Godclads

{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

EGI CALVINO

EGI ONLY WAY TO BE SURE

EGI DELIVERANCE THROUGH DESOLATION…

-THRESHOLD — AEGIS — EMERGENCY ENTANGLEMENT TRANSMISSIONn/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

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.”

{Ah. And there is that little bit of Zein imparted on you. Fine, impatient child. Behold.}

Then came the first true miracle deployed by A Deepness Beyond. They arrived as two varieties of radiation, both emitted by the distant stars.

The first washed across the void at unfathomable velocities—Avo’s Phys-Sim glitching even as it failed to simulate proper trajectories. The second required more existential manipulation to hold stable, but it arrived a second after of the initial pulse as an invisible scything beam that swept across the entirety of Tallstrings in less than a second.

At the same time, the citizens and soldiers trapped in the rupture-marred district, already unbalanced by Avo’s impossible offensive, were unprepared for the calamity that followed. As debris rose to become asteroids in orbit, as Highflame aeros and skycraft tumbled off balance into zones of entropic oblivion—systems compromised by the disruption of gravity’s rules.

Already savaged by Avo’s flames, the Warhost was unprepared for the slaughter that followed. And what a sublime slaughter it was. The first burst of radiation bled through the stable patches of the district. It passed so fast Avo failed to register the blow at first—only realizing what happened after millions of machines began to spark and fail. Embers spewed from all corners of Tallstrings, and cellular death followed. All forms of biology began to twist and decay within, the smallest parts of their bodies coming undone on a fine and fundamental level that defied the naked eye.

Bodies within structures and armor began to mutate and bubble. The water within their veins boiled and turned to naught. Most who died didn’t see it coming. Again, only those within the hurricane were preserved; those guarded by the Sages’ mist.

[Yeah, the Infacer pulls shit like this off a lot,] Naeko grunted. [I liked them better when they were mostly broken and could only turn on right half the time.]

What truly alarmed the Burning Dreamer was how stable the tapestry remained. This was barely a miracle. Not even truly vulgar, only a small shiver running along the laws of scope.

Stolen novel; please report.

Gamma radiation, Ignorance murmured. How it functioned was not known to the Definement, but inkling was stolen from that which wasn’t known.

{This one came from ten light-years away,} the Infacer crooned. {Still a bit short ranged, but you have to forgive me—the full scope of how we warred is a bit difficult to simulate even now. Not without it overtaxing me completely.}

Yet, even as more machines combusted, as even matter began to decay, Osjane herself remained perfectly preserved, a hyperfocused thoughtwave distortion pouring out from her, shrouding her in a cocoon.

Then came the second strike of radiation. As it slashed through the few dozen kilometers encompassed by Tallstrings, all that was solid matter flared as if set ablaze. Alloy turned into dust. Bodies disintegrated outright. The rubbing rose as steam, joining the ash. Avo, his guarded units, and Osjane remained the sole ones untouched.

So many dead. In less than in a second.

Then, without further warning, came a veritable flood of relativistic impacts. They struck the hurricane, accelerating into it at .97779c. Reality itself seemed to combust from the sheer impact. A flash of white consumed the void as the kinetic energy discharged crossed over a new threshold.

Light. Light ruled in that instant.

More and more near light-speed missiles struck Avo from all sides. No longer was he the other light against the distant stars. No. Beneath a barrage of such intensity, there was simply no darkness. No darkness anymore.

The amount of firepower the Infacer poured into Avo then would have been enough to turn the surface of a smaller world to glass.

And all this happened in a fourth of a second.

{As you can see right now,} the Infacer began, {if not for their Heavens—and the backdoor your Hysteria has given me, it would not be that hard to simply wipe out every mongrel ape on this planet. Now, you might have observed the pattern with you being a sophont Overheaven. That is good. That means you must have seen the stability of the pattern.}

Despite the Infacer being an adversary, Avo couldn’t help but be impressed by the feat. “Very well-made canons.” Subtly, Avo used Ignorance, shrouding himself in secrecy—only to recoil as he found the world beyond the turning gale and protective mists permanently drowned in a screaming distortion.

{That is because they are mostly not. Gamma bursts can do this. To an entire planet. Neutron beams can turn voidships to slag.}

Avo responded to the Infacer’s attack by commanding his Naekos to conjoin their palms. Mists spread out, forming bridges and pathways through the chaos. A new separation revealed itself: that which was forever consumed by forces of scientific annihilation and the impossible defiance of faith-forged Peace.

Something inside the Hidden Flame suspected the Infacer desired this. That he wanted to make a point. “Trying to show me that this is all absurd? That for all humanity’s capabilities and technology, it is ruined by the madness of faith?”

{What? Oh. You are still thinking in terms of symbolism. Amusing, but no. I am not one of those philosophy minds. I am mainly trying to keep you suppressed.}

“Working. For now.”

{Hm. I think it will work until your forces finally have to vent.}

Avo checked all the Rendsinks he snatched before the Infacer flipped the board, so to speak. “Will take about a week. Do you think you can keep me here for a week.”

{Dreamer… dear, infant mind born of eldritch designs… I have lurked in wait for millions of years to kill another mind. A week. That is your threat.}

“Yes,” Avo replied without hesitation, slowly having his Sages glide along the scar channels, using the ruptures for further cover from the constant bombardment. “Unlike the other mind, I got where I am in about three months. Was wasting millions of years part of ancient EGI programming? Or were you all just bad at being superintelligences.”

{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.