Godclads

Torture is inefficient for information, but an absolutely wonderful way of getting new offensive phantasmics. But there’s an art to this! A wonderful, wonderful art! You can’t bake a cake with a broken egg, after all, haha! Am I right, novitiate?

[Tester screaming]

You see… that’s… that’s already too much. Look into the mirror and stare at your eyes… I mean, really look into them. You see that. You’re going somewhere else. Mind’s already breaking from the pressure I put on you. Too much too fast.

Your ego pouring out with the tears. Too much. Too much. I got to peel slowly. So, let’s start with someone more sublime.

[Tester pleading; begging]

Oh, this isn’t the moment where it gets bad. This is just an initiation. Remember, your memory will be cleared after this. You are experiencing this through a proxy. This is only to get a gauge as to where your limits lie. Do you understand?

[Tester sobbing]

Now, you said you loved your father? Now, let us learn what might happen if I sprinkled some abuse on those cherished memories…

-First Instructor Kanaede, Incubi Entrance Exam, Ori-Thaum

Bad Cop/Cannibal Cop

It was the smell that caught Avo’s attention first, hinting at what kind of vehicle Draus’ had decided to procure for this “extraction.”

Hovering past a narrow weave of alleyways over the edge of the district, the trash barge was a long plow-shaped vehicle with mem-tags sprayed all along its rusted exterior. A narrow “V" formed its primary windshield and a dozen mechanical arms folded and dormant along its sides. A cake of filth crowned the sealed top of the barge, crusting it with fecal enamel.

And without difficulty, it blended into the sheer dilapidation of the environment, looking just as used and worn as the buildings and the people here.

“Trash barge,” Draus said, sniffling. “Comes cheap; got space; lined with lead. Best flyer you can get for movin’ ‘round these parts.” She cast a darting chain of ghosts into the front of the vehicle, flinging a thought command at the locus. Slowly, the vehicle began to turn, shifting to angle its backdoor to them.

Yet, as Avo drew close, he noticed the frizzling ripples coming from three minds, their thoughtstuff scattered and spiking with sudden alarm.

His former “comrades,” Avo guessed. How nice of Draus to pack a hefty lunch for their trip over to…

“Draus.” Avo asked. “Location? Where?”

“Xin Yunsha,” Draus said. Avo’s cog-feed caught the Sangshanese and began filtering a loose translation from the memories of his ghost. Proper localization needed an Omniglot phantasmic, but right then, he had enough mem-data to pump out something raw.

“New Cloudsand?” he asked.

The Regular shook her head. “Translation's too literal. It’s a line from one of them Sangshan poems. Something about the time being like the clouds and the sands.”

Avo grunted. He never held much interest in poetry. Required too much sentiment. Sentiment that just didn’t burn inside him. “Why there?”

“Got a fixer there. Cloned from the Line of Qing, named Green River. Also got half a dozen other names there, but the important thing’s that she’ll be putin’ us up for now. Got a hab that’s out of the way. And some…facilities that you and I can both find useful.”

“They take ghouls?”

Draus grinned. “Why, Avo, when you sell a fully functioning golem to a local arms broker, all sorts of taboos make like.. uh… clouds and sand.” She breathed mockingly at him.

An intrusive thought snaked into his mind, images of him opening her throat and eating her trachea. He wondered if she would still smile at him then. Inside, his blood rattled, snapping together like prisoners clanging their chains against the steel of their cages. He could shape a blade through her skull. It would be so easy…

Avo shook his head and continued toward the barge. “Fine.” he croaked. He needed to kill Chambers. Someone. Someone to dull the edge. He could hear the flowing of her blood running through her veins. His hunger was growing stronger. Getting worse.

It was like eating that Heaven had torn a gaping wound into his stomach. He was full. His body’s metabolism wasn’t burning. But he wanted more. It felt like his blood was coming afire, compelling him onward via a building heat from within. It wouldn’t be long till it became a need.

“Open door,” Avo said, staring at the glaring three ripples of thoughtstuff inside the barge. Their flows came muted, the terrible opaqueness of their wards leaking, filled with exploitable cracks. If he had a Ghostjack phantasmic installed, he wouldn’t need to dismantle cracked minds so utterly to lick the faint traces of memetic nectar from their minds.

As it stood, he didn’t have a Ghostjack. Their minds weren’t going to be intact. There wouldn’t be much of them at all by the time this was done.

Avo ran his tongue along his inner teeth. He was going to enjoy this deeply.

“Hey, Avo,” Draus said, the roughness in her voice an unwelcome intrusion, piercing his murderous reverie. He tilted his head, not bothering with a full turn, choosing to stare at her out from the periphery of his right eye. If that offended her, she didn’t show it. “You ain’t eatin’ them. You heard?”

Now he did turn. Now, the ringing chains of blood inside him echoed like cracking whips. The beast roared, fused within a metaphorical cage, but this time, it was not alone. His active Heaven–his Sangeist–could feel through matter as well, and it felt the quality of her blood. Pure. Premium. Designer make.

Avo wrestled with himself. Every sinew within him came afire, screaming at him to unleash the power of his Heaven as a bloom of unfurling blades. Peel the Regular apart and strip her clean to the bone. Find where even the adamantine will of a Regular would shatter and feast on her broken–

He pulled himself away before he could sink deeper. Too much. He had fed the beast too much these past few days. Over fifty lives taken to feed his hunger, to fuel his fire. And more. It always wanted more.

“The talker,” Avo said, voice seething as he imagined what sweet sounds he could get from taking a sharp edge to Chambers slowly. “The fool. His unprofessionalism got me killed. Twice. Killed choiceless in the crossfire. Lied to me about the dive. Can’t let him live. Wouldn’t be right. Insult to the craft.”

“And it’ll be an insult to pragmatism if you up and kill him now, won’t it,” Draus scoffed. “Look. I’ve been killing these Syndicate half-strands for a while now. I know how it is. Ain’t got spit for them if they was on fire. But we get what we can get first, yeah? You were more than a ghoul down in that Crucible. I need you to stay more now.”

Draus stared at him. Avo gnashed his fangs together and actively plucked his thoughts away from eating and hurting people. He imagined sequencing a ghost. He imagined how Walton corrected his mistakes.

“Fine,” he said, barely.

She scuffed her nose momentarily with her thumb and shrugged. “It’s a short ride. Twenty minutes. Prepared a couple hundred pounds of raw meat for you at the hab. You cotton to keep yourself checked till then?”

“Yeah,” Avo said. “Can do that.”

“Well, alright, then.” She shot the barge a look. “Still, there’s… something we ought to be doin’ along the way. Gotta ask our new friends a couple of questions. You said you were a Necro?”

“Still am.”

“Right. Good. Gonna need that when we get down to business." She pointed at the thoughtstuff ebbing from within the barge, “and I’m going to need you to get one of those half-strands sequenced up. Got a phantasmic in mind. Wanna make a plant of our own later. You spent more time ‘round them. Should have a better idea which of them’s got more pull with Mirrorhead than I do.”

“Chambers,” Avo said, without hesitation. “The talker. He’s the one to… use. Other two are techs. Logistic. Support. He’s management. Or what passes.”

“Him? Shit. How the hells are they still around?”

“Mirrorhead,” Avo said. “Best guess.”

She spat through the gap between the barge and the edge of the district. Across the gulf to the next district, a thin sheen of blackness spewed upwards in pluming gouts: the Maw exhalations given color.

She struck him on the shoulder and cracked a smirk. “Hey. What’s say you and I talk to him. Real old-fashioned like. See what we can persuade out of him first before you get to work on his mind. Like in one of them... cop soaps?”

Avo grunted. A faint chuff of amusement punched through despite his subconscious desire to suckle out her eyes and run his tongue through her sockets. He and Walton had watched a few crime serials back in the day.

Lay and Li was one. An impossible knight-squire comedy between a straight-laced Kosgan fresh from the academy and a former Sang circuit fighter who was probably more than a little based on the Stormsparrow.

The show lasted twelve seasons. Critical acclaim was supposed to have helped ease tensions between the No-Dragons and Highflame. Came to an abrupt end when the two leads caught the rash from each other and died. The media somehow found it tragically romantic.

Somehow, Avo couldn't imagine spraying stillborn versions of yourself through fissure sores to be that enticing.

“You bad cop? Or am I?” he asked.

Draus guffawed. “Shit, ghoul, I think we’re both the bad cop. Only question is which of us will be worse.”

To that, Avo only grinned.

With a wordless command, the door snapped open, a rising pillar of light flooding into the room. Three figures writhed, wincing at the sudden brightness. They were left in their undergarments, with their armor and equipment nowhere to be seen. The interior of the barge’s back end was a blank canvas of dull gunmetal grey and protruding lockers.

It was only as Avo stepped in that he realized they were writhing because all their limbs were folded over, shards of bone jutting loose from pierced skin. The scent of blood hit him. He swallowed and glared at Draus.

“What?” she asked.

He gesticulated in annoyance at the brutalized state of the Confluxers. “Trying to tempt me?” he hissed.

She rolled her eyes. “Jaus. Can’t just tie a rope or a cord these days. Half these half-strands’ got monoblades implanted somewhere. Its break the limbs or accept that they’ll do a runner.”

Chambers groaned, his voice raw with pain. “You crazy fucking sow–I carried your ass through the rain and–auughhh, fuck my legs.”

The Regular laughed. Walking over, she likely booted the bone spur protruding from Chambers’ shin. He screamed. The bone slipped up deeper, sliding through the flesh.

Avo’s mouth watered.

Gods, but she was testing him.

Rolling onto his back, Chamber stared into the light, gasping with sobs. His eyes widened. He leaned up. “Avo? Holy fucking shit! Avo. A–Avo, help me? Kill this crazy fucking Reg sow! She came out of–Avo?”

Pulling free from the brightness outside, Avo strode into the darkness within the barge, his skin taking on a strange glow in the ambient light, making him resemble the bastard offspring between leather and jade. Beneath his skin, he felt his Heaven twitch, the blood flowing with him clicking, chipping together in anticipation.

It seemed the more he fed his Heaven, the more alive it felt. Not unlike the symbiote, in a certain regard; it was a part of him, like a new organ layered into his being, granting him new limbs to reach, and new eyes to see.

And see he did. See the sudden flush of terror as the haemokinetic circuits that formed Chambers’ system, his heart filled with explosions and deflating like a balloon. The sound of the organ throbbing loudly was the truest expression of terror

"H-hey," Chambers whimpered, "I-it's me, consang. I--I gave you a place to sleep at night."

“Going to eat your eyes,” Avo said. “Eat your left for leaving me. Eat your right because I’m hungry.”

Chambers spun back over Draus, the fact that she crippled him a distant memory. “Fuck!” he cried, worming over to her, bouncing on his chest and neck. “Fucking, you’re a Reg, aren’t you? Stop the ghoul! Stop the fucking ghoul!”

Draus sneered down at him, like a hawk judging a worm. “Sorry, consang, but my discharge was dishonorable.”

“Ah, fuck,” Chambers moaned.

Behind them, the door snapped shut, silencing the outside. With a low hum, the barge’s engines fired as it sank, diving low to embark along its pre-navigated path.

With a nudge of her foot, Draus shoved Chambers into a pile with the two techs. Janand wailed as the Syndicate enforcer landed back-first against his snapped leg. In the corner, the other tech lay still, unconscious.

“So, here’s how it’s gonna be,” Draus began. “Me and the paler here might-gotta a few questions y’all could answer. So, I suggest that when I talk you speak up, because–” Draus could help but snort a laugh, “--though neither of us is what I’d describe as the ‘social type,’ only one of us might eat you if you don’t spit true right now. You synced?”

Janand hissed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, stress and exhaustion forming a catalyst of post-traumatic apathy in his expression. “Don’t know anything. Just a fucking tech. Ask… uh… what’s his name? ... Jambers? Yeah. Ask him. He’s the one Mirrorhead promoted.”

Chambers roared. “You glass-jawed, sell-your-new-boss-out, death-courting fuck!” He turned to wriggle hatefully against Janand. The tech continued frowning at the ceiling, silently wishing for death.

Draus sighed and dragged the enforcer away, casually tossing himself in the other corner.

A blaring horn sounded from the outside. The barge dipped hard to avoid traffic. Avo stumbled, claws squealing along the steel to stabilize himself. Janand rolled. Chambers bounced hard against the walls, head ringing against metal. Draus barely reacted, her balance untouched.

Slowly, she knelt down before Chambers. With both of them out of the rig, the contrast between them looked as if a champion of myth speaking down to a scoundrel.

“Let’s start with Mirrorhead. Want some details about him. When’d he show up? Where’d he come from? What’s he want? That kind of stuff.”

“Showed up a year ago,” Chambers said. “Sometime during… the eighteenth day of the Waxing. I don’t know. Just showed up one day. Started throwing imps around–mean really throwing imps. Hired every two-bit street squire wannabe into his ranks that could hold a gun. Paid wager rates for contract work too. We all thought shit was nova working for Conflux.”

“And then you let him jab you?” Avo finished.

“And then he started jabbing us, fuckin’ yes.” Chambers froze. “Ah shit. Oh shit! He’s gonna fry our synapses now–he’s gonna…” Chambers’ hyperventilating slowed. He blinked. Avo tilted his head. The enforcer was thinking. Chambers laughed, a chuckle rising to a cackle. “He ain’t gonna do shit.”

Chambers lifted his head, smiling. “He ain’t gonna do shit, and you know why?”

“Do tell?” Draus said.

“'Cause he’s hiding,” Chambers said, a bit of spittle coming free from his lips. “He’s hiding from another Godclad. He goes missing every time the Nether talks about it. Well,” Chambers said, grinning at Avo, “you raise enough hell to make the local lobbies think that another Guild war was starting. Heard–heard the rumors flyin’ that the Scalpers even sent out a knot while I was trying to bug out—”

Avo hissed. Chambers wilted.

“Milk. Run.”

“Shit, man, you can’t blame me. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“Do blame you. Should have known.” Avo growled, baring his fangs. “Innocents died. My fault. Your fault. Scalpers fault. Can’t fix me. But I fixed Scalpers. And I can fix you.”

Chambers winced away from Avo. “Okay–alright I can make it up to you. I can help. I’ll help you get the flat out. I–I–I know his name! I know his real name!”

Draus held out a hand. Avo blinked as he ran into it. Had he still been going for Chambers? He lost track of himself for a moment. Within the recesses of his mind, the beast seethed hatefully at Draus.

“You good?” Draus asked.

“Yeah,” Avo said, backing up. “Chambers. Whose name?”

“Mirrorhead,” Chambers said. “I know Mirrorhead’s real name.”

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