+Lance-3, come in? Lance-4, respond? Lance-5? Lance-5? Raggen? Someone? Anyone? Hello–+
-Last transmission of an Ashthrone Witherguard
14-18
Easy Prey
Stalking snuffers can be likened to hunting wolves. One couldn’t approach them without due prudence, for where Syndicate muscle was sloppy and brutal, snuffers were killers of a pedigree.
Avo traced their steps in his DeepNav and studied their paths. The way they moved and intersected was rife with tactical competence. Wights and drones served as screening units–the first to fire, and the first to fall.
Cradled within the core of the expendable assets were the three-to-eight-person Ashthrone teams made up of trained professionals versed in violence and clasped in Rend-expeling armor. Their assault composition had the breachers–high-reflex close-engagement specialists–embedded with the rear of the screening units. Behind them were heavies carrying more devastating ordinance, and further still were the field necros, combat engineers, and squad leaders.
Whispers from all the egos he consumed filled his consciousness with an even deeper understanding of his quarry. Most of the assets in play were Ashthrone Witherguards. Though their Guild remained half crippled after suffering a mauling at the hands of Highflame and Omnitech during the last war, they remained Idheim''s premier experts on entropy and Rendsinks.
So much so that even a standard Ashthrone combatant was clad in an exosink – otherwise called a Rendskin. Deemed highly unstable and more likely to kill the wearer than the enemy, few but the dying and desperate were willing to encase themselves in Ashthrone’s “protections.”
Still, the experience Avo devoured imbued him with caution and wariness.
Just because the Rendsink exoskeletons they wore were likely to kill them in various horrific ways didn’t prevent another from sharing this fate.
The fact they had four Fallwalkers with [REDACTED] listed Heavens and Frames escalated the threat they posed. White-Rab had helpfully marked them too. Strangely, they seemed to be stuck on the fifteenth floor of the megablock while the rest of the forces were trying to fight their way up.
A few minds winked out–deaths joined in the heat of combat.
Still no movement from the Fallwalkers.
Suspicious.
He needed to proceed with caution and kill with efficiency. When this was done, he intended to leave nothing but a mystery for survivors to discover. The attackers would be “vanished” without a trace, and from the absence of their bodies would he nourish himself on their ghosts and Essence.
The engagement between Highflame and Ashthrone afforded him a rare opportunity to feast. If he made sure that all his victims were vanished by the end of this, both sides would think that the deed was done by the other. A few suggestive ghosts left “misplaced” amidst the slaughterhouse would ensure that.
As the shadows flowed to the whims of his will, Avo swam upward through the block with Reva in tow. Currently, the bulk of the Witherguard were fighting their way up the twenty-second floor. Fallwalkers remained sedentary.
Abrel expected the defenders to hold for at least another hour.
Talon-2 gave them a few minutes at best.
[The structure’s like a square wedge but not that high. If the teams have already managed to push up past the twenty-fifth floor, I’d say this place''s N-Def was entirely compromised until you happened to the attackers. Now, in-field units are blind, lost, confused, and are getting ambushed all of a sudden because their cog-feeds were no longer updating with active detail with all their divers being nulled and all] The necro’s voice trailed off with a faint note of glumness. [PIty. They were doing so well.]
Taking in the new detail, Avo reassembled the structures of his mind and dedicated the pathways of his thought to war-making. New instincts and memories grew out from him in splashes of fire, and a coherent strategy emerged from where once was only savagery and base impulse.
Presently, he needed to avoid exposing himself to any thoughtwave disruptions. With this being the Tiers and the decimation of attacking Necros, he didn’t expect Highflame to inflict mass Nether suppression of the area. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t die all the same if someone decided to Thoughtwave an entire floor.
The faster, riskier option was just to draw in enough mass to accelerate his cognition and subsume all the minds he could access or perceive. He was likely to lose at least a few ghosts to stray disruptions if he approached things in this way, and besides, there was a certain lack of thrill to casual butchery.
He had better options at his disposal. White-Rab, for instance. Using him would feed the man’s feeling of competence and grant further insight into his methods.
Meanwhile, Avo could further his practice of fighting quiet wars. +Rabbit. I need a favor.+
+Ghoul. You gotta elaborate.+ White-Rab huffed a noise that was barely a laugh. +Why do you talk like that, by the way? The Strix sounded pretty normal.+
+Thoughts jump fast when you’re a ghoul. Hunger lurches your focus. Habit formed from biology.+ Avo paused. He wasn’t limited to biology anymore, yet he still chose to speak the same way. Strange how calcified the concept of a “self” could be. +Doesn’t matter. I need you to suppress the snuffers. Quietly. Make sure they don’t unleash stray disruptions.+
+Make me an offer,+ White-Rab replied. Through the Wight’s thoughtstuff, Avo could the feeling that the other Necro was licking his lips. Ah, that’s right. An offer. Nothing is done for free in this city. Avo remembered all his dives and wondered if those recollections belonged to the man he was speaking to instead.
+Fifty-fifty,+ Avo said. Some of his subminds quailed at just how much he was surrendering, but until he found a way to restore his more circumspect capabilities as a Necrojack, an aid the level of White-Rab was worth all the imps in the city. +You can have half the mem-data from all our shared kills and nullings. Good for a small fortune in the Deep Bazaar. Reva can also have half the Essence if she wants.+
The only reason Avo found it easy to make the second offer was because he knew the Bloodthane had to refuse.
A small canon was one thing. A spike of a few hundred thaums was entirely impossible to hide.
A shocked heartbeat of silence. +That’s–+
+A family discount.+ Avo finished.
Even in the darkness, he could feel Reva’s wariness of him spike. He really needed to stop feeding into her dread, but if he had to be honest with himself, her fear kindled his amusement.
+Tenth floor. We’re approaching the backline,+ Reva said, pushing past Avo’s conversation with White-Rab. +Looks like they left four teams to hold the tenth floor. Counting about two hundred screeners as well.+
The snuffers here were premium quality. They took their engagements seriously and held all their angles.
When it came time for them to die, Avo wanted them understand that their deaths were beyond their means to halt, for whatever consolation that would offer.
+Don’t start with them,+ Avo said. +Killing backline might draw attention. Fallwalkers first. They’re the unknowns. Highest threats. All the others can be handled quietly. We need to dismantle the core of the forces first.+
Of this, Reva was in accord. +There are four of them. Looks like they have a perimeter set up. Raldi should be able to at least scry at them and give us as sit-rep.+
+New favor,+ Avo said.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
+No. Favors are for you. She has something I like to think of as “pleasing requests.”+ White Rab finished with a chuckle.
[Maybe if you burn yourself over her mind and say that you can give him the ghost fucky-wucky, he might let you have this special privilege too,] Abrel deadpanned.
Instead of feeling amused in any way, disgust exploded across the entirety of his consciousness. The idea of mentally copulating with his cog-donor was beyond taboo for most of his templates.
+Sure,+ Avo said to the other Necro. +Do it. Snuff the Fallwalkers first. Engage the other assets quietly. Make it seem like they were attacked by convention forces. Don’t expose yourself. Quiet war rules. No full manifesta–+
+I know how this works, rotlick,+ Reva snarled.
Her response made Abrel snort with laughter. [Oh, rotlick. Does that remind us of someone? A certain angry, hair-knotted, bug-armor-wearing, my-brother’s-Heaven-stealing disgraced Regular that you just up and left without talking to for a few hours? Hm?]
Avo cycled memories of Mirrorhead’s murder through his consciousness, looping the moment when his flesh burst, wet viscera flowing out from his tattered suit like a bursting sack.
The template’s joy evaporated in an instead. [Fuck you.]
Avo laughed in his own mind and directed his attention back to Reva. +Okay. You want to lead? Head of your own cadre. Could show me how things are done.+
+No,+ Reva said. +You pulled us into this, you take us through.+
There she went, still looking for a glimpse of his full capabilities.
He couldn’t blame her considering how much time he spent researching leading up to his assassination of Mirrorhead.
Pouring up through the electrical grid, he bypassed the tenth floor and made for the fifteenth.
+Fine. Handle the attackers. Keep the defenders blind. Go see what Walton left us. Then…+
Then maybe he would give White-Rab some insurance in the form of a Frame. Avo couldn’t see how Reva nor his cog-donor could resist. Such would curry immense favor as well, wouldn’t it?
***
“What part of ‘check your fucking fire don’t you understand.’”
Human flesh boiled into melting plastic possessed a certain stench that just couldn’t be put into words. Osjack Thenden knew the smell all too well. Even inside a vacuum-sealed exoskeleton, he could still sense the taste, along with the fetid stretch of all the Guild muscle stinking it up around him, and every last flavor there was to suffer for a good ten or so miles.
There really wasn’t much to say about it. He heard that if you were born a Guilder ‘Clad, you could have those fancy big-city Agnosi make you your own Frame and Heavens.
In the Sunderwilds, things were different and the choice was sparse. You didn’t complain about what Heaven you got or how its canons were shit. Instead, you worked hard to feel gratitude every day because you were one of the few people capable of looking past the top of a mountain at the wrong time of day because you could resurrect after the no-no angle decapitated you.
But it was bullshit. All of it. Life. His Heaven. His “friends.” And especially this city.
Here he was, working for favors, ontologics, and thaums under these “Massist” people, trying to scrape together enough shit so he could swap out his Heaven of Cooking for something that would actually let him take back his Enclave from those Nyong sisters.
It wasn’t his fault those Sang freaks had a Heaven of Spiders and a Heaven of Castrations. He wasn’t fighting that shit. Yeah, he could transmute just about anyone into their weight in random three-course meals, perfectly sense smells in a ten-mile radius, and summon cooked lobsters out of boiling water, but that meant jack and shit when it came to an actual fight.
Hence, there was a need to exaggerate parts of his background and ontologics. It took nearly all of his remaining imps to get a false set of canons attached to his Skein, and buying this armor took what was left.
All that shit culminated in a perfect storm in which he did his best to fight alongside the others without any of the proper training or showing too much of his Heavens.
As so, Osjack Thenden didn’t perform very well. And he might’ve incinerated an arcade filled with hiding civilians and overloaded his fusion burner’s power cell by firing it for too long.
It took Lip–another Fallwalker from somewhere–flash-freezing his arm to stop it from exploding or something like that.
Now, Osjack found himself staring up at the transparent face of a very annoyed-looking Scaarthian Godclad with an actually useful Heaven. Something about winter or ice, no doubt. The air around her was cold, and the clarity of her skin made him feel like he was standing face-to-face with a skeleton. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“I asked you a question, fucker,” she said, clenching her jaw as she spoke. “Is it Standard that’s hard for you, or are you just simple?”
“It’s just an accident. I saw movement–the door opened–”
“People inside were cleared,” she growled. “Details got called out all the way down in the tenth. They weren’t supposed to be touched. They definitely weren’t supposed to be torched..” Her disgust for him grew, and her lips began to do that curling thing again.
Osjack sighed. Fuck this city. Fuck her too. “But you guys fucking killed all those people in the lobby–”
“That was pacification! Suppression! We were breaking their will to fight. The people you just murdered surrendered. They weren’t going to be a threat! There are rules here. Trades for every engagement. All lives of citizens are insured with others per the Articles! Do you know nothing of the losses this will incur? This is coming out from your bounty. Yours! I will not suffer for your stupidity.”
Such bullshit.
He sighed and shook his head. “Alright. Alright. Sorry. Fuck.”
Somehow, that just made the air grow ever colder. “You… stay behind me. From now on, you will not act until I say.” The pale orbs she called eyes swept him up and down. “And you call yourself a Fallwalker. How did someone like you even get a Frame?”
That hit something deep. A twitch ran through Osjack and he thought of his brother–his always perfect brother and that fight in the woods. He thought of the rock he used to conduct fratricide. He thought of how the Rend just escaped from his brother’s body and spoiled all flesh around them.
That was the first time Osjack died. But when he did, he dreamed of falling into a sea of fire that hardened around him.
Stepping past the enhanced Scaarthian before he did something regrettable, he rounded the corner and made his way back to the activities quarter for the floor that they were now using as a forward operating base. He was surprised the angry Skuldvaster would just let him go like that, but frankly, he would’ve turned her into roast beef if she kept speaking to him like that.
It was one of the few things he definitely could do.
As a few local ghosts slithered overhead, he checked his cog-feed to see if their lobby was back up yet, but found nothing but static and mind-stinging mem-data leaking through the session.
Bullshit.
All this was bullshit.
He was tired of this. He needed to think. He wanted some time to himself.
He needed it.
Osjack stopped walking and turned around. Meeting up with the rest of his “cadre” could wait. Not like they needed him much anyway. All he could offer was…
He sniffed, and the unmistakable scent of blood greeted him. Blood and… something more. A lot of different flavors…
Drawing on his Heaven, he filtered through the various smell assailing his being and focused on the peculiar ones that caught his interest. The coppery tang was almost sweet–almost like… ghoul’s blood. Hyper rich in oxygen and all that other weird biology shit those monsters were made from.
But there was also a hint of tungsten, and that stuff locus were made of, and… was that tritium or something? Glass?
Following the trail, he found himself guided by a separate stream of ghosts as well, these appearing to dart down the hall toward the point where the light was still flickering. Osjack blinked and wondered how that happened. They said these walls were indestructible. How’d the wiring or whatever get damaged?
As darkness flashed in and out of his sight, something deep inside Osjack’s bones began to shiver. He had the same feeling when the sisters were coming for his own–or when he killed his brother for his Frame.
Something was wrong, but the taste pulled him closer–
There was fizzling sound before every last light across the hall went dark. The smell of ghoul-blood flared across his nostrils, and it felt like where it was coming from was right next to him somehow.
Spinning around, Osjack activated the brightness functions for his armor’s hud.
Just in time to see the darkness flowing under him like a stream.
“What the fu–”
The ground turned fluid beneath his feet, and downward into darkness, he sank like a rock swallowed by the ocean. It was so dark down here. Quiet too. But the smells were getting closer and closer. Osjack clenched his fist and sent a command through his exoskeleton’s systems. He needed his fusion burner to fire. He needed light.
The mechanism didn’t reply. His arm servos whined against the frost still burrowed deep within.
Fuck.
Fu–
WARNING: REND fD@#FKLFLA
1vb=12*#*($#@g
eRRo
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Death, as it turns out, was kind of bullshit too when the one hunting you could reach into your blood and liquefy you from the inside.
Nothing much a Heaven of Cooking could do against that.
In the end, that was the final lesson of Osjack Thenden’s life.
Sometimes, you’re just shit out of luck.