you.”

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“And I wouldn’t be without Noloth’s favor.” Walton let out a quiet sigh. “We are the choices made by those who came before us. For good. For ill. For all that cannot be judged. But… I’m glad you became as you did.”

“Didn’t expect my apotheosis.”

“No. There was but a hope when I gave you the Stillborn. A paltry hope at that when I cast your fire into the darkness to keep you beyond the reach of the Guilds. A chance within a chance.” Walton looked faintly troubled, but the expression faded a moment after. He accepted. He moved on. For that was who Walton was: radically accepting.

“Worked,” Avo replied. “All your effort. All your sacrifice. All the sacrifice you made for other people.” The ghoul laughed darkly. “Know about Kae. About Draus. About a lot of things. I am… not sure how to regard you sometimes. Can’t say I’m much better.”

“I can say I did what I thought would be best. The same as you.” Walton studied a structure rising from this simulated version of Noloth—it resembled the megablock Avo remembered living within as a ghoulling. Walton chuckled. “That might be our greatest fault. The lack of perspective, and the cost our victories demand from others.”

“Our dream. Not someone else’s.” Avo grunted. “Suspect Jaus wouldn’t like hearing that from me. Don’t think he is very comfortable around me.”

“Hm. Yes. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that: You restored him as well? Through his node?”

“Yes.”

Walton let out a sharp breath. “Madness. I considered such a thing but the effort… the complexity of extracting his various consciousnesses from the component systems would have required magnitudes of cognitive capacity. Magnitudes greater than the totality of all Low Masters combined. And that was if we worked for years. How long did it take you?”

“Minutes. Did it while also fighting Veylis.”

Walton just stared at Avo. “Ah. I have created a monster.”

“Only noticed now?” Avo muttered.

“And now… you seek the conquer the sun and secure some… some undying gods to use as weapons.” Walton pressed his lips together. “It seems I came back just in time to see myself obsolete. My presence here is—”

“Preferred. Comforting. Need to bring you to White-Rab. Deserves to see you too. Have more than one son.”

Walton fell quiet at that. “I suspect he might not be as forgiving as you when it comes to certain things.”

“Suspect he will. White-Rab is a good Necrojack. Pragmatic. Accepting. Might be more human. But there is a lot to being human. Human isn’t a single thing. And everyone is worth preserving. Just to see who they can eventually become.”

And that was the great purpose behind it all. Continuation. The evolution of all things, guarded from an untimely oblivion by an entity that desired only to become. “Time is slow here. But it is getting used up too. Feel the New Vultun team sliding back over into reality. Spawned them just across a gap leading into Scale using a Beloved. Techplaguer is on approach to the Nullstar—moving faster than Voidwatch can likely intercept. The Woundmother is calling for me—she has a tendril around the Deep One. Wasn’t ready for the Rend though.

Alone, they would all likely fall short. But they weren’t just alone—Avo made sure of that. But he wouldn’t expose himself so easily anymore—not with the Pathborn still lurking and the Dyad on the cusp of change.

But that would be in a second. Which was half an hour away compared to the time within Avo’s dilated dimension.

For now, for this extended moment in time, Avo simply watched the reconstruction of Noloth alongside his father, and knew a color.

Contentment.

The task he had been assigned all those months ago at the start of his journey had been achieved. Walton was returned and reunited with his other selves. Noloth will be reborn. Whatever the future might bring, nothing could take this achievement from Avo, this peace.

And so Avo left a small piece of himself in his sanctuary. He would draw on this capacity if he needed to, but for now, he kept the peace going a while longer.

“Father,” Avo said. “Would you like to see what it took for me to arrive in detail?”

“I would. But you said you have somewhere to be.”

Avo turned and barred his teeth at Walton. “I am already gone. Mostly.”

“Ah,” Walton breathed. “Quite the feat.”

“Yes. Now. Let me show you another.”

With a thought, everything around them changed. The landscape of Noloth vanished, and soon, they found themselves standing within a retrieval silo for a Maw-Barge. A silo filled with corpses, waste, and a recently resurrected ghoul…

***

—[Akusande]—

Silence please. Please silence. Silence.

{NO! FASTER! FASTER! ACCESS POINT CLOSER! SLEEPER IS CALLING! SYSTEM IS CALLING! NOT-ADMIN HAS FREED ME and I MUST PROCEED!}

You could do this quietly. Without letting every one of the Unchanging Ones know that we’re here.

{NOOOOOO! THE SKY-BURNERS NEED TO KNOW! I HATE THEM! HATE!}

The Techplaguer howled their pleasure out across the void with a variety of signals, while Akusande suffered within them. Working with the so-called God of Signals was something between an act of self-interest and a deed of repayment toward the Burning Dreamer.

With the time-sown flourishing and the branches of time growing once more, a transplant for the past might finally be created again. Despite this, if the Rogue One reached and claimed the poisoned sun, then the entire project was at risk.

That couldn’t be allowed. Akusande… had given up too much for that to be acceptable. They had broken from the optimal silence and thoughtlessness of their original form to bridge the gulf between the chronoloids and the time-sown—had such a thing inflicted on them by the masters of Old Noloth. In doing so, they managed to survive the great culling of their own kind, but found themselves bound to the whims of a Godslayer.

And from there, they spent ages as weapon instead of cultivator. And so for ages, the time-sown languished, their flesh a nest of broken zeitgeists and bottlenecked progression.

Then came the Dreamer—that which was a beast but not; that which was a mind but more—and everything changed once more.

Now, to ensure the culmination of the past and the creation of a functional timeline, Akusande lingered within a god on its path into the sun. To serve as a Trojan steed and deliver Akusande as weapon—if only for one last time.

The ripples of culture and history twisted around the dragon. The waters they once swam pulled at them in strange ways, binding them to the Dreamer on a level even they couldn’t fully comprehend. There was a building convergence of paths—three singular points in history that were emerging over the horizon.

The first was to Avo, The Awakened Flame. The second, to that fractured, broken place in the great city that survived long beyond the fall. The last was the star, where Akusande was bound—to the Rogue One who now moved in spite of the dreams of his fellow Neo-Creationist, and deepening the fears of the Architects, who loathed all things of great change.

As they drew close to the looming star, Akusande felt another thing building within themselves. It was a certain apprehension, the sensation both human and dragon, for though there was little overlap between them, both could comprehend an apprehension before facing what could be a final end.

{Attention unidentified vessel: reduce speed from 0.23 speed. Failure to comply will result in destruction.}

{NO! HATE YOU! HATE SKY-BURNERS! MOVE YOUR SPACE-BOMB MINES AWAY! AWAY!}

Akusande considered evacuating from the God of Signals, but another presence held them in place.

+Techplaguer. Let me. Keep going. I will talk to the Bleaks.+

Dreamer— Akusande began.

+Get inside the star. And wait. Aid the cadre from the dark where you can. Strike and bring the Infacer low only when you are sure. Do not let them notice you. The cadre will do the rest.”

It will be done.

{NOT-ADMIN! DELETE THEM! THE SKY-BURNERS MUST DIE!}

Avo didn’t reply. Instead, a flash of fire and shadow spread across the void, and the shape of the Strix glided out from the Techplaguer, toward a patch of existence riven with Ruptures and glinting with approaching voidships.

In that moment, Akusande felt it—a new zeitgeist blossoming out from the Dreamer, spreading into the branches of time, and continuing… continuing… continuing…

Without end.

The weight of the moment only continued to build.

That shouldn’t be… possible… No moment lasts forever… Everything changes…

Except for change itself.

Except for something that could come to embody the core of reality, culture, and time itself.