“Zein. What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you trying to expose us to the Guilds?”
“Hm. Oh. Yes, Cas. What woes do you wish to bleat to about today?”
“Listen: I understand you find human life to be nothing more than a joke, but Firmant is considering burning the Column. The numbers are still rolling in–twenty-four million dead. Five tis that number nulled. What the hells–”
“Calm yourself, boy. The Firmant threatens, but they are toothless all the sa. Besides, I did nothing. Point fingers at the Hungers and their slaves if you wish to direct your ire. Besides, our Voider allies will quite like what I have planned.”
“...What the hells have you done now?”
“Oh. Just created an opening for us to seize Highfla from the inside.”
[Disbelieving laugh] “Holy shit. I an… holy shit. All this effort. All this ti and that’s what you’ve been planning? You’re scheming to one-up your daughter in a pissing competition over old slights.”
“I’m scheming to ensure the stabilization of the Saintists and thereby the entire situation on Idheim. The feud between and Veylis is but a bonus. Oh, but that girl needs to learn how to run her house better. Her father will be so very disappointed–ah. You’re glaring hatefully at again. Is this because my–”
“Lack of fucking empathy. Yeah. Did you hear the part when I ntioned over a hundred and twenty million people snuffed and nulled? Because your pet rotlick just had to–”
“If this makes your ttle quiver then I suggest you steel yourself, child, for before the desired reality can co to fruition, pillars must break and the fuel that is death must flow.“
-Cas eld’Canduir and Zein Thousandhand, Ninth Column
10-14
A Cage of Thoughts (I)
“We have an hour,” Avo said, springing into motion. Instinct propelled him even before his mind had a chance to settle. “Zein is distracting the Bloodthanes. Think she’s bombing Nu-Scarrowbur. Need to take this chance. Mirrorhead’s cut off from the Nether. Ignorant. Vulnerable.” He paused thereafter, taking in the confused faces and blinking eyes.
Too fast. Zein's little trick had left him with whiplash. More fascinatingly, he could sense a faint volutric quiver outlining the forms of Draus, Essus, and Chambers. Thousandhand slashed at him with her sword over twenty tis. Whatever that did, it connected them, and would keep them protected.
Sohow.
He swallowed a growl. Dealing with the old woman was like trying to chase a nu-cat: The resultant chaos was always on her terms. He needed to start thinking about how to change that. “Draus. Need to talk with you first. Need to talk. And then plan attack after.”
Her uncertainty shone through her stare. “This about whatever Thousandhand just did?”
“Hard to tell what’s not about Thousandhand.” Avo paused. He shot a look at Essus and found the father wavering, his eyes scanning about, lost with regard to the situation. Yeah. That was an appropriate response to Zein. “But this is about you. She wants sothing from you now. Not even sure if I should tell you–if telling you is one of her sches.”
“Spit straight,” Draus said. She turned and leaned against the table, cocking her head up to et him face-to-face. “What I do might kill , but what I don’t know can kill anyway without earnin’ my death straight-up.”
Draus was a pure creature of simple wants. Perhaps this did fall into Zein’s machinations, but it was better that the Regular knew. That way, she could at least possess so choice with regard to her own thoughts. “Zein wants you made a ‘Clad.”
The Regular’s right eye twitched slightly. Her lip curled for an instant. “That it?”
“Wants you to claim Mirrorhead’s Fra. Make you seem like the one to snuff him for good. Ingratiate you back with the ritocrats. I think. Use you as an entryway back into Highfla.”
A troubled look clouded her expression as she listened to his words. Draus went still. Deathly still. Her heart, however, accelerated, its beats slow rather than sparse. “That all she showed you?”
“Yes.” He paused, thinking on his next words. “Didn’t infuse the paths into this ti. But I think she wants to use you. Bla everything on Mirrorhead to bring down his father. Drive the Chivalrics against each other. And make you a hero. Highfla worthy. Settle their issues before they even begin.”
Draus nodded. "Yeah." She ran her tongue along the sides of her cheek. “Yeah. That oughta do it. Scoops and dias will eat that shit up. ritos too, but they’ll do anything to stomp the Chivs by this point.” Her face darkened. “Godsdamned… maybe Santanado was one of Zein’s? Maybe she planned this all along, had him in place to be the big hero and now’s just pivoting because I’m what she’s got on hand.”
Avo didn’t know, and he hated it. Zein was playing and looking down from a scope beyond his. That was what he hated most about her: How she left him grasping at shadows, wary of being strung along, in fear of being leashed to her whims.
“Don’t know if telling you is part of her plan,” Avo said. “Took out. No reason to do it. Unless she could use to influence you. Plant the seeds in your head.” He studied her. “Might’ve suceeded.”
Her face twisted into one of disgust and exhaustion. “Avo. Rember what I told you when you offered to burn a Fra into ?”
“Rembered it made you angry.”
She let out a sharp breath. “You asked about limbo. Yeah. Right. I admit it. This is limbo. But I was perfectly fine snuffin’ half-strands and dyin’ right and proper in these here Warrens. No need for greater hope. No need for a way back to honor. and the Golds? We’re never gonna be whole again.”
Curiousity spurred his next words. Loathe as he was to admit it, part of him did desire such an outco for Draus as well. Her ascension would increase her capabilities exponentially, and allow her to apply her skills on a far greater level. It would also alleviate what he thought might be “lonesoness.” He was still figuring that one out.
“What were you going to do? After we killed Mirrorhead?”
Monts passed. His Echoheads chittered and he found Chambers poking at the ways nearby, hiding the fact that he was listening to their conversation. That didn’t matter. Avo would just pull those mories out from him afterward.
“There are other Syndicates. Other lacks and half-strands who need killin’. I figured if I didn’t die doin’ this fool thing, there would always be another.” She exhaled as exhaustion bled over more into her features. “Yeah. Alright. I did think about it.”
“Think about it?” Avo said. He knew what she was insinuating, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“A Fra, rotlick,” Draus said. “I was considerin’ takin’ you up on that offer of a Fra.” She shook her head. “I missed my chance to die.”
“During the war?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “When Zein was pointing at us earlier, gesturing to you and … You and your kind were the worst things to happen to . You fed too much righteousness. All of us too much righteousness. Good kills, was what you all were. And what few of my kin died fightin’ you and your Low Masters? We did it gladly.” She looked down. “Which might’ve been why goin’ back to bleedin’ the Silvers right after turned out so godsdamned hard. Because it ant nothin’. We were fightin’ over blocks and districts. Dyin’ for a war already lost. Killin’ the FATELESS because they was in our way.”
“You wished you died fighting my brothers?” Avo asked.
The chuckle that ca from her was devoid of scorn, but filled with lancholy. “I just kinda wish my life was spent on sothin’… sothing worth dreamin’ about. Not square miles for a bombed-out gablock. Not for so Heaven or Soul that’s just gonna go to a dumbshit Guilder kid lookin’ to play in the Trials.”
Avo grunted a laugh. Her eyes flicked back to him, gaze teetering between confusion and a glare as he spoke. “So. That was not the dream.”
A beat passed. She laughed too. “Fuck you, rotlick.”
Silence settled between them. Ti was running along, but Avo had an idea how he could conduct his assault. The question of what Draus–and to an extent Essus–wanted would dictate his approach. “Will you do it? I think I can… use the tafac. Strip it from him. Install it into you when this is done. Should be able to do it like with the Fallen Heaven.”
“I dunno yet,” Draus said. “Shit. I don’t know if I’m ready to…” Her voice trailed off.
He knew the word. Live. Taking the Fra ant living. ant turning away from her imagined end fighting in these depths and face what she really wanted for herself in a life beyond Guild service or self-righteous bloodshed.
“I can tell you this much though.” She thumbed in the direction of Essus as she spoke. “You. . Him? We all got a score to settle. With Conflux. Ain’t done till they're all dead, and I say we cut these sow-born fucks down and see what lights the wick after.”
Now there was a delicious sentint. Shared retribution. He swallowed back his salivation as he imagined conjoining his tamind to Draus and Essus as they extracted tornt, trauma, ghost, and Soul from Mirrorhead.
What a glorious cocktail this was to be.
Servos whined from the corner of the room as the father stood. Twin coals of crimson burned within the depths of his sockets. His fingers rang as they snapped opened and shut. “I will co.” The man spoke in faint whispers, his lungs hollow of strength. “I must…” He turned to stare at the holographic form of his son, taking in the sight of Mirrorhead’s gravest insult. His lips contorted with withheld agony. “I must do this. You are right. His death must an sothing.”
Striding over to Avo and Draus, the father’s footsteps were a shuddering rise and hamr fall. “I will do anything–” Turning his head up, he muttered sothing between words. Sothing to Artad. “I will do as you say. I just… I want him to face my boy before his end. So that he might sink deeper into the dark hereafter with the weight of his sins in known.”
And as the words left his mouth, he placed a chanical appendage against the table they sat around and sagged. A chair moved. From across, Avo watched Kae reach over and place her hand over Essus’ transplanted limb.
Both he and Draus froze, their heads tilting in unison at the fragile creature. Curiosity beca him while worry consud Draus. How distant empathy and comfort were to him. And how visibly did it aid Essus, who bowed his head and struggled against the ragged gasps of his anguish.
“Kae,” Draus said, shooting the Agnos an apologetic expression. “That’s enough. We don’t have the ti.”
Across the table, the other woman frowned and pulled her hand back. “I-it wasn’t like–”
“I know. But we don’t risk that.”
Suddenly, it occurred to Avo how affection-starved Kae had been as well. No ghosts. No Nether. Nothing. She was an exile not only in her own mind but to society as a whole, parted from all the nourishnts needed by a stable heart.
If he was to survive the following encounter with Mirrorhead, he needed to fix her. He had an idea of how now. As well as the ans. It would not take much for him to produce a locus using his blood to extinguish her conflagration before scrying her innermost sequences.
He shook his head and refocused. That would have to be afterward. And he had to ensure she wouldn’t be trapped here in the George Washington if the worst ca to pass. He needed to house her elsewhere. With reliable assets who could help ensure her safety thereafter.
Ultimately, there was only one obvious option.
A cord of blood shot free from his body and latched onto the locus within the throne. At the sa ti, Avo addressed the single most expendable person in the room. “Chambers. Get the Blockcrawler online. Kae. Draus. Get in.”
The forr enforcer bounced up in startlent at Avo’s sudden address. “I… ah, sure thing consang. What’re… we doing.”
“That’s a good question,” Draus said. “What are you–”
“We leave Kae with Green River again for now,” Avo said. “Not here. You know why. She can’t work the locus well until the Nether cos back. Will leave her trapped if we’re all dead or nulled.” Accessing the Blackways, Avo scanned through the various gates until he found the one listed nearest to Xin Yunsha from the m-data.
With a thought, he bade it to open and the doorway, once again, fused into shape along the walls.
“You all get in the Blockcrawler. Essus. You hold onto the back. I’ll shuttle via Galeslither. Drop off Kae. Then we plan our assault on the go.”
“We got free reign of movent,” Draus said, understanding. “The Thoughtwave Detonation should’ve crippled their drone grid, and I doubt they got a coldtech redundancy built in place like the Guilds do. The skies should be ours, and more than that, Mirrorhead might as well be blind to us. We choose where we want to hit ‘em and when.” A snort of displeasure escaped her. “And to think of all that ti I spent circlin’ the block, pullin’ in m-data.”
Avo grunted. “Best laid plans.”
“Yeah,” Draus said. “Best laid plans.”
***
The wind roared as a raging torrent as Avo galloped free up along the edge of the district, his weight and speed peeling paint from the walls of the gablock. As he rounded over the apex, he found thousands upon thousands of FATELESS gathered in the empty aero-lots of the YoungSleeper Farm.
They had been broken from their slumber with the Nether-cleaving blast, and now Avo knew them as a variety of small and shriveled forms bickering and chattering about what just transpired. Their recency to the city did them no favors, the imnsity of the blast one more miracle of Nu Vultan to gawk at. As he crossed over the airways above, a few clutched at the rags they wore as clothes, holding themselves against the bitter chill of his winds.
Onward, he continued, leaving the masses in his wake.
Enal tiles extended from the folded lips of slatted eaves s like rows of teeth. Hardened walls of bone fused between the blocks and buildings of Xin Yunsha, structures forrly apart now shing into a singular defensive organism.
The Second Fortune, anwhile, remained its auspicious self, even deprived of functioning phantoms. In place of ghosts were bioforms–seven feet tall bat-like creatures carrying with them paint brushes, jars of black ink, and trailing scrolls, launching from rooftop to rooftop as they continued to push their trade in the oldest fashion available.
Sending more than a few gargoyles scattering from his path, Avo regarded the ti in his cog-feed and kept things quick. They still had over fifty minutes to pierce and secure the Conflux gablock thereafter.
Things weren’t ideal, but that went for everyone else as well, and much of his subversive architecture remained. The greatest task ahead was to disable and defeat Mirrorhead without exposing themselves. If they let the Guilder escape, there was no telling if they would ever see him again, and if their vengeance would ever be granted a proper end.
This was why he kept the Blockcrawler with him. And Chambers. They could get back into the gablock through the m-con contaminated area. Despite the Nether being down, proximal infection from cognitive or tic vectors still remained a danger. At least to your standard enforcer.
For Avo, it presented an opportunity to utilize the new properties imbued in his Heaven.
But that was a thing for later.
Twisting around the back alley of the Second Fortune, he pulled the Blockcrawler out from his Yondergales and deposited it just before the rearmost doors.
Two bioforms approached, grafted guns and chambered spores extending from their shoulders. Reforging his mortal body from the surrounding winds, Avo didn’t break stride as he fired his Celerostylus and threaded two tendrils of blood out from his wrist.
As the locus channeled within his ichor struck the bedrock that was their minds, he drove his ghosts through their thoughtstuff and blended their near-term mories into a slurry of madness. Leaving them clutching their heads and moaning with incoherence, Avo extended his Whisper along a scouting thread of blood. A dozen accretions flashed behind the door, approaching him at a steady pace. These ones were better warded than the bioforms. Guests.
He cut his reflexes for now. Ti resud.
Behind him, Kae erged from below the Blockcrawler an interesting greenish complexion, slightly ill from the turbulent trip. Skittering back over to her using his Echoheads, he caught her before she could fall just as Draus erged right after.
“Shit, consang,” Draus muttered. “Gotta work on your flyin’.”
“Flying’s fine,” Avo snapped. He shot Essus–still clinging to the sides of the Blockcrawler–a look. “Don’t let Chambers leave. Kill him if he tries.”
The father grimaced, but nodded. Avo wondered if the man could actually commit uncoerced murder, but he also doubted that Chambers was brave enough to make a run for it.
Entering the establishnt, the halls and rooms were packed to the brim with people. Most looked to be local Light’s Enders with so imps to burn and a cheap place to use them, but there was a not-insubstantial presence of possible street squires as well, hard eyes scanning the crowd.
Avo let Draus lead, slinking behind and playing the role of ignorant bioform as he closed the plates around his head. It wouldn’t do to leave an impression here and now.
“Draus?” A voice called out. Avo turned. Bright-Wealth squeezed along a dozen or so holocoated figures packed near the front entrance of the establishnt. She slithered over to them, seeming both surprised but also wary. “I thought you all left? Green River said–”
“We need a favor,” Draus said, putting a hand on Kae’s shoulders and thrusting her towards the snake woman. “She needs a place to stay for a couple a days. Nice place. Tell River that if she does this we’re more than square, that I’ll make it up to her after.”
Bright-Wealth froze. The suddenness of the request threw her off, but this wasn’t the first ti Draus gifted her with an assignnt. “I see. And will you be… returning for her afterward?”
Kae turned, swallowing as she stared at the Regular and the Ghoul. “We’ll do our damndest. Best anyone can.”
Bright-Wealth bowed her head slightly, understanding. Smuggling a glance over at Avo, she slithered past him whispering, “Ai, yao-guai. All this your fault? You trip so kind of wire in the Nether and bring everything down?”
He glared at her. Why was she–
She drifted right along his ear. “Green River might have so information about our “mutual problem.” Find a ti to speak with her once you finish… whatever the fuck you’re doing right now.”
He grunted in affirmation. “How’s the ma jiang?”
“Terrible. Losing all the ti.” She looped back around and gestured for Kae to follow her.
“I-I,” the Agnos began.
“We’ll co get you after it all gets done,” Draus reassured. “Avo’s got so ideas about how to fix that mind of yours. Right, Avo?”
Still watching the shadows in the room, he offered Kae a slow but sure nod.
Swallowing, the Agnos took a step away and followed after Bright-Wealth.
“Alright,” Draus said, shrugging her shoulders as if trying to shed tension of her own, “let’s go get this run done.”
Turning back, they made for the rear entrance again, but mid-step, Avo found himself montarily stunned.
There, behind the front desk alongside another Sang girl stood a girl he once bought a stead bun for.
Lucille.
They had stripped the mods from her skin, returning her flesh to a more amber tone. She helped arrange a folder of papers then, and erged from behind the counter to walk across the crowded room.
Draus noticed her too by this point, halting montarily to watch the one they saved walk past them. A distant call went up from the other room, the voice pitched high with more than a hint of histrionics.
Lucille, hearing the dreadful bleating of her na, threw back her head.
And laughed.
“I’m coming. I’m coming! You’re going to scare the guests.” Muttering her apologies, she slipped past two holocoat-shrouded bodies and disappeared from their sight.
Draus let out a breath. “Nice work.”
“Yeah,” Avo said. With honesty, he was surprised as well. He expected more than a little lingering trauma. A longer road to recovery, regardless. But here she was. Still surviving. More than surviving. She was alive.
Walton would have been proud.
“Co on,” Draus said. “Let’s get gone. We got a massacre to start.”
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