Ho is a fickle thing, Avo. You should know that.
Just because you spend imps to place things that belong to you inside doesn’t make it permanent. I know you already understand because… uh… the war, but I still need you to do sothing for .
That sense of security when you’re inside these walls?
Do your best to stop feeling it.
That’s the thing that gets hos burned down and destroyed. It’s like a kind of “false mythology,” sothing you treat as true but isn’t. There’s nothing stopping the Guilds from incinerating us from their heights with a thought if they knew what we were doing right under their noses.
Soone might tell you ho is the people you love are, or a place where you feel safe.
I’m not. I care about you too much.
Truth is: ho is a lie. We live on a lie. Step back a hundred years and you wouldn’t be in New Vultun. You wouldn’t be living on these lofty heights beside the Arks and all these miracles.
Instead, you would be a part of the deep city of Noloth.
Things change fast.
-Walton to “Avo”
14-7
Ho (I)
The Tiers were beyond the expressions of words and paintings alike. When a place was woven between the material and the conceptual, what followed was mood and mont intertwined, with miracles made mundane by commonplace portrayals upon this pedestal pressed against the lips of the skies.
Simply put, one’s perception of the Tiers was tied to their FATE Skein. Even from afar, he could see the phantasmal strings running from mind to mind, from lines between blocks and people and vehicles more.
He alone drifted unseen through a world of strings, studying the glory of the risen world from the black.
Zein had placed him in the Undercroft. Here, most thought this Tier to be the first step on the path to true paradise, but Avo had always thought of it as cartilage. Cartilage isolating those rely FATED from fully committed Guilders, and the FATED themselves from corpses-to-be that fed the fatal engines of the city.
mories from one of his templates rose from the deepest fathoms of the burning ocean he called a consciousness. He rembered reading a voider book–a physical book–decrying the nature of capital, of how a “middle-caste” was to serve as a pillar to blunt the conflict between the highest elites and lowest dredges.
The Undercroft, much like the Tiers themselves, offered a facsimile of hope. A path upward into glory. To even reach here was to make it in New Vultun. You were finally a full person. You were finally protected by a Great Guild. Rights and legalities beca a thing.
But there was still higher to go. Still more apex to rise.
The neon-tinted edge that most gazed from the Warrens was but the first step of normalcies egress. Despite the density of infrastructure and the sheer weight of m-data congesting every inch of his cog-feed, things were yet comprehensible to the human mind, albeit slightly different.
Hypertubes spread out like arteries throughout the various districts, but the air remained sparse of aerovecs. Ergonomic was the aesthetic here, with ghost-directed lanes sending clouds of delivery drones across the cities while signals and signs indicated the shifting of traffic lights along with accessible movent vectors.
He caught sight of a drone moving forward when it wasn’t ant to.
It snapped back where it started, its geotric reality working akin to a rubberband.
As he walked down the streets of Pendross’ Ravine, his Fra shuddered constantly, the passing weight of countless Heavens pulling at him. Beneath his feet likewise burned a network of Souls connected to every major block, with certain lesser miracles available on demand to the public.
All that you need to do was think.
He studied his supposed ho as an invader would, using darkness to mask his encroach while sweeping his eyes over all the sights like a tourist.
Striations ruled here. Between every structure, every shape, every silhouette was sothing different, and the masses moved beneath the vivacity of skull-thumping advertisents, their bodies painted in segregation of color that indicated their loyalties to one another.
A good percentage of people guarded their identities via holo-coats, masking themselves in a static sheen or used so kind of virtual proxy aesthetic. Ergency responses were nigh instant here, so clashes were rare. Rare didn’t an bloodshed didn’t arise nor that the Undercroft was clean of cri.
Things were rely neater here. The filth clung under the skin.
He moved in the darkness, catching only brief glimpses of the city. After Zein set him loose, he found the open air inaccessible from the sheer amount of attention saturating its expanse, while the sheer variety of Heavens at play made him move with greater caution.
His Incog remained active, but without needing to face the mind-flaying pulses of perception radiated by skimrs, he moved with relative ease, though still wary of his path ahead.
Loci infested the buildings and streets, and Guilder Necros patrolled their beats with greater vigor and professionalism than most from the gutters could muster. He needed to remain a ghost. He needed to stay unseen.
Just because he wasn’t directly under the blade anymore didn’t an it was far from falling. And here, he wouldn’t have the good fortune to just face a cadre of Godclads or two. He literally couldn’t cross the street when the light was red here, and as his subminds reviewed his engagent with Thousandhand, he considered the folly of his impulses.
He had changed. He had grown greater and stranger than before, but his need to consu still controlled his actions like an impulse.
It didn’t even seem wrong or foolish at the ti. He was just compelled.
Compelled. And he thought he could feel strange movents shifting about within his mind.
[Will need to study ourselves. See if sothing is wrong.]
[How? How can sothing be wrong? We feel everything. We’re aware of everything in our mind. This is paranoia. Another war mind?]
[Don’t know. Need more data. Two miles from block. We’re almost ho.]
[Ho. Is it? Are we real? How much of our mories are true?]
[Need more data for that too. Let’s go find out. See if the door opens for us–if the neighbor is still a No-Dragon grafter.]
Creeping past the edge of a block, he found block twelve curving up to cup the sky in a U-shape. Along the center of each of its levels, a thin sheet of undulating water contained the demiplanar penthouses apart from the material abodes of the recently FATED or of lesser ans.
He rembered he lived on level three-twenty-four, in room fifty-two A.
A tetrahedral landmass fused over the shoulder of the block and from it thundered lodies growled from distorted strings and lyrics howled from a rasping throat. There was sothing familiar in the music, but recently so. The singer sounded like Cas, strangely enough.
Avo almost wanted to tap into the local Nether lobbies for details but caught himself before he could inflict any damage and betray his position.
He continued on toward his block instead, settling to satisfy a major point of curiosity over a lesser one.
***
“So half-strand nulled yesterday,” Reva muttered, her mind a sour note of pain.
Across from her, the Necro so knew as White-Rab turned over on the bed to regard his lover.
She had all but broken his door down earlier trying to get in, and he felt her stress even though the wardings he installed along the inner panels of the walls. Apparently, she slipped the Paladins and her own Guildmates to co find him imdiately after whatever the hell was going on down in the Warrens.
He couldn’t say he wasn’t flattered. When he finally let her in, the look in her eye made him wonder if she was going to do sothing unwise right then and there.
The Rash was of no permanent consequence to her. Reva Javvers was a Bloodthane–a Godclad.
Raldi Nauser, on the other hand, was just really good at wriggling his way into soone else’s head.
The sensations of their ntal coupling still tickled at the back of his mind, and he felt his Lustaway engage as he was enraptured by her presence next to him, her scent.
He had done his best to give her so contentnt during their shared dive, but even lost in their throes, he could see feel her burden nudging him like a hardened knot made out of ntal scabbing.
Whatever happened must have been sothing terrible to see her storm her way into his ho without announcent, to ask him for comfort without pretense or even small talk.
Their relationship had never been a gentle one–especially considering it started with him nulling her–but Reva had always kept her troubles to herself as best she could.
Not today though.
Not today.
Raldi didn’t like that, and what he didn’t like, he had a habit of changing.
“You want to try hunting them down? Resurrections usually wipe your slate clean, but considering your wards, I have a pretty short list of people to go after. Hope it’s not XVX though. That’s gonna be a nasty dive.”
She tilted her face ever so slightly to reward him with the barest inch of a smile. Her tallic hair tided itself automatically and shifted out of the way as she turned to face him. His lust-suppressing phantasmic fired again and he found himself content just to stare at her for a while.
He hadn’t expected this in his life. Especially not with a Stormtree Godclad. Hells, he had rules against any kind of relations even before the rash, but when girl you nulled decides to spare your life in exchange for services saving one of their consangs from being tortured by the No-Dragons in Kososo, things lead from one place to another pretty quick.
She mumbled sothing. He blinked. He considered having his ghosts play it back to him, but he wanted to hear her say it again instead. “Say again?”
“Yeah, but the Nether was down?” Reva said. “Highfla Thoughtwave Detonation took that right out. Didn’t stop them from pricking with so blood and reaching into my mind.” A slight flash of discomfort ran through her features. “The way they jacked it… reminded a bit of you. You know, how you nulled the first ti.”
He frowned. Well, that was disconcerting. He had his fans and copycats in the Nether, but as far as he could tell, none of them managed to emulate his process to any aningful extent. “This happen during your, uh, ‘ho leave’?”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “My fucking uncle got in a pissing contest with so Highfla princeling calling himself Mirrorhead.”
“Oh, shit, Jhred Greatling,”
“You know about him?” Reva asked.
“Yeah. His house is spook-central for Incubi. Also used so of his Crucibles as jump points across the Nether.” He sighed. “I could’ve helped you with him.”
“Yeah. And get you embroiled in Guilder shit. You hate Guilders.”
He grinned at her. “Only most of them. And you sotis.”
“You’re real romantic tonight, you know that, Rab?”
“Hm. So, this Necroclad–”
“Please don’t call him that–”
“Not a lot of overlap between our lines of work, don’t you think? I’m thinking either Ori-Thaum or No-Dragons. Ashthrone might have soone like that, but honestly, they’re on the way out. They’ll be lucky if they have enough Souls to be a functional participant in the last war after what Omnitech did to them.”
She didn’t seem convinced, and as she opened her mouth to speak, as a session activated in her tamind, a set of mories in her Auto-Seance repeating. She rolled her eyes and rejected the link. “Fuckers.”
“Whose that?”
“Longeyes?”
“Whoa. Aren’t they the big-uns for you guys?”
“Sothing like that. They can go fuck themselves for tonight. I’m tired. I got my ass kicked. I watched my childhood ho get smashed by a cadre Highflars–led by Abrel Greatling if that’s a surprise to you–and now there’s a quiet war brewing, my half-strand uncle is missing, and I need to attend so bullshit political thing because the Articles. For so future-seeing, all-knowing matriarchs they sure let get fucked to death this ti.”
“Could’ve been out of left field for them too,” Raldi replied. “I’ll try to find your uncle. Vincintine, was it?”
“Don’t bother. If he’s dead, he’s dead. Might be an improvent on our family.”
He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “You see, this why you should’ve chosen to be an orphan. None of this baggage stuff.”
Despite his low effort at humor, she still snorted a laugh.
He liked how she let the wrinkles around her eyes crease and didn’t smoothe her skin. He liked how pointed her chin was, and the slight scar running diagonally across her lip. He liked how she kept her ocular implants subtle to retain that natural hazel hue.
He liked–
WARNING: SPECTER THRESHOLD-1 HAS BEEN TRIGGERED
WARNING: SPECTER THRESHOLD-2 HAS BEEN TRIGGERED
WARNING: SPECTER THRESHOLD-3–
WARNING–
A dozen more warnings flashed behind his mind’s eye. The bemusent vanished from Reva’s face as her expression turned iron-hard. “What? What’s wrong.”
“Could be nothing. Could be so aratnids triggering my proximity detectors or if soone’s using an Incog but–”
“But there’s a chance soone’s trying to get in?”
“Not here. The old place I had. You rember what told you about the Strix. My old ntor?”
Reva took a second to think. “Yeah. You gave so of your mories to him, right?”
Raldi winced. “Don’t remind . Anyway, he said that soday, soone might show up looking for there thinking it’s their place.”
“And then what? What else did he say?”
“Nothing. The half-strand got himself killed doing sothing really stupid. But I did end up getting sothing from him. I wasn’t supposed to access it until the ‘guest’ arrived.”
Her battle-readiness faded, and she brushed a thumb along his cheek. He shivered and his tamind scread. “Uh, Reva–”
Her eyes widened slightly and she caught herself. “Sorry. That was reckless.”
Godsdamned rash.
“It’s fine. I’m protected. Anyway, you know how I am with directions… What I’m trying to say is that I imdiately tried to open the m-packet.”
“And?”
“Couldn’t. Strix had to show up even after he died. And now, if we’re not just looking at a bunch of rats crossing into my own room, our mystery guest might finally be at my doorstep.”
She shrugged the sheets off and propped herself against the headrest. “So. You want do this the usual way?”
“What? I hide in your mind, and you make the house-call?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I could use the excuse to clear my head, and make up for not letting you hide inside my mind for Nu-Scarrowbur.”
“Wow, Reva Javvers learning from her mistakes. Nu-Scarrowbur was that bad, huh?”
She jabbed him lightly. Pain exploded across his arm. He was going to need to pour so rainwater over it later.
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