24-4

Defilement (IV)

--[White-Rab]--

It took painfully long for Kare to accept the session request, but when she did, White-Rab immediately understood why.

Tapping into her cog-feed, the scene before her was carnage and chaos. Her Heaven was fully manifested, and she was whipping tendrils of lightning at the oncoming cadres in a vicious offense to keep them at bay. The water surrounding her was rapidly hissing away into steam as tongues of lash fire licked scars into matter and space. Mangled bodies of sea life and once-nulled customers drifted between the warring parties like debris.

A beam of coruscating magma tunneled through the water. Kare dashed–her metaphysical being stretching along a web made from lightning. She brought storm, war, and speed to bear against two rival cadres who warped the fundaments of space, desperate to cage her in place, fighting to lock down Shotin, who was nowhere to be seen.

Surging along her lightning-wrought net, Kare splashed out behind the enemy Godclad that just fired at her. Their Heaven bore the shape of a cerulean starfish with a blazing eye at its core, and Kare emerged at its rear, two of its allies broke from flinging out Rendbombs and spatial distortions to assist their comrade.

They came a moment too late.

Kare tore into her foe in a manner befitting her name. She moved like a bolt-wrought spider, lurching into the metaphysical flesh of her enemy, knocking them aside before they could sweep their glaring beam through her form. A tempest detonated from inside her as she slipped into her webs once with prey in tow. It was like a trapdoor spider pulling a bug down beneath the surface.

The crackling energies of the web grew along with the thaumc load. Kare’s Rend spiked. The responding Seekers formed spatial cages where she once was–and in doing so sealed their own fates.

Diverted from their task of suppressing Shotin, and opening formed in the offensive, a flicker passed through them–snatching them from existence. In the wake of the blur, destruction followed as the sheer velocity detonated pockets of vacuum within the water.

The entire engagement happened less than a second.

With Godclads, numbers, Spherage, and skill all applied, but there was another concept that had be considered–always considered.

Asymmetry.

On paper, two against two cadres was a bad fight unless the former possessed an extreme advantage in one area or another. In practice, it was a dubious practice to measure struggles between Godclads as one would clashes between material forces.

The game being played right now was one of inflicting dilemmas and anticipating reactions. The bulk of the D’Rongo Seekers sought to pin Shotin and grind him down with Rend while the two members they had leftover handled Kare. But though they identified the greater threat between the two, that didn’t mean their available assets could face down the rookie Paladin on their own.

So she managed to evade their attacks. So she broke through their defensive lines. So two suppressive Porters had to choose between letting one of their allies die or focusing on keeping Shotin at bay.

Wrong choices on all accounts, and the scene was cemented the mutilated remains of a kraken tumbled through the blood-choke waves, brain tissue and skull fragments sprouting from its opened skull as its Metamind winked out and a resurrection anchor scabbed the face of reality.

Emerging from her descent through lightning, Kare flung the shredded corpse of the enemy Godclad aside. Soulfire erupted out from their wounds as the Heaven flickered in and out of existence, its user drawn closer to the embrace of death.

Metal petals swept out like a hurricane and Kare dashed again. Whistling Rendbombs zipped through the water like bullets before exploding without force or sound. Their Rend flowed into Shotin’s Parallelist as he absorbed the entropy, keeping the battlefield stable. A frenzied quality characterized their offensive as assumed advantages melted away.

Kare rode the channels of her Stormwebs , a threat in constant motion. They could ignore her and try to go for Shotin, but then she’d fall on them anyway. They could dedicate half their remaining power to handle her for good, but without the Porters running interference, death was a single planeshift away.

Nothing but bad choices.

+Avo?+  she finally cast, briefly eyeing the surrounding Nether. The cognitive realm resembled a sea of frozen flames. Flickers twitched against one another like grinding blades, and as she continued her harassment, she called out to Avo several times, trying to get her to respond.

+Rab,+  White-Rab said, taking in the sight with a hushed breath of his own. +Avo’s still… Jaus. Talk about a nightmare dive.+ Once again, Stition was right. This was coming from the moment that half-strand from earlier said the words “milk-run.”

Taking in the warring Conflagrations, White-Rab recounted his years of Necrojacking experience and found himself drawing a blank. His personal philosophy of dealing with the Incubi could best be summed up as “don’t,” and his plans for dealing with their mind-melting bullshit was “don’t be there.”

No longer options in this case.

Synaptic lightning flashed from one of the Seekers as trauma patterns registered in Kare’s cog-feed. The weaponized ghosts recoiled the instant they passed beyond the Seeker’s accretion, ringing against the unmoving flames like rain upon armor.

But they didn’t burn. At least not immediately.

Curiosity swelled inside White-Rab as an idea began to form. But he didn’t really want to test it on himself. There was too much at stake here, and if he burned, the Paladin likely would too. He needed another Necro. Someone willing to make the shitty dive. Someone who knew enough, but was still expendable.

There was only one candidate for the job.

SESSION ACTIVATED

->MEM-ID: [AEDON CHAMBERS]

GHOST-LINK ACCEPTED

Chambers responded almost immediately as Kare resumed her battle, bobbing and weaving as she tried to draw a pursuer away; create an opening. +Rab? You got–holy fuck that’s a lot of fire–wait. Why aren’t you burning? Why aren’t I burning.+

+Avo’s deadlocked with the other Conflagration.+  White-Rab paused. +I think. I need you to make a dive–+

+Whoa, whoa, what the fuck, consang, I’m not going into that shit. I’ve been burned by that shit before. You think I like getting nulled? Why the hells don’t you do it? You’re the master-jackoff.+

Kare grunted as an alloyed spike sank into her chest just as she re-emerged from her webs. The enemy cadre was predicting her. Or just got lucky. A hazy figure in the distance blinked and reappeared, slamming into Kare as if there was no distance between them at all. Flickers of a metal plant-shaped monstrosity wrapped its branches around Kare’s Straying Tempest. She tired to dive again, but Soulfire erupted from Heaven as she suffered backlash.

BACKLASH DETECTED

HEAVEN - [STRAYING TEMPEST]

->DOMAIN OF (LIGHTNING)

   ->CANON - STORMWEB

Closing her storm-made palps around her foe, Kare tore into the enemy Heaven and was mauled in turn. Tendrils of metal sank deeper and further through her writhing form. Her’s was a built meant for speed and skirmishing, not prolonged brawling.

Some outside assistance was in order.

+Kare,+  White-Rab cast, +slam your ward into theirs. Chambers. You need to do this. Avo would want you to do this. I’m just his ego-donor. You’re the one he empowered. You’re his consang. You’re the one he chose to spare.  He chose you before, he’ll probably want you again now. Besides. You said you saw him use the flame on you? Well. Time to balance the scales.+

Kare’s reply came first as a terse +Synced!+

Chambers took a moment longer. +I know what you’re doing, Rab. Fuck you. Fuck you for using my attempt at growing against me. Fuck you, because its going to work.+

Back in the real, White-Rab smirked. +I meant every word.+

+You also don’t wanna risk your own ass, but Chambers can eat shit.+  A sigh followed. +Godsfuckingdammit, alright, aggggh!+

A trail of ghosts whispered out from White-Rab and Kare’s Metaminds before slipping against the near-solid Conflagration. +Jaus, these memories are fucking incomprehensible,+  Chambers muttered. +Gonna take me a bit to spoof–+

The moment came. Kare flung her ward out and slammed it into her foe’s Metamind. Her cog-cap spiked. Warnings flickered in her feed, warning her of impending overload.

COG-CAP - 92%

DISABLING ALL NON-ESSENTIAL PHANTASMICS

White-Rab didn’t hear anything else Chambers said–ignored Kare’s gasp of pain as her mental palace shuddered. Snaking through her protective traumas, he brought his own wards to bear as he hammered down on the enemy Godclad a second time.

The Seeker’s cognitive protections–though superior to Kare’s–were embrittled by the impact. Cracked. Its traumatic shell went from being armor to a cracking egg as White-Rab crashed through, using his own trauma patterns to clear the way.

The metaphysical flower spasmed as Kare seized her opportunity. She sank her limbs into her foe and channeled the full energy of a thunderstorm into them. Metal sang. The surrounding water sparked. This time, it was the Seeker’s Frame that flared with a thaumic backlash. White-Rab sought the Seeker’s Auto-Seance to compromise his allies–to bring the battle to an end.

But the tides of war turned and turned again. Crawling into the depths of the crumbling Seeker, the architecture within suddenly pulsed with an outside presence, and the mem-data changed. The crumbling labyrinth stabilized and began to shift in shape and phantasmics. White-Rab jolted to a stop as his instincts screamed for him to jack out.

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

Because even in the incomprehensible chaos, one detail stood in defiance of all others. One scent sorted from the sensory whirlwind.

Citrus.

The voice that spoke afterward even sounded like the Strix. +You are not Avo, are you?+

White-Rab went silent. Not a hard thing to do when his mind was silent. The Strix was dead. Nulled, but with the flashes he got from Avo’s mind earlier, it was clear the other Famines held onto some of his memories somehow.

Like they were wearing his corpse.

Fuckers.

+Silence will not not mask you from me,+  the Famine continued, voice resounding through the orbiting debris that once comprised the Seekers’ mind. Nondescript towers and children playing on city streets sailed over White-Rab’s perception. A low chuckle rumbled as all the surrounding memories dissolved into fragments, reassembling themselves to form an island at the end of a single sequence. +You lack his volume. His ferocity. His warminds. But there is skill in you. Certainty in the way you dive. I wonder, are you the wastrel he empowered and imbued with our art? The Highflame hound he has found an uncanny kinship with? The broken little Agnos? The hollow agent used by those who dwell in the black? Or another? Which are–?+

Trauma patterns exploded out from White-Rab as he let loose with his Ghostjack. Ghosts tore out. The Seeker’s mind came apart as if caught in a wave of shrapnel. Thoughtwave distortions seared the mind clean of counterattacks. As White-Rab conducted his retreat, he masked his voice and altered his mem-data while also priming a few of his emergency lobbies to dump distortions and null him should he be compromised. +Sorry, consang. Necros are in the business of taking knowledge, not sharing it. I don’t parlay with amateurs.+

More laughter–godsdammit, the sow-bred bastard really sounded like him. And more fragments were spilling out around him, slipping into the fissures of what he broke. White-Rab forced calm on himself. Emptied his mind of all other details of the present. Focused.

+Humor, pride, but also enough self-awareness to retreat. I don’t know you. But the way you approach these memories… You react to me… You knew Defiance, didn’t you? What was he to you?+

Activating another of his private lobbies, White-Rab pulled up a menu as he deployed external Specters to patrol himself. He had his entire mind space mapped out, and with the interface running second-interval one-to-one sequence comparatives, he’d know if the Famine slipped him with a splinter.

For now, held position, unwilling to allow the Famine just reconstitute the Godclad he nulled. All he needed was a few seconds for Kare to finish, and then he could–

A strangled cry reverberated in the back of his mind. White-Rab felt Kare’s wards shatter and the labyrinth around him began to collapse.

+Run. Save your cargo.+  The Famine’s voice was less than a whisper but louder than thunder. +Let us see your wort–+

White-Rab launched a disruption straight into the Seeker’s mindscape before reeling himself back to Kare. As he arrived, he found the Paladin’s inner world crumbling, an unseen presence peeling away her sequences. He detonated a thougthwave without hesitation, sweeping the area clean and buying time.

+I–I–+  Kare’s thoughtstuff spilled into her own mind, pouring into the mess of her pooling memories. White-Rab cursed as he tried to understand how she was nulled–how she managed to be compromised. Gut instinct made him look at the surrounding Nether still lost to the stalemate. Chambers was diving into the unmoving flames, squeezing through claustrophobic memories of madness.

The Low Master might’ve done the same. Probably could’ve done it much easier with a warmind of Delusion. Hard to keep up with the other player when the rules for the bastard kept changing. Gods, this must’ve been what it was like to dive against Avo.

They needed him back. And now.

Considering his next steps, briefly, White-Rab checked Kare’s Rend capacity and considered just nulling her. There were still enemies left. Leaving her a mindless husk risked her getting real-deathed by a stray Rendbomb or some miracle. But he couldn’t be sure which sequences of hers were stable.

Hells. If the Low Master was already inside, none of them were stable. Considering how her wards were spilling outward–like someone had blown them apart from within–made this more of a deliberate taunt than a successful attack. The Ad-Nec was already inside, tearing through her memories, twisting her ego with their unseen blade.

This was a challenge to a duel more than anything else.

+Alright,+  White-Rab said, hardening his resolve. A trickle of excitement ignited in him, a faint accompaniment to the fear. +I see what you’re doing. You play search and destroy.+

The voice returned as a chorus this time, emanating from every fracture and fissure lining Kare’s collapsing bedroom. +We expect you to perform. We wish to sample your skill. A greater latitude has been allowed to us. In the aftermath of the defilement the Dreamer inflicted upon our masters, the chains that bound us for millennia are undone. I am free. Free to shape myself so long as the task is accomplished. Free to incorporate every thought and memory worth taking in myself.+

White-Rab scoffed. +Well, I can’t say you’re very original with your strategies. Avo was already doing that. You might need another gimmick.+

+This is an act of flattery on my part. All of it. Defiance would be so proud of him. He has already incurred such changes in me. Claiming you, the Paladin, and the rest of his people, however, will be my insult. He has taken sanctity from the city eternal and Peace from my cohort.+

+I–hurts–+  A swell of pain passed from Kare to White-Rab as her thoughts echoed.

+I know. Hang on.+

Through the fizzling static of her cog-feed, he also noted an approaching shadow. Kraken was back. Resurrected. Great. Fuck . The noose was tightening around him. He couldn’t get to Shotin, and he can’t risk triggering a session with the rest of the cadre without exposing them to the Low Master.

So what could he do?

What could he do?

How could he change the situation without–

He had outside influence. A chance, at least.

As tension tightened in his gut, White-Rab quickly extracted all the memories he had and poured them into one of his proxy lobbies. Applying a session to its Auto-Seance, he activated the phantasmic and contacted Paladin Maru Sandrupal.

If Naeko’s Heaven worked how people theorized, he might just be able to hit the half-strand. Or at least deal with all the Godclads.

Swallowing the risk, White-Rab checked his Conundrum as he tentatively reached out into Kare’s deeper memories, preparing to align all that was broken.

+The wise choice would be to abandon her,+  the Low Master said. He wasn’t wrong, and normally, White-Rab would be long gone by this point, but this was more than a dive now.

Without the Strix, he probably would’ve been another body fed to the Maw. Another idiot juv who dove too deep too fast too soon. Letting this fuck use the man’s memories–use his voice and his scent was an affront. And, if White-Rab was to be honest, he really wanted to see how he would perform against a Low Master of Old Noloth.

SESSION ACTIVATED

->EGO-ID - [TRAP-PROXY001]

SESSION ACTIVATED

->EGO-ID - [TRAP-PROXY002]

SESSION ACTIVATED

->EGO-ID - [TRAP-PROXY003]

SESSION ACTIVATED

->EGO-ID - [REPLACE-SUPPORT012]

SESSION ACTIVATED

->EGO-ID - [REPLACE-SUPPORT155]

Layering his mind with various lobbies, White-Rab dove fully into the Paladin’s mind, openly exposing himself–prepared for what was to follow. Right now, he was in compromised territory; an unfamiliar mind already breached by another’s hand. But there was something he could control, something that the Low Master revealed.

He wanted White-Rab. He wanted the entire cadre. And to do that, he needed to claim their minds.

That was fine. White-Rab knew his own mind–kept over one-thousand and eight loci on standby to sync, resequence, and replace parts of his mind fortress or ego damage incurred during a dive.

With the warminds in play, direct victory was an uncertainty. But he could play for time. And he could make th is hurt the Low Master.

ATTENTION: SEQUENCE ANOMALY DETECTED

A menu flashed in the corner of his perception. One of his memories–the earliest he had of meeting the Strix was lighting up. A chill passed through him. He didn’t even feel the Low Master breach his wards. The infiltration was absolutely silent. Just like Avo. Maybe even better.

But just because one was a shark, that didn’t mean they dived the depths alone.

Pulsing a thoughtwave through that sequence of memories, White-Rab felt a pop of surprise as a low hum filled the air.

+You found me,+  the Low Master said.

+You’re pretty predictable,+  White-Rab replied.

+When did you meet Defiance?+

+Why’d you put on his memories? Use his smell? Old ego not doing it for you?+

Silence. +Fine. Let us continue this dialogue another.+

An entire section of Kare’s memories imploded. White-Rab cursed and fired his Ghostjack, clutching parting memories together to prevent the Paladin’s total cognitive collapse. Through her feed, he saw her sluggishly slashing at one of the kraken’s eyes. Within his own mind, another dozen compromised memories lit up with alerts.

An inquisitive sigh brushed through the Nether as the Low Master spoke once more. +Who will you fail first, adept? The Paladin? Or yourself? Or perhaps that fool you sent to walk my flames.+

Chambers. Shit. No time to worry about him right now. No time at all.