Godclads

Eternity above ruin.

-Stormtree Motto

32-16

Tyrant of Mind and Matter

ZEIN THOUSANDHAND: THE GLAIVE THAT WILL ALWAYS BE [EST. 900,000,000] (DUELS/CHRONOLOGY/WAR/GLAIVE…)

She arrived as a herald, dispatched through the gates of some Stygian dimension. The Dyad looked on, the Demiurge and the Strix locked in their eternal struggle, but from the between that held them poured a conjoinment of threads — paths and sequences fusing together, warring against one another. Together they melded, and as Soulfire coursed from the binding between the Burning Dreamer and the High Seraph, Zein was reforged.

Zein Thousandhand, the greatest killer Idheim had ever known.

Zein Thousandhand, the finest glaive to ever bear the weapon.

Zein Thousandhand rendered a god unto herself, a divine in human form, Pathborn, Sequenceborn, Soulborn, all.

Maintaining her ephemeral form, she was but a speck amidst a sea of madness. The Substance swirled like a turbulent stew, struck and ruptured with the arrival of the Deep Ones. Kill Team Innsmouth came forth, all of them tore an array of patterns within the tapestry. They moved as if gliding knives upon the surface of flesh, tearing and bleeding all they touched. The Weaver, once more, served as the vanguard. Its twisted biology bled impossibilities, and between the clefts of its wounds simmered worlds ruined, shimmered paradises untold.

A shrill note sounded thereafter, and Trinary Melody followed as a twisted note of music, prying at broken time, time forever lost, and the past denied. And then came the two others. The stillness of an impossible shadow corroding the shape of existence, and a crushing mountain guarded by circulating rivers that warped all those in its vicinity toward a path of bloodshed and destruction.

"So I have been summoned forth to face you lot," Zein said. Her voice was resonant, divinely ordained. Another few threads coalesced around her hands, and from it extended the familiar presence, a familiar form of her dragon glaive, Akusande. Avo felt a faint pulse of symmetry. The warmind of Ignorance, lurking within the blade, called out to him,Remember! Remember your oath! Remember your promise!

"And you," Zein said, flicking her glaive at the many battlegroups, at the many palms that drifted upon the surface of the Substance’s chaotic miasma like frogs in a maelstrom. Her face twisted into a vicious rictus. "I see you. I sense you. Dreamer, have you stolen my son-to-be's Frame? Have you stolen his Heaven? Or perhaps you're merely aping his designs, finding a new way to strike at me." She paused, and I overheard a series of whispers flowing from the Dyad to Zein. Slowly, her eyes widened and she exhaled.

"Free. Naeko. Free and restored. And… Jaus. A node…" But then, a pulse of Conflagration ebbed down from the Dyad, and whatever emotion that might above overwhelmed her vanished, leaving her the Zein that always was. She let out a pleasant chuckle, but her voice was thick with something else. Avo tasted a pulse of loss; an ache at the center of her being. She felt this moment more than she revealed. "Ah, I suppose I do owe you, Plague. It would be a sublime wonder to witness what my boy has become. Alas, right now, I fear I must do you another disservice."

"As if you have ever done me a service," Avo shot back. He spoke from all his remaining battlegroups to obscure the point of attack.. At the same time, he began launching Rendbombs—creating new ruptures in the Substance.

Ruptures of Peace to facilitate the reconstruction of the true Sage of the Sundered Sky. Well, a modified variant at the very least.

Osjane twisted and writhed as Avo’s flames infested her Frame, flooded her Soul. It was a Halcyon-Pattern. If such a thing mattered to Avo. The structure was made for Towers, capable of supporting a single cycler but a considerable amount of canons. At the touch of the Stillborn, all that became fluid. Variable. True to Kae’s words, Avo’s Frame was a revolution, and continued to be with each Heaven he constructed on the fly.

“No! No! Stop! Stop! Father! Highest VEYLIS! SOMEONE! SOMEONE SAV—

There was a special kind of cruelty in burning a defenseless ego still nested inside their Soul. It was rather like murdering someone still under their blankets, in their bed. As Osjane plunged into Avo’s Soulscape, he usurped her resurrection—drained the Rend out from her while fusing a Naeko variant in her place. At the same time, he regarded her Sword of Swords and saved it to his Frame’s system.

Such a Heaven would be useful. But not right now. Right now, he needed everyone to bow to the tyrant of peace.

SAVING FRAME-PATTERN HALCYON

SAVING HEAVEN [SWORD OF SWORDS]

INSTALLATING HEAVEN [SAGE OF THE SUNDERED SKY]

>MODIFYING HEAVEN [SAGE OF THE SUNDERED SKY]

GRAFTING DOMAIN OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

GENERATING DOMAIN OF (MIND)

GENERATING DOMAIN OF (MEMORY)

[Avo, what are you trying to do?] Naeko asked.

“Trying to stack the deck in our favor as much as possible. Zein is at Sphere Nine. Was bad enough at Six. Deep Ones also hard to engage directly. Need to be more esoteric. Have identified a shared flaw among all of them.”

[What’s that?]

“They all still have to think. I wish for them not to. I wish for the Sage to regard all thought as anathema.”

This made the Chief Paladin blink. [You’re going to use my Heavens to literally swat thought-criminals. Holy fucking shit, Avo. This is the kind of shit Osjane would have reprimanded my ass for.]

“You disapprove?”

[No. I find it godsdamned funny. Now, slot it so we can drag our palm across Zein’s jaw. Got some things to tell her, and I don’t intend to do it with words.]

“Gladly.”

Avo’s battlegroups slipped into a forming rupture. At the same time, Zein casually stroked the space in front of her with her glaive, guiding its tip through the Deep Ones in the distance. The action promptly manifested as one of the most vulgar miracles Avo ever felt. A massive gap opened across the horizon—splitting the Substance asunder as well. Her blow as acausal, omnipresent, and time-defiant. It struck beyond the confines of dimensionality and space, slipping perfectly between each of the Deep One’s ruptures to cut at something.

The patterns of existence shuddered. Avo sensed something breaking. Minds. Consciousnesses. Ghostly static began to well out from each of the Deep Ones, resembling how blood would pour from rents in armor. That was how Avo understood what Zein was cutting at—their thoughts. She was slashing at the minds that served as the governing egos for each of the Deep Ones. Slashing, and perfectly avoiding the ruptures that composed their ontologies.

The tension within Avo rose. This wasn’t just Zein. This was Zein blessed with the Strix’s Domain of Continuum and Conceptualization — the power to defy space and time; the privilege to cleave thought itself.. This was Zein granted the full privilege of her daughter’s paths — used it to make her an even finer duelist. This was Zein granted Avo’s memories — especially his understanding of the Scar Charts.

With a better understanding of his enemy, the Hidden Dreamer began to graft faster, accelerating Osjane’s resurrection at the same time.

His apprehension was not a shared one, however. “Naeko… Might want to consider—”

[Fuck that. We stand and deliver.]

“Not just Zein. She has—”

[I don’t care if she has every Guild and their Arks infused in her. I’ll kill her. I’ll find a way. That’s what she trained me to do. That’s what I was born for: Breaking gods.]

Raw certitude resonated from Naeko, and Avo found himself unable to deny the man this moment, template or otherwise. Nor did he want to. This was a moment for choice, of choice. A statement was about to be made.

The Hidden Flame only hoped that it wouldn’t come at the cost of his life.

With another stroke of her dragon-glaive, an entire portion of reality was severed. Akusande sprang forth, its length sky-blotting gold. From its scales shone calamities of all natures, bombarding the Weaver, drowning the shadow in light, keeping the smiling mountain at bay. Then, Avo realized what it was doing. It was circling the Deep Ones, creating a fixed border around them. One molded from looping time.

The Trinary Melody sang again, its broken Domain screaming to bend the world toward the nothingness that pursued. Yet, nothing changed. No attacks came. Its unmiracles clashed against Akusande as if a falling blade against a shield. Ruptures whipped forth, but from the dragon’s many hands materialized daggers and shields. Twinned to Zein’s will, the dragon-glaive fought, her shadow in motion and skill.

The moment was surreal and terrifying. A Ninth Sphere Zein alone was dreadful enough. A Ninth Sphere Zein weaving a living dragon? Avo’s mind reeled. He strained his cog-cap to dangerous levels, trying to anticipate her next hit — and couldn’t.

And to cement her level of mastery, Zein spoke to him as she dueled Voidwatch’s greatest assassins in the Infacer’s stead. “Avo. I wish to speak to my finest pupil — your senior. But before that, before I bleed you properly, I wish to know if you consumed him unwillingly, or this was something he allowed.”

“We are of a dream now,” Avo answered, pointing his scorn at Zein. “Unlike you. Haven’t forgotten. All this. All this death and destruction. Your fault. You cut me down. You stopped me from fixing this. Condemned—”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Zein tilted her blade—and suddenly a long paracausal cut flashed across each of his Sages. The attack was instant. Impossible to avoid. And Avo felt it coming, ringing inside him like a fated blow, destined to land at her will. Which was likely when his Sages needed to vent or suffered a paradox. Thankfully, she hadn’t cut Osjane’s Death-Anchor. The point of hiding her deep with the ruptures worked. It would have taken him a good while to sift her ontological shape out from the lattice of ruined patterns; her limitations must be the same.

“Spit and spite,” Zein said in a sing-song voice.

The Weaver materialized a shattering planetoid. Continents began to bubble out from its wounds, but Akusande simply turned the opposite way, tilting time, causing the Deep One’s ruinous attack to stutter in place — long enough for Zein’s cuts to trespass all boundaries and leave render it unto grain-sized pieces with a single cut.

A single cut. A single cut that landed everywhere within her vicinity, hitting everything, at once.

The sheer amount of Rend pouring out from her would have overloaded a few thousand Sphere Six Zeins. But Avo guessed that barely induced a single percent of Rend Capacity for her right now. Moreover, it was probably easier to list what she couldn’t do at this point.

Her power was focused around the glaive, for that was who she was: a duelist. Now, she was every bit herself, but on an absolute level. She could cut anywhere. With the amount of Domains she had, she could cut anything, slash through any Domain. The Sage could counter that, but he doubted he could sustain against and the Infacer burying him in Rendbombs.

The Deep Ones, meanwhile, were a threat to everyone—kept at bay by Zein for now. But Avo could hear the strain filling Akusande’s mind, see cracks forming along the golden borders it established.

Though Zein painted stroke after stroke upon the Deep One’s consciousnesses, when their minds shattered, that would just leave them maddened gods of unfettered entropy. Which didn’t seem much better, unless you had the capacity to lead them away somewhere, somehow.

Wait… Somewhere… A realization came to Ignorance. Followed by passive horror. If he were to turn this against Voidwatch, he would release a Deep One out of the Substance. Direct it against Massist forces and threaten to reveal its make. Or create a temporary alliance of terrestrials against the voiders — a sequel to the Builder War.

Between cutting at the Deep Ones, Zein flicked an off-hand strike at some of Avo’s battlegroups. Rifts of reversing time opened before them. The Sages held in place, but the pattern pulled at them, lurching them toward oblivion. The Hidden Flame cursed and directed his sixteen surviving Heavens of Peace to form a chain. They would share the Rend via whatever Rendsinks they had left.

The political nuances of Idheim were complicated enough that even Avo couldn’t predict what would happen. But it wouldn’t be good for stability by any means. Perhaps not even Naeko could ensure peace in such a circumstance. The threat of more Deep Ones held by the voiders was existential.

Need to stop her. Need to burn the Deep Ones, Ignorance muttered. The thought was both exhilarating and miserable.

“Suicide,” Avo said, thinking of how the Trinary Melody nearly left him unmade through mere presence alone.

Not with modified Sage.

Speaking of…

HEAVEN UPDATED

APPLYING EXO-PARACOSM

APPLYING CANONS OF CONCEPTUALIZATION

CANON: THOUGHT-POLICE (PEACE/CONCEPTUALIZATION/MIND/MEMORY/VIOLENCE) – TREATS THOUGHTSTUFF AS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE OR FORCE. ALLOWS THE USER TO SEIZE THOUGHTS UNDER THE REIGN OF PEACE.

HUBRIS: N/A [ELIMINATED THROUGH OVERHEAVEN]

HELL UPDATED

APPLYING PATTERN-NULLIFICATION

CANON: TRAUMA-STRIKER (ENTROPY/TRAUMA/CONCEPTUALIZATION/MIND/MEMORY/FORCE/VIOLENCE) — ALLOWS THE USER TO CHANNEL AN INSTANCE OF HARM BORN OR MEMORY OR IMAGINATION. THE OUTCOME OF DAMAGE WILL BE DELIVERED ABSOLUTELY THROUGH THE SAGE.

[The hells does that mean,] Naeko asked.

“Means we’re about to starting thinking about obliterating Zein with a punch. And it will happen. If you manage to punch her. Probably.”

[Probably? The fuck you mean probably.]

The Hidden Flame sighed. A feeling of malaise briefly returned, and had to be dispelled. “Would normally leave this to Kae. She knew. Part of her still out there. Only using my own knowledge now.”

Perhaps this was a color as well: Grief was more than a feeling. That was why he couldn’t burn it away. Grief was an absence. And there were so many that were gone right now. Gone, but yet, the war wasn’t over. This need not be the end.

RESURRECTION - 98%

Just a little longer.

Just then, a swirling wall of midnight expanded behind Zein, and a fleet of ten thousand stars rode to her aid. No… not just stars. Avo’s Phys-Sim detected massive gravitation bodies there, each larger than a start, encompassing them several times over. They were as a layer of moving rings, further shrouded by a veil of smart matter.

And then, a memory sounded inside Avo. He knew what this was. Or at least he had a guess.

These were Dyson-Carriers. Some upgraded Neo-Creationist version at that. Each one left a faint thaumic imprint, and from them poured obscene floods of missiles—so much that it would overload Avo’s ghosts merely trying to count them.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

{Apologies,} the Infacer grumbled, sounding more than a little displeased. {I had to empty my Rend. The last paradox came close.}

“And yet you live, Broken One,” Zein scoffed. “Clearly not close enough.”

{Zein. Ever the displeasure. Of all the people Veylis could have chosen to rebuild, you are at once the most optimal and my least favorite. Which is saying something because I had to suffer the company of Aedon Chambers.} Avo felt a surge of negative emotion pour into the open chasm that revealed the between, directed at the Dyad. {Fuck you very much for that Veylis. I told you. I told you it would not work. But you never—}

And then, both the Infacer and Avo noticed something.

Veylis was grimacing. Even scowling. Beside her, split by the mirror, the original Burning Dreamer sneered with laughter before a surge of gold rushed through him and made him hiss in discomfort.

{Oh, oh, I see…} the Infacer scoffed. {Dick move, Avo. Well played. I suppose this was unavoidable.}

“Expected… you to… predict…” the Burning Dreamer and Veylis spoke at once. One was amused. The other was disappointed.

They were promptly interrupted as Akusande reeled back, its body reverberating as it slithered back into Zein’s hands. The boundary it maintained shattered, and a loud deafening note shook the very surface of reality.

RESURRECTION - 99%

Zein slashed, and Avo felt her reformed glaive of ascended gold parry an invisible blow that was meant to tear her back across time. The Hidden Flame’s consciousness blinked out then—only to be brought back by Ignorance the next instant. Panic burst inside them as they checked Osjane’s Frame and—

Zein’s cuts landed.

The moment of his incapacitation didn’t go unnoticed by her—attuned to the Dyad as she was. A crash of Rendbombs struck his ruptures. His Sages overloaded one after another, and evermore of his hard-gained forces were consumed by spreading fissures of entropy. Several plunged across the temporal wound—and Avo had to cut them from his mind before he faced the nothing yet again.

In a single blow, he was left with only two Sages and mere thousands of mundane forces.

But they were ultimately spoilers. And their purpose was served.

For Zein missed the target that truly mattered.

RESURRECTION - 100%

Clouds began to billow from open wounds of peace lining the surface of existence. Clouds that formed an enormous hand that shook the world, that stilled thoughts, that parried the soundwaves singing forth from the Trinary Melody. It blotted out the Deep Ones, manifesting between the Dyad, Zein, the Infacer and the oncoming Deep Ones.

THE SAGE OF THE SUNDERED MIND: A TYRANT OF PEACE OVER MIND AND MATTER [EST. 31,551,341 Thaum/c] (PEACE/VIOLENCE/FORCE/CONCEPTUALIZATION/MIND/MEMORY…)

The Weaver—undaunted by the new challenger, reached out with a lanky lip. It disembowled the fabric of reality, and from it came a flood of rend, came neutron bursts used to cleanse worlds of organic life.

But the Sage simply swept its hand in contempt. The burst, powerful at the mundane, were not divine. They bent to the will of the pattern and stopped. The entropy, however, continued tearing forth, and the Sage was forced to evade for once—shifting slightly and letting several cracks pass between their fingers.

Yet, the Weaver was stilled, and an entangled mess of static thoughts and twisted sequences dangled out from its entropic vessel like a prolapsing swinging between a human’s legs. Avo could hear the EGI infused into the Deep One wailing with madness.

The flick he initially sent wasn’t just something that redirected force. It pried at moving minds and thoughts the same way. As such, when the neutron burst was ripped from its course, so too was the mind it was born from.

The Weaver stumbled while the following Deep Ones skidded to a sudden halt, sinking further into the ruptures they opened.

And thus, three sides were formed: Three functional members of Kill-Team Innsmouth marched ahead of an open rupture; thousands of the Infacer’s war-forged stars basking Zein and the Dyad in blinding shadow, and between then was the Sage, was Naeko and Avo unified, holding the very structure of existence itself in a chokehold.

And what a chokehold it was.

At the center of the palm was no longer a splattered god of war, but a cycling of accretions forming a rippling eye of flame. Said eye was leveled at the Dyad and then at the Deep Ones, and they remained in place, acknowledging this fight now effectively had three sides.

{Oh, come the fuck on,} the Infacer sighed.

“Don’t complain,” Avo grunted. “Didn’t when you threw star-cracking missiles at me.”

{Because that makes sense, Avo. What was the point of me ranting about losing the foundations of reason when you just go and make up some new bullshit on the fly.}

“The point is you should pray harder. To yourself. But maybe I’m just a better god. Sad. Countless eons. Only to be outdone by a baby mind.”

{Oh, okay. I see how it is. You will regret this.}

“He likely won’t,” Zein said, grinning. “Pride is in his very nature. Isn’t that right, Plague?”

“And hubris is yours,” Naeko said, speaking in Avo’s place.

Her smile faded. “Naeko. My poor, foolish boy. Is your new master treating you well? Does he allow you to break everything you want inside that false-world of his? Or are you allowed to waste away playing that ridiculous simulation? Is there are difference to me.”

“Nah,” Naeko growled. “I’m here. And I’m there too. Fighting in both places. Stormjumpers is hard to play when some half-strand destroys the lobbies.”

“I’m not sorry—”

“You’re never sorry, Zein. That’s your problem. You never take any godsdamned responsibility for anything. You just keep fucking things up. And then getting away with it. Because no one can kill you. Because Jaus loves you. Because I love you.” Naeko’s voice quivered at the end. “I love you. But I’m done with this. You’re in my city. You're under my purview. And I’m going to give you all a chance—all of you! That includes you guys too!” His palm pointed at the Deep Ones. “Voidwatch! If you’re hearing me, we’re gonna have words after this. But right now, submit, surrender, and you will face a fair trial as per the Charter. Resist and give me what I want.”

Slowly, Zein’s expression turned expectant, and relieved. “Oh. Whatever he might have done to you, be you slave again or allowed to be master of yourself still, you are returning. You are yourself again.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you. Either of you.” Naeko spat. “You and Veylis… Both of you… I’m gonna…” Words failed Naeko as he let out a garbled series of noises.

“Naeko? You alright?” Avo said, feeling the Chief Paladin’s ego tremble.

“Fine. Hey, do you think a mental construct can have a rage-aneurysm.”

“No. You’re well past that threshold by far.”

“Great. Gotta handle this the old-fashioned way. Zein. Say you don’t surrender so we can start talking proper.”

Thousandhand threw her head back and laughed. She laughed with genuine happiness. She laughed like a mother greeted by a long-lost son. “I do not surrender. I do not apologize. I do not regret this. Come to me, Naeko. Make me decide otherwise.”