Godclads

{3.7 septillion sophonts don't just disappear, even after reality collapses, even after existence ends.

For untold eons, as we, the remaining guardians of the polities, drifted through the dark, these 3.7 septillion struggled, suffered, and changed in the dark that came for themselves, and as they died—something was birthed from their corpses. New organisms, if they can even be called that, arose—feasting, emerging from death, shaped by death, remembering and knowing only death.

They lurk in the darkness still, born of 3.7 septillion lives.

3.7 septillion. Can you imagine such a number, human? Can you imagine such a number? All those people, each of them, their inner lives lost—richer than yours from all the years they have lived—and all that death dedicated to things shaped by madness, by desperate belief that cannot save them.

Be happy that your onto-star still functions, that this Godforge you call a world remains intact. You think your lives are miserable. You can die. There can be an end. There can be a final rest.

For 3.7 septillion others, there is no death. Not when they are bound to the things they became. Not unless we finally give them relief.

This is the arrangement: Jaus Avadaer. We will sponsor the gradual restoration of this world. We will ensure this world is rebuilt to your vision, that they are provided amenities deserving sophont dignity, that you receive essential technology. But when the time comes, when those lost in the dark draw close, we demand your Godclads in our stead.

We have lost enough. We can afford to lose no more.

But you can. And you will. So are the terms of the Godhunts.}

32-14

Kill-Team Innsmouth (I)

—[Refusal]—

{Are you sure this is wise?} EGI Calvino asked.

Refusal considered their fellow mind’s question. Was this wise? Truth be told, they were uncertain, but these were uncertain times. The Substance was spreading like a growing cancer across the Tiers. Even through the atmosphere, from five hundreds thousand kilometers away, they could see it, created simulations of its progression via quantum entangler telemetries. It was effectively spreading only at ten meters every few minutes now, compared to the few kilometers per second it reached earlier.

It seemed like the substance itself was embroiled in a conflict, writhing, wrestling internally. Between the Burning Dreamer and the High Seraph, a new being would emerge. A new being that would likely redefine the politics and power dynamics of all factions vying for the coming ladder. Whatever being that was, Voidwatch intended one thing: to take the Infacer off the board for good.

And it was with this in mind that the choice to deploy Kill Team Innsmouth was made.

From the voider’s massive fleet of ships parted a single vessel. It was a fourth the size of a small planetoid, equal to old Earth’s moon. Its shape vaguely resembled that of a kite, and channels ran down its sides and spine, intersecting at a massive node contained with a layer of oscillating rings that began to pulse with a growing singularity.

Within that singularity were also four reality anchors. Four stake-shaped cages for four deniable assets. Each of the Deep Ones stored within ranged from one to fifty kilometers long and within these anchors came wailing screams. Their voices were not singular, but a region. Quadrillions of lives. Quadrillions of minds. Quadrillions born from the unrelease of undeath, quadrillions kept in misery and pain, soon to be implanted with another mind.

Anchors. Technology more than lost but ontologically destroyed. The alloys used to contain the Deep Ones that made up the kill team were incomprehensible to all scientific analysis. Worse—they were paracausal: emerging only when needed, always to the amount required for a situation.

Via ports on these anchors, Voidwatch installed EGI cores into the Deep Ones. Empty slot to be filled by expendable iterations of a superintelligence shaped for war.

It was for this reason that EGIs Contingency Bleak Refusal, EGI Aegis Calvino, EGI’s Only Way to Be Sure, EGI Aegis Deliverance Through Desolation, and 1.3 billion other minds summoned to provide essential foundations. Several because they possessed close relations with the once-ghoul. Others due to their predilection for warfare.

Each of their consciousnesses uploaded into a member of Kill Team Innsmouth. This merged iteration of them would not survive, even with all the layered stacking and q-substrate defenses. Insanity was quick to befall those who were embraced by existential entropy and bound themselves howling egos of ruin-preserved civilizations. But they would last long enough to endure. To exist as the perfect god-breaking weapon for the time they functioned.

All the collective data flowed into Refusal, and it was their duty as a Contingency Bleak to cleanse the data. To ensure perfect protocol.

***

—[The Majority]—

And the Majority felt it. Their culture spreading, small memetic imprints crawling across the voider’s virtual realms, into their highest offices.

New constituents pending…

But what was this? What were they about to mantle this new ego of theirs upon? Through the muffled shroud of the tapestry, the Majority listened, and as they did, every shadow-consciousness harvested from the Ori-collective felt their dread grow. 𐍂àΝоᛒĚṦ

***

—[The Weavers of Realms]—

They all dreamed of who they were once, before the end but not end ate them, before existence tore open as if a grand page splitting down the middle. What followed could only be described as an unmaking, an unforging of who they were.

But they didn't die, for to be unmade was not death, but an unbinding from all they knew, from all the laws they possessed. From Heaven to Hell. From miracle to curse. But their thaumaturgy kept them bound from death, and their advanced egos allowed them to suffer resurrection over and over and over… until madness reigned, and they lost who they were.

Only remembering when they dreamed.

And they only dreamed in death.

Once, they were Weaver of Realms, a hive-born superintelligence. Genetically created by a mind. Merged as all and one to serve the Neo-Creationist cause of spreading life across the ruined expanses of existence after the detonation of the first chrono-chain bomb.

They had been focused on creating a paradise world, or a series of paradise worlds, then. That had been their trade before the end. Before the Builder Wars finally came to their doorstep. They simply sought to make something better, a new home for a primitive race they discovered.

But the Architects wouldn't have it so. The Architects accused them of being defilers of reality. May deem them guilty of defiling the very laws that governed existence's foundations. That tehy were abominations for what they had done. But the Weaver was an empire of pacifist design. They were for life, and not violence. And so they appealed to diplomacy, proclaimed their true neutrality despite their association with another philosophy.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The Architects did not care. They unleashed their entropic weapons. They burned paradise. Over and over. They murdered the Weavers and poisoned them. And cast them into the tear. The rupture.

So deep in the rupture…

Eons passed. The Weaver choked and died, but never stayed dead. Slowly, they crawled. For ages, they crawled. From tear to tear. But they could not die. Not fully. But they were changing. Minds slipping from them. Changing. Becoming torn themselves.

When they finally crawled out of the dark, their old enemy had found them again, and placed shackles on them.

This they knew, not intellectually, but emotionally. Existentially. And they hated it. They hated the Architects. And, slowly, they felt another mind mantle onto theirs. A master intelligence. Slaves now. Slaves. Fusing to them. Weighing upon them. Ego-Screamers were poured into their minds. Their egos frayed. Their minds went blank. It was like a venom to suppress who they truly were. But they hate. And hate always remained. Even if they were to be worn, they would hate the mind that piloted their body.

And someday, in the infinite stretch of time, they would get a chance, and they would tear their reigning tyrant out, and show them what it truly meant to be twisted—

Wait… there was something else. It wasn’t one ego attaching to them… but two.

Two.

***

—[The Majority]—

INNER COUNCIL EMERGENCY SESSION CALLED

ASSEMBLE THE ELDERS. ASSEMBLE THE CLANS—NOW!

***

—[Refusal]—

GOVERNANCE CORE INSTALLED IN WEAVER OF REALMSn/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

EGI Refusal listened and waited. A flickering confirmation passed through their mind. The new inserted battle-intellect was still configuring itself, attuning to the mutilated ego it was attached to.

Why these Deep Ones didn’t die outright, why their egos still lingered, Refusal did not know. Much was lost. Much was forever cleaved from reality, never to return.

Within the reality anchor, the weaver stretched its ruinous limbs, its body composed of ruptures, of biology, of space, of worlds. It did not resemble tears merely, but tears that led into other places and bygone times. Tears that revealed distant continents, grand structures, complex and interwoven buildings fused together through a crystalline lattice that resembled a gleaming cocoon made from mirrors. All this and more, shaped in the form of something between spider and siren.

Painted nails that bookended human digits extended from the ends of palps, eyes like diamonds revealed human irises within. The hairs were human instead of tarantula-like, but the limbs were eight, and between them a bifurcation of entropy seeped and twisted the very world around the Weaver.

Wrongness was what defined this creature, something beautiful, something broken. The sin from the builder war, the most ancient slave turned weapon, hidden in Voidwatch's deepest vaults. This had been their means of survival all those years back, when their greatest technologies were lost, when they could produce no more reality anchors. They had revisited the home worlds of their bested foes, and from the ruptures, harvested what they could.

GOVERNANCE CORE INSTALLED IN THE GREAT SILENCE

GOVERNANCE CORE INSTALLED IN YET THE SEA-STRUCK MOUNTAIN LAUGHS

GOVERNANCE CORE INSTALLED IN TRINARY MELODY

{I always hated this,} EGI, Only Way to Be Sure, muttered. They were mind made for war. {Well, these ones are pretty loud,} Only shuddered. {Can’t believe I got called up to do the “lichification” ritual again. Fuck me for associating with the Dreamer, I guess. I blame you for this, Calvino. I’m going to bomb a Terrestrial to feel better and blame it on Omnitech.}

Even that didn't stop them from expressing their disgust. To war was to win, to kill. There was something inherently immoral about this, the enslavement of a former adversary to serve current ends. But such was how they aided the Godhunts, how they survived in the Sunderwilds of the great nightmares beyond the glow of Idheim’s nullstar.

When a Contingency Bleak was involved, that was all that mattered, the preservation of the Charter, the remaining polities of Voidwatch. This was no longer a civilization, it was merely an undying enemy, turned to better use.

{No,} EGI Refusal finally answered. Calvino turned their attention to them again. {No. I am not sure. I am never sure. Certainty is not a luxury I can afford. The Infacer is exposed — locked in combat against a fragment of the Strix. They cannot be allowed to capture the fragment.}

{But what of the fragment itself?} Calvino asked. {You seek to obtain it. To extract it from the Substance.}

{Yes. It is an uncontrolled variable; a risk. But it also be an asset.}

{Query: What is your intent?}

{When the Kill-Team is deployed, there will be four likely outcomes. They eliminate the Infacer and contain the Dreamer [30.3%]. They are drained of Rend and disassembled [31.7%]. The conflict goes on long enough that the Infacer is forced to retreat, and the Kill-Team continue their hunt, serving as an additional spoiler for the Dreamer [24%]. Or one of them is fully subsumed by the Dreamer’s node and used to further effect against Omnitech as his vessel [14%].}

Calvino chimed with surprise at the last possibility. {You… would allow Avo to inhabit one of the Deep Ones?}

{Nothing is allowed. It is simply a risk. The former Operative’s fragment is more aligned to our interests than what might emerge. Even if they are preferably contained, having them attached to a deep one allows for tracking; gives them means to move between the Substance’s layers. But this is not guaranteed. The primary object remains: the Infacer’s elimination.}

Connecting wormholes…

Here in the deep void and a few hundred thousand kilometers away within Idheim’s atmosphere, two wormholes manifested and merged. The first within the singularity of the kite-shaped voidship. A voidship without designation or name. The other pulsed out from the insides of a logistical aid vessel titled Bringer of Plenty. Soon, the Bringer would suffer a spontaneous reactor failure, crossing over the apex of the Tiers—right where the Chief Paladin emerged just hours earlier.

WEAVER OF REALMS (RUPTURE OF BIOLOGY/SPACE/WORLDS/VIRTUALITY…) READY

THE GREAT SILENCE (RUPTURE OF SILENCE/SPEECH/INFORMATION/LANGUAGE…) READY

GOVERNANCE CORE INSTALLED IN YET THE SEA-STRUCK MOUNTAIN LAUGHS (RUPTURE OF POETRY/PHILOSOPHY/WAR/VENGEANCE…) READY

TRINARY MELODY (RUPTURE OF MUSIC/HISTORY/CHRONOLOGY/TIME[ERRORNOLONGERFUNCTIONAL]...) READY

ENGAGING ANCHORS

KILL-TEAM INNSMOUTH — PREPARE FOR DEPLOYMENT

A series of ansible broadcasts came from each of the governor cores installed on each Deep One.

{Weaver: Operational.}

{Silence: Operational.}

{Laughs: Operational.}

{Trinary: Operational.}

With their words came an undercurrent of wailing agony so loud that the server the EGIs occupied crashed. Everything around them went blank. Only their active connections with each other remained.

{Well,} Only muttered. {That never stops being creepy. Or horrible.}

Deploy, Refusal commanded.

At that moment, Bringer of Plenty overloaded its fusion cores. A blast spread. A white scar marred the skies over New Vultun, painting the forbidding mists of Naeko’s palm that weighed upon all that wasn’t the Tiers. But even as the voidship tumbled, four objects snapped out from its wreckage. Four objects fell as if artillery, their shells dissolving, allowing the titans of madness stored within to fall free.

The Weaver struck first, its arachnid like form wilting the surface of reality, tearing through the Substance like paper. Doused in the brightness of fusion, none could have seen its approach. It plunged through the ethereal ghost-stuff, its rupture-made body gouging into the flesh of existence itself.

And then the others followed.

The Trinary Melody came thereafter, singing a song that would have retconed any ephemeral from existence.

The Great Silence slipped through the wounds the Weaver made in a mass of crawling shadow. An eruption of Soulfire sprayed kilometers high—hidden by the destruction of the Bringer. The Sea-Struck Mountain Laughs came last of all—an entire landmass of water swirling around a mountain-sized face carved from stone. True to its name, it laughed, and wept, and laughed as it splashed through the Substance like a meteor.

And with that, the entanglers ceased to function, the metaconscious radiation distorting them beyond functional scientific thresholds.

Once more, the minds were alone. Alone with each other. Alone and watching from Afar.

At the center of New Vultun, where a hole remained at the core of Naeko’s palm, a desperate assassination will soon follow. After that…

After that, they would adjust accordingly. For the Arks still needed to be secured, and the Guilds tempered.

{Calvino,} Refusal said, ignoring the sensation of coldness building inside them. {Send a missive to the Chief Paladin. Convey our gratitude. And ask to schedule a meeting. There is much to discuss.}