novelapdf Chapter 29-14 Back to School (V)
Chapter 29-14 Back to School (V)
Chapter 29-14 Back to School (V)
I...
I can feel it inside me.
I can feel...
I can feel... how...
I can feel... love.
All the world is just... love.
And all the world is... hunger.
—Excerpts recorded from a Stormtree soldier infected with the Beloved Virus (Also known as the Nu-Ghoul Contagion)
29-14
Back to School (V)
—[Vator Greatling]—
One moment ago, Vator had stepped through a gleaming reflection the regular had presented to him, prepared to embark on a journey of most dubious loyalty. Now, he found himself sailing through the air at 4,500 meters per second, while material and metaphysical destruction lashed the world beneath him apart.
Life came at you quick these days in New Vultun.
He only got flashes of what was unfolding across the district. A bit of nuclear fire here. A cadre of Heavens pursuing what looked to be a Chronoframe strike group there, both sides barreling through entire blocks—memite now sorely missed.
And then there was the place Vator was approaching. It looked like a patchwork of eldritch tumors tearing at the seams of reality. The fabric of existence resembled rotting wallpaper peeling from the wall, and from these wounds gushed anomalies—rogue miracles untethered from governing mythos. Without a Heaven and a Soul to further fuel their devastation, these ruptures would mend over time once the entropy was drained. But as things stood right now, Vator was heading into a hive of madness, and he had only one person to blame.
Perhaps the Regular did want to kill him, but wished to do so in the most amusing of ways.
Waves of displaced space crashed over him, threatening to displace his being from where he existed. But a countering emanation from another rupture pushed the first anomaly back, allowing Vator to continue unburdened. He was effectively falling between stable clefts—clefts created as a delta between conflicting existential fissures.
Scar Charts. That was the word. Strange how the Sunderwilds were leaking into the city now. Strange times. Fascinating times.
Where are we? the Portrait screamed. It reached out into existence, and Vator felt countless catalysts respond. Millions of bodies belonging to those alive and dead resonated with the Heaven of Biology, and countless among them were brutally injured, the death rate rising at a staggering rate. Thin threads extended out from him, forming a network of connections he could use, and through these pathways, he gained access to miracles of blood, skin, sinew, bone, flesh, and more. He gained a glimpse of Thronerest through the eyes of the people, and what he saw left him less than pleased.
Stormtree was pushing in on one end. Sanctus and Ashthrone rolling down the other. And now the middle, an unreasonably placed dragon housing an entire cityscape of its own bifurcated Highflame across its own territory.
A squadron of drones buzzed over Vator like an angry horde of hornets, emerging just beyond the edge of a rupture that oozed blackness over into the real. They traded fire at an unseen target—and then a cascading wave of flames swallowed them before materializing as an armored humanoid form with six arms and a ring around its head.
SOUL DETECTED
HEAVEN DETECTED
SAMSARIST OF THE PURIFICATION (FIRE/WAR/MEDICINE/DESTRUCTION) EST. [955]
The manifested Heaven was about a hundred meters in size and with each passing second, the air around Vator grew hotter. The only reason he had burned was due to his enhanced physiology, but even so, every intake of breath was beginning to sear. Then, just as he noticed the Samsarist, so too did it notice him.
And a spiraling flame built in that ridiculous little ring fused over its head.
Wonderful. He so hated fighting Godclads of the Fire Domain. Burns were some of his least favorite wounds. However, before Vator could manifest his Portrait in response, a dozen glass shards punched through Samsarist’s midsection, each one the size of a small building and traveling at nearly the same speed Vator was. The instrument blinked in surprise, but the wounds on the flaming Heaven seared closed in a gush of roaring flame.
Seemed material harm was less than useful—
The glass shard detonated. Fractures spread out from them and extended over spatial reality—and the Samsarist—as well. The fragmentation they inflicted was absolute. As they sundered space, they struck a paradox as well, the Samsarist breaking apart into pieces before its being dissolved into motes of unstable Soulfire.
Now, Vator felt the biology of the Godclad as well. Foreign implants—Stormtree by size and crudeness of the organs. The Instrument prepared to reap another life using his Portrait, but his Heaven cried out in rejection of the act. Not that it was necessary in the end, either.
A final shard of glass, far smaller than all the others, drifted just above the Bloodthane. A bullet, almost too small for Vator to perceive, darted out and struck the falling Godclad. When it hit, both bullet and Bloodthane ceased to be. Reality jolted. And then something wasn’t. It was more like Vator had forgotten what was in front of his own face than anything else.
Witnessing the scene caused Vator to sustain trauma damage. His wards shuddered as if he had borne witness to something he shouldn't have. The Instrument blinked. It had been years since he had suffered true trauma damage not inflicted by an enemy Necrojack.
“Why...” The Portrait murmured. As the body was vacant of thought or internal drive, Vator assumed control, rising on feeble, fragile limbs. “We healed the child, but she does not return...”
Child? Vator looked down, only then realized that he was, indeed, piloting the body of a young Nolothi girl. Not that young. Frankly, from how short these flats were, it was hard to tell. That and the sheer amount of cell damage already inflicting them. What brutal little lives. Ah. Well. He tried. But her’s was a poorly designed vessel to begin with. Like a paper too thin to even endure the strokes of his paint.
Immediately, he began rebuilding his own biology using her own, and slowly, Vator hatched out from the peeling flesh of the girl, her skeleton melting into his, her organs sinking deeper and transforming to his enhanced variants in seconds.
What remained of “his” old brain tissue spilled down the wall as Vator stumbled to his feet. Nolothic bone runes jingled along archways, revealing veritable drone fleets battling within the confines of the City Eternal. It seemed like plenty of the world beyond had found their way into the space within Noloth.
Right now, he was standing along a corpse-strewn canal. An intricate system of aqueducts extended across the cityscape, and thousands of Nolothis were leaping into the fetid waters to escape roving bands of Stormtree nu-dogs tearing through the streets or Highflame Regular Kill Teams fighting to secure ziggurats and other structures of significance.
+This must be corrected,+ Mercy sighed. The sudden manifestation of the Famine made Vator flinch, but he scoffed after that.
“Mercy,” he greeted. “Glad to seek you again. How nice of you to leave me in the hands of that most unpleasant Regular.”
+Her decorum is irrelevant. The Burning Dreamer has chosen her to be his Ignorance.+
“His what?”
+You will remember when he allows it.+
Vator blinked then shook his head. He felt a vibration pass through the building next to him and triggered his reflex boosters. Shifting back a step, he barely avoided getting “his” head burst apart a second time as a fléchette exploded out from the wall. Overlapping his senses with all the others in the area, Vator frowned as he got a glimpse of just how chaotic the battle was within this stretch of Noloth.
There were Golds, Silvers, Greens, Blacks, and even what felt like some unaffiliated personnel. Soldiers from all factions and even Squires were scattered across Noloth, and all of them were massacring the locals as they fought each other.
+The outsiders are lost. Just like the City Eternal itself. Worry not for the citizens. They belong to the Dreamer. What is lost can be restored. Bodies are ruined. But minds are preserved. Such has it been. Such will it be. But for this iteration of the city, the nodes of these citizens... they deserve better. They deserve a chance to survive.+
“Why?” Vator asked.
Mercy turned to him, his eyes a cold hazel. There was another difference between him and Emotion—that poor fool’s eyes were stitched. +Because you do not want any Guild controlling the inner expanse of this city. Not with all the viviante available. Not unless you wish for them to capture the ziggurats and unleash district shattering traumas at their pleasure.+
And then the Portrait spoke. “Vator. User. I will not rend flesh. I will not harm. This is not my way. This will not be what I am. Whatever this one asks of you, use me not as a weapon, for that is not what I am.”
The Instrument merely nodded. “I agree. But you have never been a weapon. You were always—”
“Your expression is horror,” the Portrait said, cutting Vator off. And then it receded deeper inside him, leaving the boy with a sourness on his lips and a frown on his face.
Make your own way, another voice echoed from within Vator. He knew this one. It was— Gods operate beyond the limits of man. Be a creator. Destruction does not need to come from your hands.
“Ignorance?” Vator breathed. “You... you’re the one that took me from...”
And then the voice was gone, and Vator forgot who he was talking to. But in the absence of the speaker, he found new memories instilled into his mind, and the Instrument felt his thoughts flare with excitement.
MEM-DATA ASSIMILATED
Roused by his excitement, the Portrait returned as quickly as it left. “What is this? What is the shape of a monster gracing my page?”
For some time, Vator worked on improving the design of the ghoul. Such was his want when he pursued the Burning Dreamer in the aftermath of his brother’s murder, toward the end of proving his sister’s innocence. But he and pitiful Abrel were all the same in the end, mere pawns in a greater power’s game. Now, however, he had an epiphany. He knew Avo’s sheathe by heart—could combine it with nu-ghoul “rough drafts.”
The bulk of the forces assaulting Noloth were mostly mundane forces. Few Godclads or even golems managed to get this far in, and though Vator wondered why, that meant his resolution of this crisis could be simplified—and outsourced.
“It’s not a monster,” Vator said, answering his Heaven of Biology. “It is an artpiece. An unloved, unfinished work born at the hands of Noloth, come back to save this part of their city once more.”
+What are you doing?+ Mercy asked, gaze fixed to Vator.
At once, the Instrument’s flesh began to crawl and tear, and drawing on the full power of his blessed epiphany, he extended his influence across the city, infecting all non-Nolothis he could feel with a new strain of the Haemophage—one that even Guilder enhanced immune systems couldn’t resist.
Not without updated vaccinations anyway.
And across a thousand bodies, be they Vator, Regular, Wargskin, or other, eight limbs burst out from their backs. Eight Echoheads, like the legs of a spider sliding free from a discarded exoskeleton, followed by a cloud of static spores, and elongated bodies that gleamed bright in the light.
A new power would be joining the battle soon. Not truly aligned with anyone, but compelled to hunt Guilders above all. Yet, even as Vator continued along the guided path of his inspiration, he failed to notice pinpricks of consciousness dotting the minds of these nu-ghouls, small burning orbs granted by an unseen influence.
And high above, the sky tore once more, a spreading chasm of gold consuming all other ruptures as Jelene Draus faced her path-wrought alternate while Vator finished seeding Noloth with his final touches before he returned to his task of departure.