The paths for the Guard-Captain have been walked. Her ultimate fates have been compiled.
{Oh. Joy. Let me guess: she tries to solve everything by shooting or exploding various people and places?}
She will seek to resolve matters the way she was trained: Through every means available; by any method of victory possible. She is a fine weapon. A good hound. A worthy adversary.
{If that is true, why did you let the Chivalrics drive her off?}
Because the path of her retention would have led to civil strife. Strife I could not abide.
{Ah. Ape politics fucks us yet again.}
Indeed. But through these paths, we will have solutions to any of his inner circle should the Stillborn prove contagious.
-Veylis Avandaer and the Infacer
29-4
Reflections
JELENE DRAUS OF THE STILLBORN, DELIVERER OF FINALITY (WAR/GUNS/REFLECTION/LUMINOSITY…) [EST. 10000000]
Existence shuddered as if the surface of a disturbed pond as the synaptic lightning receded back into the memory tower. Yet the final bolt stitched a new form into shape, infusing it with the glow of Soulfire and marking it finally with the pinpricks of an unformed accretion.
Standing at the base of the ziggurat and flanked by the smear-like breaches revealing zones of altered reality, Draus faced the new threat with blank thoughts. She saw the name that was displayed, and the tension within her built to a solid knot. A dome of glass spilled over the ziggurat, sealing it away from the rest of the district within her Liminal Paracosmos. Through the glass, legions of replicas marched forward, guns spiraling behind them like drifting wings, their blades aglow with eldritch luminosity.
From within an altered space created by her heaven, Draus observed her supposed twin with apprehension. As a god-glad of the H-sphere, she felt as if she was a blade of grass standing before the falling weight of a wrathful hurricane. But the Deliverer of Finality did not move, did not initiate a sudden assault. Instead, it stood there, as if waiting for further orders.
To make the contrast between them even starker, it looked like it was designed in an inversion to her current design. Rather than being a hundred-meter-tall knight made from glass, sporting shards and guns as wings, it was a colossus twice her height, but composed of broken blades, warped barrels, burning arrows, and ruined husks. Destroyed platforms made for war composed the entirety of its body, and the gore extracted from pulped corpses lined the broken remnants of war, forming a humanoid shape leaked with fractured viscera.
From its back extended six trails of broken glass, each one ugly, jagged, edge-pointed, drowsy. There was a tremor of symmetry between them. But more than reflection, she felt an absolute sharpness emanating from the tips of the fractals. And finally, there was that ugly-rusted gun that had been sported in place of an actual head. It was a wretched-looking weapon — a massive cannon longer than some buildings were tall. It swore to four teeth-like barrels; an enormous spite of hissing darkness lay dormant within.
And Draus sensed a feeling of wrongness emanating from the enormous flechette. She knew on an existential level that if it hit her, any part of her absolute destruction would be her fate. That no barrier, be it constructed from miracles of matter, space, time, or more, could deny the seed of ruin it carried within.
{Draus, are you well? Our sensors are detecting a massive spike of activity pulsating through the strands of substance composed in your general area.} Calvino sent.
Draus didn''t respond verbally. Instead, she cast over her recent experiences using her ansible as she kept every last bit of her focus locked on the deliverance of finality.
{What the fuck,} Chambers muttered, still on the same call. {Why the hell does this half-strand have your name as a Heaven?}
That was a good question, one that Draus wanted to find out about as well, and the answer came as the rumbling voice of Veylis spoke once more. With each syllable, the memory tower shuddered with oscillations of unstable gold.
"G-guard Captain," Veylis said, her voice a fractured echo of what she used to be. "I greet you now, beyond my egress from life, my consciousness sustained in embracement…" The last word shifted between her and Avo, and suddenly the gold vanished as an ethereal essence erupted out from the tower.
Draus failed to react as another bolt of lightning whipped something into her. But rather than inflicting harm, she felt a flood of miracles splashed around her being, and a faint shroud of golden armor fused around her manifestation. The shroud resembled a tall gold-armored figure sporting a weapon that looked like a merge between a fishing rod and a glaive. Above her, a strange fish swam along the currents of time, sending cascading echoes outward, forming protective eddies around Draus''s body.
The Fisher that Wasn''t
Draus knew this Heaven as well. It was Zein’s instrument. She remembered fighting Thousandhand, how futile the whole thing felt; the shadow superimposed upon her was but a faint shadow of the Godslayer.
Can… only offer this… haven’t fixed… rest of her… need more time… no time… Get to tower…. Avoid anathema… Escape…
But before Avo could finish his final words, Veylis returned, and the ethereal glow was usurped by vibrations of trembling gold once more. The Fisher vanished just before Veylis returned, and even Draus ceased to feel its presence.
"Guard-Captain," Veylis said, speaking through both the tower and the Deliverer of Finality.
"Highest Avandaer," Draus replied. From every reflection she controlled, she brought forth the most potent of her guns and created a few hundred shards empowered by Shattershunt.
She had no expectations about winning a prolonged encounter against this anathema. Whatever Avo meant by that, there was no time to play defensive. The infusion of Zein’s shadow was given unto her to create an opportunity for escape, but the conditions of her retreat still needed to be created. As such, she couldn''t hold anything back. Her rend was already pretty high for the Simulacra, and if a Sphere Eight vented into her, Draus guessed she''d pop like a shitty light bulb.
"Kinda figured death wouldn''t come that easy to you," Draus said, speaking to the High Seraph. The Deliverer shifted its gun-shaped head ever so slightly. Draus fought back a sneer inside as she recognized that tick to be one of her own. Nether bullshit, path bullshit, it was all bullshit. Give her a gun, a monowire, a bomb, hell, let her use her hands, and she''d have no problem with the bloodshed to follow. But even as a Godclad, Draus couldn''t help but think of canons as being the biggest pile of bullshit of them all.
Sometimes it didn''t matter about your skill, your grit, your preparation. Sometimes the other half-strand just had you by the cunt.
"Contrarily, I am dead," Veylis replied, but a slow chuckle followed her words. "I simply have not ceased, where my soul and original vessel have been shattered beyond restoration. My consciousness has found continuance as the bridge of my paths joined the length of the dreamer''s sequences, and through our mutual collapse, our ruins fell united, each forming the other''s load-bearer, my time circulating the destruction of our ruptured forward in the future, and his unique cognition preserving us, rebuilding our egos where all lesser minds would have succumbed to a final dissolution."
{Oh,} Calvino sighed in the back of Draus''s mind, {oh dear, this is far worse than I expected. She is likely trying to integrate herself into the Stillborn. This is a level of recklessness that we have not anticipated.}
{Wait, so Avo still alive, right? I mean, Veylis is too, which is shit, but you heard what she said, he''s still alive!} Chambers barked a laugh, and Draus finally found it almost admirable how the man could stay upbeat even when she was about to get stuffed.
"So this was your game all along, huh?" Draus asked.
The Deliverer extended an arm, and some of the rusted wrecks that composed its material body tumbled into shape out from its open fingers, forming a glistening blade composed of rust, fusion, blood, weaponry, and above all, consuming darkness.
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"As much as I would like to boast of my foresight, I must offer the Dreamer his due. I laid my plans for the future, but he spun an admirable web of ever-changing schemes in the very present, between him, the Chronicler, Mother, and Naeko, I relearned lessons of humility and near desperation."
Draus snorted at that. "Well, damn, the rotlick must have gotten pretty close, if even you''re telling me this."
"Blessed be the worthy," Veylis said simply, "this truth is self-evident. The action does not change when virtues are shared between enemies."
"Nah," Draus replied, "reckoning just makes it truer."
"Well-spoken. But alas, I leave the time for dialogue, as I intend, Guard-Captain, to know this vessel to be something I created in the past, specifically to eliminate you."
"Flattered," Draus scoffed, “Didn’t think you gave that much of a shit.”
“Not so. You were a lamentable loss for Highflame. But the cost of your retainment would have seen civil strife. Alas, this counter-agent is all I can offer you as an apology. May it kill you well. I crafted it to be your nemesis should you have inherited the Stillborn after burning Dreamer''s potential demise. But gazing upon you now, seeing your limited Spheres, I now bear witness to the Dreamer''s many flaws. He is selfish, he thought, of himself before all others, even as he sought to become you, even as he sought a lying consciousness. He has damned you, Guard-Captain. Burn bright, fight hard, die well."
With that, all the splendorous radiance of gold vanished and Draus was alone with her “clone.” The jagged, fang-like barrels of the Deliverer’s gun-head began to spin, and slowly it closed both hands around the hilt of its new blade as it shifted its posture, cutting a slow, trailing scar across reality. A wound opened across the flesh of spatial existence, and the Deliverer pushed its leg back as a shudder of absolute speed surged through its body, a displacement building between how fast it shuddered and the dust flowing around it.
At the same time, Draus''s mind arranged hundreds of firing trajectories. Green lanes threaded through the deliverance, she prepared to unleash the full power of her Shattershunts. Something told her that even her most potent attack wouldn''t see her foe destroyed, but the further destabilization of spatial reality could give her just enough room to reach the tower.
“You know,” Draus said, speaking to the Deliverer without knowing if it was going to reply, “you could just step aside and let me pass. I ain''t gonna tell on you to the High Seraph.”
After a familiar chuckle escaped from within, having composed of ruined weapons and mangled corpses, it replied, “And you could just drop your heavens right now and let me shoot you. Save us both some time.”
Shit, the fucking piece of shit even sounded like her. “Yeah, we both know I ain''t gonna do that,” Draus said.
“Of course,” the Deliverance replied. “Who would we be if we followed orders?”
Both Deliverer and Draus shared a laugh, but the original considered that thought for a moment. “Well, I''d say we''d be you, seeing how everything about you was shaped from the High Seraph’s will.”
Deliverance went very still at that. “You know, it just occurred to me that I''m kind of a sow. Gonna enjoy killing you, Draus.”
“Right back at you, Draus,” Draus replied, and then she immediately cast Chambers once more. {Hey, half-strand, got any ideas?}
{What? Me?} Chambers said, sounding startled and surprised in equal measure.
{This one''s an exact template or echo of me. Everything I do, she''d probably know in advance. So, I either have to get a lot smarter than who I am right now, or a lot dumber. Thankfully, I got both options on standby.}
{I approve of your strategy of destabilizing spatial reality,} Calvino said, {but I suspect every Heaven you possess, your counterpart already possesses a countermeasure to. Your best odds are to rupture the local area, and delay their attack as long as possible. The… miracle Avo infused into you is the only thing the Deliverer likely does not have a counter to. But you should not gamble all you have on something you cannot control.}
{Maybe use a flat wave detonation too,} Chambers said. This idea drew Draus''s attention. {Yeah, yeah, the detonation. If the other you can talk, and she can probably think. If she can think, well, a detonation will throw her off. It might not be much, but every little bit that gets you to the tower counts, right?}
Draus grunted in accord. {Shit, Chambers. I thought you was supposed to give me a stupid idea.}
{Yeah, well… the rash isn’t working anymore… so, my one big trick is gone.}
The Regular snorted.
“Whenever you''re ready, consang,” the Deliverer said.
Draus replied by launching every single Shattershunt shard at the Deliverer. Fragments of luminous glass splashed down around the base of the ziggurat. But with the contemptuous sweep of their hissing blade, the spatial links between the Shattershunts were severed, and a massive gulf of Soulfire exploded out from Draus.
She didn’t even see the cut. One moment the Deliverer was still. The next they were finishing a stroke through her Shards.
VENT! VENT! VENT!
BACKLASH: DOMAIN OF (SPACE)
REND CAPACITY [SIMULACRA RESPLENDENT] - 97%
A torrent of eldritch fire wept out from every reflection controlled by Draus. And suddenly, her Heaven of Reflections destabilized vanishing with a discordant cry. But just as the Deliverer blinked across the distance between her and Draus, the Regular sailed forth in the form of her Arsenalist, countercharging without fear. She detonated a thoughtwave at the same moment she fired herself across the air as a bullet.
Her mind went blank, but in the next moment, when her coherence reformed, she realized she was sailing towards the top of the tower unimpeded. For a beat, her gambit looked successful. And then the Deliverer suddenly materialized before her less than a meter away, a massive barrel pointed at Draus’ slight bullet.
“Fuck,” Draus sighed.
The gun of the Deliverer fired then, and a shock wave hammered against Draus before the spike of darkness even arrived, jolting her to an agonizing halt. A massive pillar of absolute destruction speared out across the scant distance between Draus and the Deliverer, and the Regular felt the cold claws of death close around her as reality itself unraveled with the passage of the bullet. Only for the echo of the Fisher to ignite around her. A glaive rose up, splitting a wound open on the surface of the tapestry. The Deliverer’s spike slipped through the chronological rupture, and in the next instant, the Fisher rematerialized, thrusting its glaive through the Deliverer’s skull-gun.
But instead of dying, Draus''s clone seized the Fisher''s weapon by its hand as a blast of destructive fire rushed out from severed head, with black flames and scalding blood eating clean through the Heaven of Tiem. Parts of Zein’s heaven vanished outright, even as it tried to shift out of the way. Draus felt the Deliverer’s Domain of War press down upon the laws of reality harder than any other miracle she experienced before.
The Deliverer was a Heaven born from the ruins that remained after war. It was more than a death, more than destruction. It was the stillness after a struggle. It was the collapse of progress. It was the smoke choking away the light of the sky, murdering all hope for every tomorrow to come. The Deliverer was a terminus, a fatal point where everything had to break, where there was nothing left to give, nothing but war and annihilation.
But what was war to Zein? Even a shadow of her? Death held no sway even over Thousandhand’s shadow, and instead of striking back before it was utterly destroyed, it seized the Deliverer in a grapple, plunging both of them into the currents of time. They were gone in the next instant, and the path ahead stood clear. Draus exploded forth, zipping at hypersonic speeds—only as the Deliverer snapped back through the cage of glass she layered around the ziggurat.
Once more, the bloody, black blade descended. This time, there was no Zein. Draus was but a scant meter away when she felt her divine form part in two. A second backlash tore through her, this one destabilizing her Heaven of Guns as well. She tumbled free, her ephemeral form emerging from the collapsing wavelengths of Soulfire.
And this would be the point where most died. This would be the point where most failed to react, out of options.
But Regulars fought, Regulars survived, Regulars endured, and Regulars adapted.
Draus was more than her Heavens, and she still had options remaining. Options such as the Bomb Queen implant allowed her to create explosive organisms using a special organ transplanted on her back. The detonation mangled her body enough to fling her through the phantasmal surface of the tower as she splashed into the ethereal bomb whirling free from the cogni-thaumic construct.
She felt another slash of absolute destruction chase after her, but it dissolved into nothingness, coming apart as a splash of ghosts in a phantasmal force coiled around her, drawing her away from the district while ghostly chains speared out from the tower, devouring the Deliverer from within.
“Fuckin’ Zein,” the Deliverer grumbled as she began to disintegrate. But that was the last Draus saw of her alternate self as she pulled away into a chaotic sea of memories, phantasmal rapids carrying her downwards, deeper and deeper into a whirlpool. Visions and stimuli flooded her mind. Her cog-feed burst apart into pulsating sprays of discordant color, and in the back of her mind, she could hear Calvino and Chambers calling out to her, their voices growing distant as she continued plunging deeper and deeper down an all-consuming vortex.
And suddenly the world was inverted, and she found herself laying cheek-first upon a cold stone surface. For a few moments thereafter, the Regular simply lay there, the nanosurgeons within her blood mending ruined organs.
The faint feeling of thaumic energies cascaded against her Frame, and faintly, she could feel the Heavens within herself stirring once more.
But as she recovered, a shadow passed over her, and the Regular triggered her projectile launcher, ignoring her ruined body as she responded to the threat—
“There is no need,” a thin, airy voice spoke to her. “You are safe here, Regular Draus. You are safe. Our lord warned us of your coming. This is a sanctuary. You will not be harmed.”
Still, Draus turned, aiming her gun at… “The fuck?” A group of flats stood before her. There were dozens of them. Men, women, children. Some possessed ashen skin while others looked dark as the Maw. But all of them wore similar attire. Robes and dresses decorated with the glyphs of Old Noloth. “The… fuck are you all…” Draus slurred.
“We were esteemed chosen and hidden traitors to the City Eternal. Once, we called ourselves the Double Thinkers, “those who faced the walls within.” But now… We stand amongst the first to welcome our new king, our broken king, and with your arrival, Knight Draus, we will see the restoration of Noloths old and new, our destruction unmade by the cleansing flames of the Burning Dream.”