In simplicity, thaums can be considered ontological mass–the taphysical space or capacity a Soul can hold in existence. Indeed, it is the Soul that is the foundation on which our society rests today; the plucked hearts of our forr gods powering their corpses which we wield and pilot.
Through its structure, Heavens and Hells can be made manifest, expressing their miracles and twisting the fabric of reality revisions, be it only evanescent.
It is with that in mind that all must beware of facing ontological inertia. For the expenditure of miracles is not eternal, and the weight of reality will revert even the greatest Soul fueling the most efficient of Heavens should there not be enough thaums.
So, keep an eye on how much you’re burning. Won’t do you much good if your golem suddenly goes empty halfway through a fight.
-Golems: Gods Upon the Machine, Chapter 4
2-13
The Monster and the Ghoul
Avo toppled left. The ground spiraled and spun. His steps were chasing the floor as it snaked away from him, moving to evade his touch. His skull t the side of a container in a ringing impact barely felt, for right then, the confines of his skull were already subsud beneath a raging storm of clustering headaches that pried at his loose thoughts. Lumps of misshapen thoughtstuff bubbled out from his cracked tamind.
A pillar of crimson punched deep into the ground next. Shards of plascrete splashed up, breaking against the roughness of his skin. Above, an enormous crimson mass lood, its uneven shadow spilling over him as they both shook and fumbled between two ever-narrowing rows of intersecting stacks.
On instinct, Avo flopped his gun behind him and jerked its trigger, expecting to feel the kick of recoil. Nothing. He twitched his finger across the trigger twice again and gave up. He hadn’t reloaded. And now, he couldn’t even rember where the ammo was.
A dozen wire-thin threads of blood whipped through the air. Containers and storage units ca slumped apart, unzipped by the sheer undiminishing sharpness of the haemokinetic constructs. Little Vicious giggled madly, the insanity of her voice diminishing by the second as her tamind nded her broken mind as well, ejecting damaged mories like unspooling strands while replacing them with simulated mimicries.
A net lashed out at Avo. Too far overhead. An overturned cargo loader ca apart in three separate pieces, spewing hydro-coolant.
Almost got you, ghoulie! she cackled, her golem bumbling into a stack and knocking it over. It was as if she was drunk, but he was no better.
Ahead, Avo saw the crane swaying in the wind, its contours a vague blur to his nearsighted eyes. He couldn’t see Draus, but with his cog-feed broken, he couldn’t see much of anything at all past fifty feet. Everything was a blur, and his drilling migraines made it worse. Maybe she already left. Ran off to help the father and son after using him as bait.
That would be cruel. But it made sense. She was used to killing things like him. They were the ones she promised to protect.
A lurching groan ca from the toppled stacks as the golem pushed off it, leaping. Its form ground montarily against the ceiling; pipes speared down like javelin-like rains while flakes of paint served as snow. The golem struck the ground next to him in a deafening impact, carrying him off his feet, and throwing him into the air as force carried him with the rock and debris.
A rusted hinge bounced off Avo’s shoulder. The decomposed body of a Wight splattered against him. He struck a nearby column with a sudden lurch, his ribplates expanding like spiderwebs before the impact. Avo slumped down, wheezing, clutching his stomach. Every breath he took felt like he was forcing his insides through a grater.
As he lay there, desperately trying to rember which muscle groups to coordinate so he could stand, the golem staggered toward him, its tower-like body lting, drip by drip. Gazing upon its presence with his bare mind drew a tortured noise out of his chest. He choked. He hissed. Eyes rolling back, he shrank into himself, like a child before a descending belt.
Too small. How could sothing like him face that which feasted upon the flesh of reality?
Inside the golem, he saw the drifting cracks of a ripple slowly slide back together around an ovaline command module, a bobbing organ amidst crimson translucence. Shaking limbs inched out from its body, long and sharp. They were tal but shaped in extending branches by incrental spurts of blood.
A nest of thorns was being grown out from the golem’s very chest.
A crack shuddered through Avo’s mind. Consciousness surged back through him. Pain took a more comprehensible shape as the world stopped trying to dodge him. His cog-feed sputtered back into his awareness as he groaned, only noticing just now that he had been drooling like a dull animal.
As the golem’s existence planted its withing kiss upon his mind again, he felt its touch through the tattered fortifications of his tamind. This ti, the madness ca with a degree of separation. His outer accretion of ghosts howled in despair as they diverted to take the brunt of the harm. It was like he was hiding in a basent born of his own psychological architecture as horror hamred his outer walls like artillery.
The golem was shrinking. That wasn’t a misjudgnt earlier, even if it had diverted so mass to flank him. Still, to go from eighty feet to a re seventy or so lent him no advantage, and what it did to defile the natural laws governing blood and matter tortured his perception, the sight of its being a fraying thing, sothing that all mortal minds on a cellular level knew to be unnatural.
Eldritch.
With a grunted shout, Avo pushed from the ground and made to run again. He needed to break the line of sight. Lose it before getting to the crane–
A harpoon of glistening red whipped out through his shoulder. A choked rasp squeezed free from Avo’s throat. Thrust out by the extending limb, Avo felt the back of his head crack against the cold, cracked face of the column. He fought it. Clawing and biting into the lash.
Little Vicious’ mind bled perverse joy as he saw her accretion take shape as well, the damage to her slowly coming undone. Her growing branches and briars spilled down the lash, snaking themselves through the clefts of Avo’s wounds.
Ghouls don’t scream so much as they screech. Sothing about their vocal cords and pitch. When the tendrils sank into him, they began to alchemize his blood, Little Vicious’ flaying touch spreading out even from within. In seconds, he felt his flesh turn from being rely broken to an altar of pain.
To lay agony upon agony, Little Vicious slamd him head-first against a nearby container; one already torn in the middle with frayed flaps of teeth-like tal awaiting him. Avo recognized it from the stacks she knocked over earlier. Desperately, he struggled, but she grasped him within, her haemokinetic blood clutching his skin like a glove.
Call out to your friend, ghoulie? Call out to the Reg.
Avo looked toward the crane and saw no sign of Draus. She was gone. Probably left him.
For the first ti, he was glad about it.
“Why,” Avo said. “She told . Ain’t…my cosang.”
Little Vicious huffed, annoyed but triumphant. Fucking heartbreaking.
She slamd him down against the flaps. Flaps dug through his flesh, digging up from just beneath his chest. He felt the skin of his torso peel against the rusted flaps as she drove. Inside, she worked on him as well, spreading more brambles of tal through his flesh. He drew his blood back away from her influence, but it was like wrestling against an infection.
She was cultivating a garden of thorns inside him. As curving roots slipped out from between the lips of his muscles, erging like teeth from gums, darkness crept around the corners of his vision. Hunger ignited like an inferno in his gut as his biology boiled his tabolism away to keep him alive.
With a savage tug, she thrust him out the other side of the container. He felt one of his arms fold at the elbow. By then, he noted the breakage as a re afterthought. Between monts of half-consciousness, Avo rose into the air, his limbs forced apart by a will not his own, spreading him like an asterisk.
Below, he saw rivers of red receding back from the pathways between the countless rows of containers, down from atop the stacks. So didn’t make it. So just beca trails of blood, lost to the golem’s touch, its presence. It was shrinking again. She was burning through itself to kill him, a ghoul. How flattering. Avo couldn’t help but whimper a laugh. A weight felt fused to Avo’s right hand. The brambles had spread into his shotgun as well, fusing it to his fingers.
Down his chest, he saw a dozen haemokinetic hooks poking through his bandolier, his shells glinting beneath the droning lights of the room.
In the distance, he could faintly hear the cheering of ghosts. Spectators, watching from leagues and leagues away in the Nether, not daring to approach for fear of another thoughtwave detonation. Growing whispers rose between two struggling choruses, one to see him dead now, the other to see him released and spared.
Little Vicious did neither. Instead, she went about living up to her na. First, she cut the ligants in his left leg. Then she went about slicing up the tendons in his right. Avo writhed, his body threaded through by her brambles. He heard her snort with laughter just as a spike burst out behind his left eye.
A howl of pure tornt spilled out from his throat. His lungs were hoarse from shrieking. Two gripping limbs seized his neck and forced him to look up. Before him, the thick layer of red surrounding the golem’s command module parted in a chasm, revealing the machine to which all this thaumaturgy was anchored.
Eight open slots that expelled and cycled blood were built into its sides. The center of the machine had an ‘H” shaped hatch shrouded by gleaming chro. The module hissed. The hatch expanded, and within its cockpit sat Little Vicious.
Never had Avo seen a more ghoul-like expression of violence on the face of a human. She studied his pain as if taking in a feast. Uneven trails of mascara marred her otherwise perfectly symtrical features. Her skin was without blemish and her irises like rubies festooned over her sockets. A dress woven from synthsilk and lined with microelectronics played countless replays of all those who had died in the Crucible.
So wore cruelty like a sleeve. She wore it like a shell of armor.
He was close enough to hear her heartbeat now, its rhythm coming fast. Excited.
“Ghoulie…ghoulie…ghoulie,” she said. “Did you really think you could get away from ?”
Avo tried spitting blood at her. If he could get so onto her skin maybe he could infest her with the haemophage. She was already acting like one of his brothers. Why not make her one as well? He opened his jaws and spat. The spurt of blood carried by drool landed a scant inch short of her face but stained the collar of her dress.
The glee faded from her eyes. Her lip twitched in a savage snarl. He watched as her mind reached out and linked with the golem again. It lowered him slowly next to the warped container again, his denuded tissue and gore still clinging to its jagged edges.
“Wait,” Avo muttered.
She drove him hard against the edges again, the jagged parts sinking into him, gouging away parts of his body. There’s a particular noise one’s skull makes when the rusted edge of a tal container glides past the flesh and sinks into parting bone. It’s a kind of noise that follows you into your nightmares.
Along the jagged edge of a container, she ground him over and over, the feeling of his skull coming loose in a sawed flap rattling down his spine. The chipping of his bone grew loud enough that he couldn’t even hear his own cries anymore.
For soti between a mont or eternity, she worked him against the container, using him as a whetstone. By the ti she was done, the sight was gone from his eyes. The winds whistled through the gaps where his right ribs were. Most of his skin hung from him more as an apron than anything else. From split sinews, the layers of his exposed muscles twitched.
Once again, she brought him back up to her, a tortured subject before a cruel queen. He could taste the hateful ire she held for him–a kind of hate she had no right to feel. Even blind, he could feel her scornful glare.
Speaking hurt. Thinking hurt. Being hurt.
Delirious, Avo sputtered blood from between his cracked fangs. And laughed. “You…must…feel…how I…look...” His words were a whisper. But the whisper was enough.
Her ire exploded into a supernova. Inside him, the threads of red squeezed. Sothing buckled inside. Sothing broke. A lung popped.
“No,” she snarled, her voice that of a child that just couldn’t accept losing. She wasn’t using her tamind anymore. Had to yell at him personally. With her voice. So mad. Forever mad at not getting what she wanted. “You have no idea what I feel you…subhuman. You fucking cannibal.”
He drew in a half-choked breath as he coughed. His remaining cells tried their best to heal him. The burn of hunger was like a conflagration. He felt himself shrink, all nourishnt draining away. He needed biomass. He needed to eat.
“Why?” he asked, his voice a near-whistle.
A wry grin spilled over her face. “Why what?” she asked. “Why am I doing this? Because it’s the only thing I’ll ever do that matters maybe? Or maybe it just relaxes ? Maybe I like it? The thrill? The stream? The attention? Basking as all these idiots watch the killing, staining the air with their emotions. Can you taste it, rotlick? They want to see you die. It excites them to see you die.”
The atmosphere around him grew near palpable with desire, but most of it was hers. The ghosts were still far away, keeping themselves safe. This was, and had always been, about her.
“I think the Reg left you,” Little Vicious said. “I’d call Dread Draus a cold fuckin’ sow, but then again, you’re ghoul. Not sure your life was worth that much to her.”
Little Vicious might not have been lying about that at all. Sohow, as he was on death’s door again, Avo couldn’t find it in himself to bla her. Perhaps she did use him as bait to lead the golem away. Perhaps she was there waiting for him still, but pulled back when she saw the golem get him.
It didn’t matter now. He was too hurt, too tired to care–
Then, Avo heard it. The faint hum of sothing coming online. He felt a pull inside him, sothing tugging on the brambles, drawing him upward. Servos humd as sothing above him moved.
Could that have been the crane?
Avo wondered if it was his mind going for a mont, but decided it didn’t matter. Even if he was deluding himself, it was nicer to delude himself into thinking Draus was trying to help him. He deserved that at the least. He wanted to go with the thought that at least soone would rember him as more than just a slavering monster when he went.
Even if he could co back again.
“Nuh-no,” Avo said, swallowing sour spit and bile. “D-don’t…care about…that.”
Little Vicious cocked her head. “Oh. You don’t? Well, then. While we’re here, I’ll listen: tell what you do care about?”
Avo wanted to mock her. But frankly, pretending the torture wasn’t getting to him was bad enough. So, he gave it words and cast his hate right back at her.
“You,” Avo said.
Little Vicious threw her head back and laughed. “You care about ?”
“Want to know…why…you’re pathetic.”
Her laugh ended as abruptly as it started again. “What?” Her voice cracked, croaking in disbelief.
But gods was she so easy to rile…
Avo continued. “You. Pathetic. Nice clothes. Nice life. Even genes are bought. But still here. Down in the gutter. Killing those who can’t choose.” He swallowed back a mouthful of blood. “You. People like you. Like litter. Everywhere. Staining the city. Not unique. Not special. Nothing new. Seen you before. Seen you in the face of my brothers. Too stupid to live. Too hungry to just die. Seen you in the face of every joy-fiend. The dose. Never high enough. Seen you in the face of every Mid-Guilder. Just another cog. More lubricant than person. All impulse. No control. No choice.” Avo grinned at her. “Sub. Human. Like . I greet you, sister.”
Fury exploded from her mind, the intensity too much for her ghosts to bear as they quailed. Her expression must’ve twisted into sothing of pure hate, pure rage. “You–You don’t fucking know anything!”
“Family’s made up of guilders. You have money. But always, you felt less. Less than your peers.” Avo was just guessing now, blood loss taking him on a final, feverish rant. “Lacked sothing they had. They fit. They enjoyed life. Seed able to. You couldn’t. Family grew you. Grew you in the vat to be perfect. But still, here you are. With .”
Overhead, he heard a hum growing closer. Little Vicious must’ve been too focused on him to notice. Avo was glad that his face had practically no skin left on it. Otherwise, she might’ve seen him smile.
The blood controlled by the golem was practically boiling. She puppeted him, pulling him closer using her blade-like grasp, actions made sloppy by her feelings. Tears spilled out from her eyes. He could sll the salt. Hear her choked sobs. Her hands were shaking. Faintly, he heard the rasp of a monoblade. Ah. She was pulling a knife, planning to end this personally for that slight.
Avo chuckled. How accurate he had been. And how predictable she had been. “Pathetic,” he muttered.
He heard her cry out with a snarl. A spark of surging electricity cracked above him, a sudden static spilling over his skin. Without warning, he was torn upward, the golem and Little Vicious soaring up with him. The branches inside him dissolved as Little Vicious scread, losing the focus to maintain her construct. He heard her knife sail past him as her cockpit snapped shut.
tal scread and bolts broke. Little Vicious was roaring curses, trying to wrestle her golem back under control. Inadvertently, she cast him loose, releasing him into the air. Then, suddenly, there was nothing holding him anymore. Cut free from his torturous cage, Avo flopped and tumbled across the ground as above, golem greeted crane in a snapping clash.
Faintly, he could hear Little Vicious howling. For a mont that stretched on forever, he chuckled, content to lay on the cool ground as his mind began to unravel from hunger and pain. A rising percussion of footsteps approached.
Soone was standing over him. He could hear their heartbeat. Their blood slled tasteless. Pure.
“Jaus,” he heard them whisper. Or did they? Was anyone there? Draus? Draus. “Avo? Oh, deep hells, what the fuck did she do to you.”
He tried to say sothing. All that ca was a cough.
“Alright.” She picked him up as if he weighed nothing. Considering how much of himself he burned trying to stay alive, that might’ve been the case. Above, Little Vicious continued to struggle. It sounded as if it were cutting against the crane now. “Co on. Let’s get, consang.”
Avo grunted. It was getting hard to think. “Draus…”
“Yeah?”
I was worth coming back for? “Consangs?"
Draus laughed. She increased her pace. "Crane's fuel cell was fried. Had to rig a replacent from an aerovec I found in one of the units. Kept it in stasis. Real lucky.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “Lucky…”
As he bounced to the rhythm of Draus' footsteps, he felt a flash of light spear back into his right eye. He blinked. His sight returned to him. Faster than it normally grew back. Of course, the first thing that greeted him was the golem sinking the jaws on its crown into the walls, taking a bite out of the plascrete. Suddenly, its flowing rivulets flashed red. No longer did the blood gleam tallic. Now, the flows grew thicker, mottled.
Like plascrete.
The golem descended from the crane then, unaffected by magnetism. Like an anvil, it struck hard, cracking and nding blood and plascrete both.
Avo sighed. “Draus. Run. Run faster…”
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