Godclads

Chapter 25-1 These Flames Above and Below

Chapter 25-1 These Flames Above and Below

“NETHER BREACH DETECTED!”

-The Gatekeeper

25-1

These Flames Above and Below

ONTOLOGICAL ALTERATION DETECTED

ADAPTING STILLBORN-PATTERN LIMINAL FRAME...

ERROR - UNABLE TO ISOLATE SOUL FROM HEAVEN

ERROR - FRAME RUPTURE DETECTED

ERROR - CYCLER CONDITION UNKNOWN

ATTENTION - UNKNOWN ONTOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT DETECTED

->UNKNOWN ONTOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT ORIGIN > USER [EGO]

UNKNOWN ONTOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT IDENTIFIED AS USER [AVO] EGO

WARNING - USER [AVO] NOW CLASSIFIED AS _ARK_

->ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE NOW INTERWOVEN WITH COMPONENT ONTOLOGICS

SOLUTION: MERGE SOUL WITH ALTERED USER ONTOLOGY

INITIATING MERGE... 100%

ATTENTION: EMBODIMENT CREATED

->(CONCEPTUALIZATION)

[OVERHEAVEN] CREATED - AVO, THE KNOWER OF TOTALITY (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

ATTENTION - DOMAIN SHIFTING POSSIBLE – NEW STILLBORN DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAY DISCOVERED - [CONCEPTION OF ONTOLOGY]

INTERNALIZED DOMAIN OF (CHRONOLOGY) MENDED

CYCLERS CONJOINED

REDIRECTING REND...

WARNING: UNABLE TO UNGRAFT ATTACHED ONTOLOGICS

SOLUTION: ASSIMILATE ONTOLOGICS INTO OVERHEAVEN

ASSIMILATING ALL COMPROMISED ONTOLOGICS UNDER HEAVEN OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION): [WOUNDMOTHER]; [FARDRIFTER]; [TECHPLAGUER]; [ARSENALIST]

WARNING: REND CAPACITY RISING...

ASSIMILATING EXCESS ONTOLOGICS: [STEEL MAGNOLIA]; [RAVAGER OF THE DEPTHS]; [DAWNGAZER]; [THE CHARIOTEER OF DIRECTIONALITY]; [NIGHTGOUGER]; [SKYGRASPER]; [CENSOR OF DETAILS]; [HEART OF NOLOTH]

ASSIMILATION COMPLETE

ADAPTION COMPLETE

LIMINAL FRAME STABILIZEDVissit for updates

Avo changed, and his Frame changed with him. Memories drifted across his awareness, but also spread through his Soul, extending out from him like tendrils that bifurcated the flames. It took him a moment to realize his Metamind’s sequences had been internalized, and another for the haze to fully clear from his cognition.

His Soul remained the nexuses of his perception, but no longer did he linger in a fiery vacuum filled with little more than ontologics, cyclers, and his Soul. Phantasmal architecture rose from the burning waves, orbiting him as the ghost-made continents they were. More than this, however, he could feel his Soulfire suffusing his ghosts, pouring streams of gold into their structures, into his mind.

They drifted upward, and Avo followed their movements–was shocked to discover a beacon of phantasmal fire projected upward from a gaping wound in his liminal border. Threads of ghosts crawled upward toward the firmament, Avo gazed through them, felt through them, was them.

Parts of his being were drifting back up into the Nether, were pulling information back down. Or maybe that wasn’t the right way of looking at things. Maybe he now embodied an aspect of the Nether itself.

His Frame... it classified him as an ARK now. He felt himself change, but the outcome of his most recent apotheosis remained unexplored.

No time like coming death to learn some new rules.

GHOSTS - [100,134,996]

THAUMIC OUTPUT - 144,870 THAUM/c

AVO, THE KNOWER OF TOTALITY

->EMBODIMENT OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION)

->DOMAINS OF ([VARIABLE])

DOMAIN SHIFT ACTIVATED - CONCEPTION OF ONTOLOGY IN EFFECT

And all at once, he found his ghosts guiding his thaums, fragments of consciousness binding temporarily with wills to reweave the very nature of his Heavens and shape his ontology to something that could serve his needs.

Right now, though, his problem wasn’t one of architecture but a need to expel his Rend. Thankfully, he still had unused thaums left to spend and with only his Embodiment of Conceptualization and mind flowing free from the confines of his Frame, the choice of his newest enhancement was quite simple.

CANON OF (CONCEPTUALIZATION) - 144,870 THAUMS/c

Avo paused momentarily to take in the amount of thaums that were flowing through his Embodiment. “All of them?

[Because you are assimilated maybe... your nature is interwoven. Unless you graft an external cycler, things within you of a conjoined chronology will not be considered separate constructs... maybe? Avo, this isn’t the important thing, make a new mind-hell first or you’re going to die!]

EMBODIMENT: (CONCEPTUALIZATION) - 144,870 THAUMS/c

->DEFINEMENT: IGNORANCE (IV) - “I am all you don’t know, and all the world does not know. I am the missing detail. I am what goes unnoticed. I am a warmind reforged–made complete through your rebirth.”

APPLYING DOMAIN OF (ENTROPY)

->CANON: UNSEEN, UNKNOWN, UNMADE - THE ARK PERMANENTLY DESTROYS AN ENTITY’S ABILITY TO LEARN SOMETHING THEY DO NOT ALREADY KNOW. REND IS EMPTIED BASED ON THE SPECIFICITY OF THE SEVERED KNOWLEDGE AND HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE IS TO BE SEVERED PERPETUALLY.

WARNING: THIS ACTION WILL DAMAGE THE FABRIC OF THE NETHER AND INFLICT COMPLETE COGNITIVE COLLAPSE ON A STABLE EGO

REND CAPACITY - 91%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

[Potent!] Kae breathed, [Wait. One more thing. Maybe we can... we can adapt this. Use this. Avo! Apply a Domain of Matter to this canon.]

A new configuration of the canon materialized, but Avo found himself slowly weaving the Hell, guiding patterns that could afflict the material world out from pathways once containing nothing but pure thought. He converted branches from his Woundmother and grew them from his new Embodiment. Kae was no less bewildered than he, but her plan slowly revealed itself, and Avo found numb with anticipation.

APPLYING DOMAIN OF (MATTER)

->CANON: WITHERED MEMORY - THE ARK DRAWS A SECTION OF MATERIAL REALITY INTO THEIR MIND VIA THEIR GHOSTS. THE AMOUNT OF GHOSTS VARIES BASED ON MASS AND SITUATIONAL COMPLEXITY, AND ALL GHOSTS ALONG WITH THE MATTER THEY CONTAIN WILL BE UNMADE BY REND-INFUSED TRAUMAS.

REND CAPACITY - 93%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

[What the fuck,] Corner breathed, trying to understand the canon Avo just cultured within himself.

The newly ascended Ark—a cognitive rival to the great towers held by each of the Guilds—wasted no more time. He flung his awareness outward from his Frame, pouring his perception outward as he began to take in anything comprised of material substance. Ghosts flooded out from him as they swallowed the walls of his tower, and further did they flow downward like a waterfall. All that they touched turned from matter to memory; it was as if an unseen presence was unzipping the blood-made spire from the outside. Pieces just vanished upon ethereal currents, slashing wounds spreading to become fissures. With all that went missing beyond, new structures entered Avo’s awareness without difficulty.

The strands composing his skein jolted with violence as his Embodiment siphoned existing patterns out of the actual world, but as he cast mentally subsumed mass into his traumas, he sacrificed three thousand memories and flattened the distortion.

And with that, the strain prying at his very ontology lessened, and Rend flowed out from him, injecting his debt of entropic disbelief into to another structure; a sacrifice was found in his stead.

REND CAPACITY - 87%

Inside his mind, Kae began to giggle, then laugh. [This... this is... we... I have created a masterpiece. I have created salvation. I have created victory. This cannot be possible. But we are doing it. We are doing it. Avo. You’re a miracle. You just turned yourself into a Concept given metaphysical shape.]

More of the external reality unraveled. He found Chambers and Dice trying to comprehend the sudden annihilation taking place around him, and quietly, he simmered with growing pleasure.

REND CAPACITY - 84%

REND CAPACITY - 79%

REND CAPACITY - 75%