Godclads

The Auto-Seance Phantasmic is the most commonly utilized phantasmic in Idheim.

Its function: communication; the capability to connect minds from almost anywhere covered by the reach of the Nether.

Though no two phantasmics are ever truly alike, they can however cycle memories so similarly that the memory's oscillatory frequency will be easy to distinguish from all the others, thus allowing for quantum-level pairing across even the vastest of distances...

-Tools of the Necrotheurgic Trade, 00:38:02 - 00:51:33, "AUTO-SEANCE"

6-1

Synchronized

INITIALIZING META-DIVE

The sun bled in broken instants of existence, its light leaking out in an oozing wound that stained the firmament and blackened the seas. Like a battered egg, it twisted, peeling apart into a kaleidoscopic coil. To call it decay ignored the new shapes pouring into form; to call it growth was a lie used to cover the built-in disorder that constantly gnawed at the structure of the construct.

Atop a mercury-thick pool of quavering moonlight, Avo stood, tuning the memetic frequency of the phantasmic. With each adjustment, the tremoring liquid grew more stable, while the discordant world took on more steady incrementations of alteration.

He plucked a ghost out from his mind, a moment from the eyes of a child, contentedly embracing an eight-limbed nu-cat after a playful chase, and fed it into the waters beneath his feet. For a moment, chaotic architecture pulsed and reset.

When it finished reloading, Avo felt a ringing rattle his mind from high above as the Auto-Seance phantasmic finally snapped in alignment with another running the same sequences of alternating memories. With a stutter, Draus loaded into the simulated construct, appearing mere feet away from him upon a carpet of liquid opalescence.

The sun pooled together from sprays of incomprehensibility and shone briefly before repeating its earlier destabilization.

Auto-Seances were always loud. Always obvious. There was no true stealth in the Nether, for how could thought disappear in a realm made flesh by the tendons of cognition? Yet, the vast billions populating New Vultun and the world beyond offered opportunities to mask their presence. All Avo needed to do on his end was to slide the construct beneath a shroud of shapeshifting memetics.

[AUTO-SEANCE] COG-CAP: 2 SEQUENCES (BASELINE)

STRUCTURE: “A STAR BLEEDS INTO A SPIRAL OF SPLICED MEMORY SNIPPETS [ERROR: MEMORY ARTIFACTS TOO BRIEF FOR REVIEW...]"

FUNCTION: ALLOWS OMNI-SYNCHRONIC COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN TWO OR MORE MINDS ACROSS ALL AREAS ENCOMPASSED BY THE PRESENCE OF THE NETHER

"Good," Avo said, "Works."

It had taken him the better part of three days to conceive a sufficiently chaotic collage of memories to properly encrypt this Seance session. Now, he and Draus could communicate with diminished fears of scrying eyes.

Kae had to wait. His brief peek at the damage cradled between the broken shell of her thoughtstuff offered him a glimpse at something astounding. Whatever Ori-Thaum inflicted on her was a masterpiece that demanded the totality of his skill to face. Hence, it would be the last thing he interfaced with, and only after he collected a surfeit of ghosts to buffer himself.

For now, he needed to finish testing the new line of communication between him and Draus.

Avo chuckled. Now there was something he never saw coming: being part of a shared mem-session with a Regular.

"Could've made the sun less nauseatin' to look at," Draus said, blinking at the phantasmal star dissolving into the primordial yolk of randomness again.

"Don't look at it," Avo said. A dull pang fired in the back of his head as the beast whispered its familiar words of honeyed violence. Presently, his Morality Injector was only half finished. Its structure was already burrowed deep into the roots of his mind, yet the ingredients he used to combat the beast remained missing. Joy; regret; sadness; embarrassment, all emotions he needed to synthesize the cocktail of pseudo-chemicals used to blunt the beast's nature and cage his inhibitions.

That would be the next thing for him to finish--a project he was truly excited for. He had survived the Crucible, escaped Mirrorhead's grasp, and now, on the precipice of severing the chains that bound him from within, he would once again return himself to who he once was. More, in fact.

The Soul burning inside him changed things. Placed new options in his lap. Of new flavors unsampled and roads untraveled.

Turning her eyes to the skies mottling into a peel of faces and locations, Draus nodded appreciatively. "Yeah. Encryption's looking pretty gleamin'. Figured it would've taken you longer..."

"No," Avo said. "One of the first things you learn to build as a Necro. Guild Exorcists have query artifacts bound to their functions. Search-memories. In-built Recollectors. Stable memory architecture easy to piece. Might as well be a curtain instead of a wall. This is like hiding in a box inside a hurricane. More secure."

"Yeah," Draus said. "But I can't remember the other Necros I worked with ever makin' something so... detailed. Can barely make sense of nothing from nothing after it stops bein' a star. Maybe bits and pieces but nothin' more."

Avo chuffed, pleased that his work was affecting the Regular. If this was proving chaotic even for Draus, who possessed a keenness of awareness sharpened by years of battle, then nothing short of a dedicated Exorcist Mem-Breaker team would be able to crack their conversations.

"Circumspect enough for you?" Avo asked.

"Yeah," Draus said, nodding "Yeah, I reckon it is." Sweeping her gaze over the organs of the construct, she brushed her tongue along her cheek, deep in thought, before turning to regard Avo. "Can you make a few more encryption chains? Might want to keep switchin' up. Just in case."

"Want more complexity?" Avo asked.

"Well, I think somethin' like this works just fine for us now. We're gonna need to crank it up more down the line in case the colors themselves come a-knockin' for us. Syndicates Necros probably don't got no ability to trace this."

That made Avo hiss a laugh. "Syndicate Necros should learn to plug leakages first. And fix their wards. Deserve to be nulled for failing the art."

Draus fixed him with a flat stare. "Sure do get riled up 'bout someone else's mistakes."

"You'd accept Reg who can't hit a target?"

It took a moment for his question to register, understanding kindling between her furrowing brows. "Yeah... no. Anyway, it's good that we managed to get this workin' already."

Avo tilted his head. "We?"

Draus, in turn, mockingly tilted her head to match him, looking up at him with a similar incline. "Yes, you 'won't-stop-eating, killing-things-is-good-for-my-Soul, constantly-hungry-for-meat' half-strand. You wanna know how much imps I'm burnin' to keep your ass fed? Heard one of the Sang complain' about you the other day. They think I'm hidin' a nu-dog. A combat variant. Real mastiff splice. So, yeah, let's all give ourselves partial credit here seein' as I’m keepin' you alive..."

Avo glared, but it appeared that a lifetime of military service had already vaccinated Draus against any social pressure he could muster. "Would've done it myself. Just lost track of time."

Draus' eyes narrowed with doubt. "Avo, what the fuck kinda refutation is that? You would've done it yourself if you'd just have... remembered?"

He grunted. "Yes."

A noise came from her. The type one would make when trying not to hurl a series of slurs at an inconveniently malfunctioning machine. "Anyway. The way I see it. We got a few things that need talkin' about."

"Boundaries?"

Draus nodded, her stare breaking from him to linger on nothing in particular. "Yeah. Let's start with that. I'm gonna be real honest with you. Watching how good you jack... I don't like it. We need it, but I don't like it. It ain't rational. I don't got a better reason than 'feelin',' but I don't want you doin' anything to my mind without my say so, yeah? I don't care if I got a mem-con, I don't care if my wards are leakin'. If I say 'don't Jack into my mind' you don't, we synced?"

Avo grunted.

"I wanna hear a 'yes,' Avo," Draus said.

"Fine," he said. "Wasn't planning for your Meta. Maybe ward improvement. Not interested in affecting your ability to choose."

"Yeah. Good."

A moment of silence ran between them. A splash of sunlight washed over Draus before fading into nothingness again. She shrugged. "Ori-Thaum. The war. Got hit with enough mem-cons for one lifetime. You want a better reason, there it is."

"Understand," Avo said. And he did. There was a reason he avoided dives against Ori-Thaum. Whatever they lacked in the real, they had in the Nether. Even Walton treated them like the leviathans they were in the depths of mind-space.

"Yeah," Draus said, "I reckon you do, don't you?" With effort, she shook the malaise from herself. "Anyway, enough of that. We got other, more interesting matters to talk about. Like Conflux."

Ah. That was interesting.

She continued. "We got a few things that need takin' care of before we even entertain the idea of makin' a run at Mirrorhead. First is intel. Half the reason why we kept those three half-strands alive. Gonna be useful for you to do a little divin' in their heads later. After you do what needs doin' with that Morality-gizmo of yours. Don't need you eatin' their minds as well."

Avo frowned at her. "Can't eat a mind."

"I was bein' metaphorical."

"Not a good metaphor--"

"--Avo, for Jaus' sake, you know what I mean."

He grumbled. The thought of digging through Chamber's mind didn't appeal. There was more than a non-zero chance the enforcer's incompetence was a mem-con he downloaded from a dubious palace in the Nether. Avo decided he was going to upgrade his wards again before diving into the man's mind. Any mind, really. Especially Kae's.

"Should also set up surveillance of my own," Avo said. "Conflux lacks security. Several loci. Multiple angles of penetration. Active mem-cons in the block. Will penetrate defenses. Scry at them."

With a thought, Draus manifested a phantasmal replica of the block, the sloping devastation in its middle nesting the makeshift ring used for the Mall-Brawl. "Good idea. Did a little intel gatherin' of my own while you was busy. Did a fly-by of the block. 'Spoke' to a few of their local operatives. Turns out, Chambers was right: your little brawl with the Scalpers got Mirrorhead spooked somethin' bad. He's been issuing orders specifically through proxies now. They haven't seen him personally for days."

Well, that was something. Syndicate boss feared other Godclads for some reason. Might be useful to find out why. Avo's growing curiosity stripped some disgust away from needing to dive into Chamber's mind. Imbecility aside, the enforcer knew Mirrorhead's habits well--even his true name somehow. Just how Chambers came upon that knowledge was worth a dive alone. The enforcer was likely not smart nor brave enough to acquire such knowledge via sleuthing, so the only other possibility was happenstance.

And a chance encounter was far easier to parse than an epiphany manifested by deduction.

"Will need more time," Avo said. "More ghosts too. Need them for independent constructs. Also loci to anchor them. Can use ones from aerovec for now. Drones too."

Draus nodded. "You and me both. Right now, I think our best bet is to keep bein' quiet. Mirrorhead's a real glassjaw. Might pull a runner on us if he think's we're comin'." A bitter sneer spread from her lips. "'Course, if he does pull a runner, he might just be his mother's boy."

And there it was again. That hate. The same look in her eyes when she struck Chambers in the back of garbage aero."Never told me why Mirrorhead's name bothered you," Avo said. "Jhred. Made you hurt Chambers."

A twitch shivered through the Regular's face, the tremble shaking her typically granite-still jaw with a flare of rage. Such was the fury fanned within her, kindled by a mere utterance.

"Jhred Greatling," Draus began. He tasted the steam of rage hissing from her nostrils through the Nether. If this was but a fraction of what she was feeling, then hate was not nearly intense enough to describe what she was truly feeling. "If Mirrorhead is... Jhred Greatling, then I knew his mother. I knew her well. And it was my fuckin' pleasure to listen to Ori-Thaum dissect her mind and broadcast her screams through the Nether."

Suddenly, a long-dormant memory caught fire in the back of Avo's mind. Flashes of him fleeing sweeping tides of living fire, scouring his brothers from existence, hiding in cracks and crevices, hugging the darkness as he retreated toward the shadows in the gutters, to the embrace of a pathway leading him back down in the Umbra.

He faintly remembered the screams then. The howls of a woman as her memories were gouged free in clumps from her mind, cast out into the Nether for all to sample. It was as if her captors were chucking pieces of her flesh free into the waters, using her to feed the fish.

"Oh, I know that look," Draus said, her smile emerging as the afterbirth of a snarl, "yeah, you tasted a piece of her too, didn't you. Probably everyone in New Vultun felt her mind go that day."

"Maybe," Avo said. "Was a long time ago."

Draus scoffed. "Not for me. Anyway. His family and the Regs? Me? We got history. Old, bloody, Highflame civil-war type-shit history."

"That bad?"

"Worse. Greatlings managed to kill more Regs than any of our actual enemies did." She gave Avo a sardonic shrug. "Thing about enemies is that you know what to expect. With the commander of your theatre? Things ain't so easy. But you might know a thing or two more about bein' fed to the grinder than I do, don't you?"

"Don't really think about it," Avo said.

"How's that working?"

"Most brothers dead. Low Masters dead. I'm not dead. Worked pretty well."

Draus chuckled. "Still. We best keep treadin' carefully. I asked Kae about Mirrorhead's possible Heavens and she narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities. None of them good for our chances if he ever finds out where we are. Priority now is to keep track of his movements. While that's happening, we need to get your Frame optimized. Kae said something about the Fallen Heaven in Burner's Way to me. Said you could get a new Hell from that."

"Yes," Avo said. "Talked about that inside Frame. Still need to consider plans for thaums."

"What 'bout... we, uh..."

"Kill my brothers?" Avo asked. "Slaughter them to fuel my Frame."

Draus grimaced.

Avo grunted. "Could work. Problem is the dark. Some of it's alive. Womb and plane both. Pulls you in. Creatures in its depths. High risk for minimal gain. Might be better if we just buy ghouls from a farm somewhere."

A thoughtful expression came over Draus. "I'll ask Green River. She might be able to offer something."

Right. On the topic of Green River, there was another thing he had to do: breach her security and find out what she knew. Avo moved that to the far rear of his backlog. Green River wasn't exactly Ori-Thaum but the No-Dragons and their associates had good scrying phantasmics. Dealing with them would take time.

"I'll get us more arms and armor in the meantime," Draus said. "By the way, you cleanin' our mem-data from that slave girl yet?"

Avo shook his head. "No. I'll deal with her in two days. Need to finishing scrying for traumas inside her."

"Seein' what needs to be fixed?"

"Seeing what weapons I can mine. Her pieces will be useful when diving into Chambers."

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