Godclads

It don’t matter if you’re me. It don’t matter. I have to get to the Ladder. I gotta make this count. This world is broken. Ain’t no difference between echo, template, delusion, and reality no more. I am. So I wish to be. So I have to be.

Ain’t no other way about it.

I need to make it out. I need to make it to the tower.

Even if I have to snuff my original self to do it.

-Jelene Draus, User of the Stillborn

29-3

Chronoframe (II)

The first thing Draus did to shape her assault was to expand her pathway junctions. She went horizontal and vertical at the same time, expanding her influence along windows, puddles, passing arrows, and drones. She vitrified the tops of megablocks, creating panels of glass she could shoot or depart from, and then finally dispatched thin shards high up in the air and created a subtle encirclement of the entire district. The borders of her Liminal Paracosm now stopped only a few inches away from where the substance enshrouded the space. For twenty kilometers in all directions, Draus widened the expanse of her demiplane, and only when she was done did she start trying to line up the perfect shot.

The pulsing, phantasmal disturbances from the memory tower were intensifying, and ghostly lightning leapt out in pace to the rhythm of a climbing heartbeat. The Chronoframes were at a loss as to how to handle the situation, but it wouldn't be long before they attempted another thought-wave disruption. With the memlocks provided by Avo, she would be able to track them from almost anywhere in existence, but there were other things to consider as well. There were sixteen operational knots within a ten-kilometer radius — thirty-two within the full twenty kilometer expanse. After that, the substance saw her blocked off from the rest of New Vultun.

Additionally, it was getting to be a pain finding all the cloaked Sanctian weapon platforms spread across the airspace, and Draus didn't want to risk her aerial shards in the form of a fly-by and end up giving away her presence.

Finally, it was the issue of dealing with the Chronoframes. She fought Sanctus plenty of times during the war, and what they lacked in firepower, they more than made up for in maneuverability and spatial-kinetics. She knew her first shot wouldn't see any of these frames destroyed, even if it shattered their forms. It would simply shift, reform in another area, and then skip back across time to the place they were destroyed, effectively counter-attacking their ambusher. Chronology-charged Rendbombs were one of the few things that could destroy a Chronoframe instantly, but without access to the assault and severed from the rest of Idheim, Draus needed to do this the hard way.

But when wasn’t that the way of things. Regulars played the hand they were dealt. More than once, she had to make a shiv out of undigested shit. Right now, she had a hell of a lot more than shit to work with; fate was practically grinning at her as far as she was concerned.

The plan was straightforward: engage the Chronoframes, engage the local drones, engage the golems as well. Creating an alignment of overlapping mirrors, she designed a metaphysical kill box around the Chronoframes, allowing her to pump out a direct stream of firepower and tear through all four enemy targets at once. She attempted to do the same thing with the other targets in the area, but with how spread out they were, and without knowing what miracles the Knots possessed, it would be presumptuous on her part to think that she would experience an easy victory on this day.

"We are to fight as a symphony," the Simulacra spoke to her. Already, the Heaven of Reflection gleamed with luminous brightness. Crackles of breaking glass sounded from within its resplendent form. When the battle began in proper, the glass-made knight would divide into a legion unto itself. She would tear through the district, an army of one, the ringed wings of the Arsenalist firing all the while behind her, shooting through the glass, shooting through the Simulacra, shooting and giving her enemies countless false targets to focus on, while she herself navigated her metaphysical pathways.

If this was to be a battle of maneuver, then she’d ensure her own advantages as well.

Draus let her mind bleed dry of everything but focus. One mistake, and that was all it would take for a certain triumph to result in demise. The thinking was done. Time for the killing to start.

A spiraling ring of battleship-derived rail cannons poured out from her projectile launcher and joined the other guns spiraling at her back. Each cannon was the size of a small building, and the mass of tungsten-strike spikes slumbering within their barrels possessed enough kinetic energy to core a mundane megablock. From them, a few hundred Phys-Sim trajectories were simulated, and one by one, the firing lanes went from red to green. As the last shift in color arrived, Draus glimpsed down at the ambush she designed.

A dense web of crisscrossing firing solutions was what she beheld, and a series of racking bolts and whining batteries heard from this Arsenalist: a sign of the Heaven's pleasure. "This is purpose, this is beauty, this makes existing worthwhile."

The Regular signalled her accord by lifting her projectile launcher and firing the first shot.

All hell broke loose across the district. A storm of metal blasted out from windows, from puddles, from panels, from all sources of miracle-infused reflection. From the thinnest of pathways emerged massive pillars of tungsten and streaming bullets, slashing out in defiance of spatial reality. Shock waves of kinetic force scattered unbolted objects and warped all fragile matter within the effect radius. Projectiles zipped through patrolling drones, slipping over and between thousands of halted aeros as the Arsenalist elevated Draus’ aim beyond the limits of mortal possibility.

Tons of superheated matter impacted unsuspecting golems, and they came apart by the dozen, entire Knots ceasing to be.

But the brunt of Draus' firepower was reserved for the Chronoframes. Fusion lances, particle beams, rockets, ferromagnetic projectiles, lasers, crude slugs, and gyrojet munitions collapsed upon the Chronoframes, granting them no room for escape.

The lighter Chronoframes disintegrated immediately, barely having any time to respond. A golden oscillation emanated from their forms, sparing them from the first shots, but the devastation followed disintegrated them entirely. They came asunder, parting into vanishing echoes of fracturing gold; the ordinance that devoured them continued on, seeking the heavier frames thereafter.

Draus felt the mem-lock assigned to those two Chronoframes jump. Both of them were now fifteen kilometers away, settled within a surviving Knot of golems that put up a defensive demiplane before they could be destroyed. As more vectors of fires crashed against the heavier Chronoframes, the initial salvo passed through a reflection layered behind them and before passing through a pathway and emerging from a translucent panel of metal at their feet.

But as Draus’ attack slammed into the Chronoframes from all angles, the memory tower roared with cascading energy. Bolts of ghost-laced lightning rained down on the Chronoframes once more, and again folded along the outlines of their bodies. But this time, instead of splashing away from the Chronoframes and warping the environment more, it became as if an aegis of protection as Draus's ordinance dissolved into phantasmal strings of memory.

The Regular snorted to herself as she moved to another reflective pathway. She grew distant from any of her ground-level portals and positioned herself across from her aerial shards. Swimming above the district, she observed the aftermath of her alpha strike from on high. Two lighter Chronoframes destroyed once; drone majority annihilated; four surviving golem Knots.

Not a bad opener—but she could have done better. The Nether-ghoul-fuckery should have been anticipated. For as much as the half-strand helped her, he couldn't seem to stop bringing trouble her way either. Alive, dead, or broken, Avo was always a surprise. And a pain in the ass.

A warning indicator pulsed across her cog-feed.

RENDBOMB DETONATION DETECTED

To the Sanctians' credit, their retaliation came immediately. Only a few drones survived Draus's initial strike, but those that lingered responded by firing at every window through every open doorway they could see. She doubted that they knew the actual source of the attacks. Probably just thought someone was taking potshots at them from inside the surrounding architecture. The Golems, however, took a more defensive posture, and Draus counted four defensive spatial spheres expand, their swelling presences feeling as if a shroud of counter-spatial reality.

She felt a disturbing weight grind against her frame, and immediately Draus released her nearby reflections, the luminosity fading from them as they were encompassed by the non-defensive measures. A thirty or so portals vanished from within her Liminal Paracosmos.

A pulse of brightness rippled across the district. The two heavier Chronoframes blinked out of being, leaving only faint echoes wherever they once existed. From above, Draus spotted them moving as faint flickers dancing along the surface of existence. They flashed fast as a few hundred aerial gun emplacements fired around Draus. Spatial reality clenched tight around their barrels and pockets of space collapsed inward below. They were bombarding the spots where they assumed her shots were coming from, and Draus had to dismiss a few more portals before she suffered a backlash.

A heartbeat later, a series of spatial Rendbombs joined the hovering gun emplacements and further ruptured the tapestry. Sanctus was taking no chances. They wanted her dead. Draus's zone of control was shrinking. But she'd anticipated this. This was why she decided to take the higher ground instead. And as the cloaked platforms around her continued to fire, Draus turned the Arsenalist on them, and from the spiraling array of shards she had encircling the district, she unleashed a swarm of threading missiles through her pathways. She kept her aerial assault subtle and fluid, using only low-yield missiles to destroy the emplacements to avoid drawing too much attention. The longer it took for the Sanctians to realize they just lost aerial supremacy, the better.

As the emplacements broke apart, she slammed more missiles into their falling debris, striking them until only specks of ash remained. At the same time, she dropped her Simulacra Replicas down from above. She dispatched ten Replicas at first, and they ground down the sides of megablocks as they unfurled the enormous wings they used as shields while the Arsenalist continued firing using them as a porthole. The last of the drones were destroyed as the Replicas reached ground-level with a synchronized roar of impacts.

Draus's voidtech reflex booster was boosted to obscene levels, and the only things that still bore any hint of motion aside from her “selves” were the Chronoframes, Avo’s memory tower, and four defensive spheres projected by the remaining golems.

Ten knights of glass continued what seemed to be an aimless rampage through the district, and Draus had them stay below the hovering megablocks at the highest levels, “offering” her enemy the higher ground. The two larger Chronoframes fell for her bait immediately. Their mem-lock signatures vanished for an instant before they jolted back into existence with a splash of pulsing gold. They took up firing positions along the edges of two megablocks hovering above where Draus's Replicas continued their warpath. The Chronoframe’s tendrils coiled around the edge, and their implanted weapons fired, but instead of traveling across space like Draus's guns did, they skipped across time, punching chunks of raw matter out of her “bodies.”

Tons of glass went missing inside of her. A small burst of Soulfire sprayed out from every luminous reflection under Draus's control.

REND CAPACITY [SIMULACRAE REPLICA] - 34%

The Regular remained undaunted. This was what she wanted. Some damage made the bait feel real. Angling her aerial shards downward, she selected the most potent of her particle beam weapons and extended them through her reflective portals. Motes of light danced within helix-shaped barrels, and a new brightness bathed the entire district. A stream of searing rain slashed down from the sky. Threads of energy zipped down faster than any kinetic could. They burrowed against the armor of the heavy Chronoframes, rather than break or shatter like dead machines, the time-forged constructs bled radiant ichor as they screamed in pain, their cries carrying their pilots’ agony as well.

The heavy Chronoframes lasted for a full real-time section before they finally came apart. Again, their signatures reloaded, and Draus found them hidden behind the same spatial shroud that housed their lighter comrades.

But while she was focused on bringing them down, three bubbles of spatial impossibility exploded as twelve Heaven-manifested golems launched themselves skyward in a counterattack against Draus. Their breakers came forth looking as if two-hundred meter long humanoid bodies sporting flower-like heads. From each petal blossomed tumbling gales of wind and storm, and as the golems twirled, their control over movement was absolute.

At once, a hurricane began to form in the sky, and Draus felt her shards get wrenched off course. Her Hyalokinesis was only a relative power, and could offer nothing against the countervailing miracles of the storm. But why make a battle symmetrical when you had other options? Twelve more Replicas rushed out from her pathways, and they rode across the sky in lances of four, each meeting a knot on their own. The wind passing through the Replicas as they glowed, and suddenly they were as if open doorways passing through the sky. Then, she was upon the blossoming Heavens, and her reflective blades extended to becoming lances, splitting through the golems as she parted the very space connecting their bodies.

Three forming maelstroms sputtered and broke before they could even fully form, but the porters among the golems enclosed Draus's Replicas in three separate dimensions of space, sealing her. Or so they thought. Her “captured” Replicas detonated into spatially interconnected shards, each empowered by the canon of Shattershunt.

REND CAPACITY [SIMULACRA REPLICA] - 79%

Her high vulgarity miracle went off and fractured the very fabric of existence. The passageways within the shards collapsed outward and then came crashing together. Matter and space were both mangled in equal measure, and the attacking golems discovered too late that this trap was going to be their tomb. Chunks of compressed material were squeezed across the sky, turning into thin strips of mutilated ontology.

She felt another shudder press against her Frame—felt a disturbance across the Domain of Space–and then demanifested her Simulacra just as she fired herself out from a collapsing pathway using her Arsenalist.

A vast layer of rings composed from interlocking guns accelerated down toward the last Knot of golems; behind that final demiplanar shroud, the Chronoframes lingered as well, the coming deaths to be their final ends. Her decision to descend was a wise one, as but a beat later, a few hundred Rendbombs blinked into place behind her as the ligher Chronoframes rematerialized, lining the sky with existential landmines.

Draus turned some of her faster guns on them and fired. Lasers slashed out.

And struck nothing.

The sky above came asunder with a few hundred spreading ruptures as anomalies of displacement spread across existence. Suddenly, the lighter Chronoframes blinked into being right next to Draus, and they tore into her Arsenalist, slashing through her guns with their blades and melting her down using fusion burners.

She loosed several shots at them, but her flechettes kissed only fading imprints vanishing from the surface of time. Temporal displacement was miserable to deal with, and the Regular went from reacting to anticipating.

The lighter chronos would always be faster than her. Her ambush was the only reason she got them earlier in the first place. But she didn’t need to outdraw them, she just needed to get them ahead of time.

Instead of shooting at the Chronoframes, she turned her guns on each other, and they all fired at once. Her enormous railcannons blew apart from scything beams, and her lesser guns turned to slag from spreading balls of fire. But through this act of calculated self-harm, the Chronoframes fell victim to the carnage as well. They arrived just in time to get caught up in the blast radius. The Arsenalist generated from guns; but the light Chronoframes were cast aside.

One was shredded utterly, the gold shimmering for a moment before vanishing altogether like an extinguished candle. The pilot’s body emerged from a cocoon of gold as little more than a spill of sloppy viscera. The other lost an arm and a leg. Draus could tell they hadn't been killed, at least not yet. Before they could escape, she hit them with a thoughtwave disruption, and they managed only a single skip across a hundred meters before a rainstorm of bullets carved them down to nothingness.

From there, she doubled her acceleration toward the final Knot where the last two chronos waited. As she closed in, she saw a chain of Rendbombs get teleported across every intersection, every avenue within the district. They went off. And the cityscape below as engulfed in chaos.

The Regular simply sighed. Classic battle tactic. If you couldn't hold operational control, deny it to everyone. Except that killed your own citizens. Scorched earth was supposed to be done to your enemies. The godsdamned half-strands didn’t even know where she was, considering the fact that no new bombs went off in the sky. She vitrified a small bullet within one of her guns and fired at the last demiplane.

As the glass-round left, she Shotjumped into it, the Arsenalist disappearing into the small projectile entirely. She circled the air for a few moments as she watched the district come apart. After a minute of waiting, the Knot finally dropped their plane, exposing the golems and the two larger Chronoframes holding a defensive posture.

The Regular scoffed internally.

“Cowards,” the Arsenalist declared.

Ain’t even worth the tungsten, Draus agreed.

“Let us give them glass instead,” the Simulacra suggested.

From that single glistening bullet, the Heaven of Reflection burst into being once more, sporting enormous shard-like wings lined with a thousand protruding barrels. A stream of fire drilled down through the Knot before they could react, and the heavy Chronoframes were caught in the crossfire as well.

The Breaker-golem overloaded immediately as a fusion lance struck its paradox. The air around its petal-like head grew hyper-heated. Soulfire detonated thereafter. Two other golems and a chronoframe were caught in the blast radius, and all ceased to be at once. The Porter lasted perhaps a moment longer before an enormous spike impaled it through against plascrete below.

And finally, the last of the chronoframes skipped ahead into the future. Without assistance, without a proper plan, without anywhere to run, their fate was sealed. It emerged two kilometers away, and the pilot dismissed their time-forged avatar, choosing to feel down a narrow hallway inside a megablock on foot. They thought Draus wouldn’t be able to track them now, quiet and small as they were.

Well. She saw their hope, and she sent out a single shot in response.

A single hyper-accelerated shard skipped along the side of a building, ricocheted down a panel against a weall, passed through an open window, bounced off a door frame, impacted the ground, left through anther window, skipped off the ledge of a building, passed into the doorway the pilot just fled, rang against the walls behind them, and finally snapped out through their throat. A welter of gore sprayed free from the wound, and pilot managed three more steps before the last strand of glistening sinew finally untangled. The dead Scantian collapsed. Their ontology shifted twice. On both of their alternative bodies, their head was barely attached to their body.

For a moment thereafter, Draus simply scattered her surroundings. Some collateral damage, no hostiles, nothing except—

+Draus.+

Her name was spoken by a thunderous whisper, passing through the entire district, and a turbulent storm began to build from the memory tower. That didn’t sound like Avo. That was all Veylis.

“Shit,” Draus muttered to herself. The Regular wasted no time, moving towards the tower in anticipation for what was to come. She didn't think; she acted, she prepared. Rows of Replicas formed, materializing a defensive wall, her reflections surrounding the ziggurat.

And as it rumbled with crashing one more time, a bolt carried a new pressure across existence, injecting something into reality just before Draus.

UNKNOWN SOUL DETECTED

ERROR: SYNCHRONOUS ONTOLOGY DETECTED

JELENE DRAUS OF THE STILLBORN, DELIVERER OF FINALITY