Godclads

Despite his allegiances, despite the war, despite his very past, I will stand testament to these words:

Aedon Chambers is what it means to rise. He is what it means to be a real man. A real hero.

We were not allies. We are enemies. But still, he stayed to fight his shadow for me. For the idea of me. And for himself.

I would not be here. And neither would Yaobi. And I would ask the Inner Council to consider granting him a stay of execution should we ever prevail against him in the field of battle, and respect those under his Guild when engaged.

For now, I put forth my resignation. As a Seeker and a Guilder. I have done enough harm to others. I have spent enough time at war. There is someone I wish to spend my days with; a city I want to know with however much time we have remaining should the end come.

I remain proud of the Ori, of the republics and its peoples, but I cannot do as the Inner Council commands. There is no life where I go to war against the Lovebringer. Not after what I have been shown.

This world is filled with monsters, and noble foes can be a rarer treasure than trustworthy allies. It is still my preference that democracy prevails. But the rule of love would not be so bad…

-Former Seeker Mas Nudracht

30-17

—[Chambers]—

VENT! VENT! VENT!

REND CAPACITY [LOVEBRINGER] - 99%

VENT! VENT! VENT!

REND CAPACITY [BIOIGNITER] - 96%

Aedon Chambers was a poor, ugly, wretched little man. That was never more obvious to Chambers as he studied his mind-broken twin born of the paths while he worked to heal the survivors of the Sovereignty.

With the Fuckbringer laid low, the grotesque sores and festering folds vanished, and the structures they subsumed returned as piles of ruin. Chambers didn’t know how many were trapped beneath the rubble when the attack began, but they were all dead now. Not a single accretion lit the detritus. Not a single bond or link slipped free.

Aedon Chambers had been a murderer in his life. Had been a flesh-dealer; slave runner; thief; any number of shitty things. Mass murder though? That was never something he wanted to do. No, he was too much a rat to concern himself with higher thoughts like proper revenge or retribution against society. He just wanted to survive. Even without love, he just wanted to be.

However, his shadow—the user of the Fuckbringer—was a magnitude more bitter, a magnitude simpler in thought, and a magnitude weaker at heart. The puppet that Veylis sculpted stole from him his behavior, but failed to account the reasons behind them. So it was that Chambers, nested within the ontology of twin gods descended upon defeated reflection, and sighed.

“Can burn him,” the Bioigniter cracked. It still had enough Rend Capacity to see that done. Evil-Chambers was well and truly fucked. His mind was smashed to shit, his Frame was likely choked with Rend after all the fucked up miracles he was using, and when he died… Well, Chambers wasn’t sure what might happen to the Fuckbringer. Probably some time-ghost bullshit if the Substance was anything to go by.

Just then, a whisper caressed the surface of Chambers’ mind. Consume… him…. Take… from me… to you… from her… to you…

Avo. No, Ignorance. The former Definement was speaking to Chambers from inside. Telling him to feed the Stillborn?

“Avo? Consang? You—”

But before he could get a response, the whisper and presence vanished, leaving Chambers confused about what he was just doing, and aware that his Stillborn was about to feed. Even so, a tug of apprehension filled his chest.

He couldn’t lie: more than a couple of times he thought about killing himself when he was a kid. Especially when things got rough on the streets. Especially when he barely survived some things that were particularly fucked. But a coward is as a coward does, so he lived. Pain was better than oblivion to him; rather hurt than feel nothing at all.

Which was why he knew what was about to happen, and hated it.

The pathborn parody of Chambers lifted his head, his voice hissing and hitching in sobs, jitters, and stray curses. His eyes were wild, his expression barely human. Drool leaked from the corner of his lips, and it was clear that he was pissing and shitting himself at the same time. But even so, there was enough left in his fragmented psyche to reach to Chambers—to appeal for more life.

More life. Even after what he did to everyone in the district.

Taking in the nightmare that was once a city, Chambers swallowed sorrow more than disgust. Millions huddled together for warmth, their bodies naked and healed, while their halos remained fractured and frail. Yaobi and Mas knelt against each other on a stable patch of ground that once probably existed as polished wooden floorboards for some rich Guilders house. Their foreheads pressed together as both shook. Neither spoke, both were weeping, and the wounds inflicted on them would take a dedicated mender to heal.

They weren’t the only ones so mauled. Children in the district had been forced to endure the unspeakable; parents and lovers were missing the other ends of their bonds, now never to be found. All Chambers could truly do for them was bolster their bonds—let the love flow between them all.

Love wasn’t the absence of pain; love was even sometimes the amplification of it. But it was true and right as anything that could be born of the human condition, and so, just like Chambers, it would be their rope to life instead of the siren call of the Big Nothing.

“You’re an absolute piece of shit, you know that,” Chambers said, his muted voice reverberating across every bond, resounding like a snarl of flames. His other self looked up at him and shook.

“Puh-puh-ahh,” the host of the Fuckbringer moaned.

Chambers guessed the half-strand was probably trying to say “please don’t kill me” or some sad shit like that. It was what Chambers would do in the end. Beg. They weren’t so different there, only practically everywhere else that mattered.

“I don’t know if you ever had a chance,” Chambers said, continuing. “I don’t know if you could have made your own choices or if you were just some puppet after all the fucked up time-shit Veylis did to you. All I know is… I’m glad I’m not you, you know? I think—I think I’d be you if I was more like my dad and less like mom. She was a coward. But she cared for a bit. That mattered. Might’ve been all that is still right left in me.”

A low crooning sounded from the copy, and Chambers drifted lower. A bond extended out from him, but rather than it being tinged with vibrant magenta, it was a tether of decaying grayness, with portions dissolving away. “This Heaven fucks me up. It’s hard to think even with… I donno, the epiphany I just had? That understanding? It’s too much. Part of me thinks I don’t deserve it. The happiness. The pleasure. But, deserves got nothing to do with it. Worthy is godsdamn bullshit. We’re just here. We were all fated in our lives. And so, I think we gotta make the most of it. Gotta choose what we can, enjoy what we got, and… I guess I owe it to that poor fucking juv back down in the gutters to make something great out of what I got. Be hard enough to do the right thing for once.”

In the distance, something trembled on the wind. Sirens and engines sounded. Things were moving in the atmosphere above as well. Fuck, what Chambers wouldn’t give to see a Paladin somewhere. Should only be Naeko’s loyalists left after Avo’s purge. Those fuckers would still be reliable.

Instead, at least for now, it was only him, his shittier self, and way too many broken people that were likely going to be churned up for the coming war.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Yeah. Chambers was starting to get “why love.” Because if you didn’t, life could get really bad really fast.

The Lovebringer’s flaking link sank into his copy’s chest, and a cry of despair sounded through the madness. A flash of consciousness revealed itself—for a final broken moment—behind the Fuckbringer’s eyes.

Canon: DISENTANGLEMENT (ENTROPY/CORRESPONDENCE) — THE HOST SEVERS AN ENTITY OR OBJECT FROM ALL BONDS, CAUSING THEM TO BE PARTED IN TERMS OF MATERIAL AND METAPHYSICAL CONNECTION FROM THE WORLD.

PARADOX – [ERROR: ANATHEMA ALREADY ACTIVE]

An injection of channeled entropy hissed out from Lovebringer while Soulfire and thaums climbed back up the link in return.

INTEGRATING NEW DOMAINS…

REVISING MYTHOLOGY…

CORRECTING INCONSISTENCIES

MEM-DATA UPDATED…

LOVEBRINGER (LOVE/CORRESPONDENCE/BIOLOGY/FORCE/LUST/DECAY/MISCARRIAGE/SICKNESS) [EST. 7,554,888 THAUM/c]

The Fuckbringer’s user wasn’t flayed of his flesh. Nor did some horrific birth or sex-related anomaly consume him in an act of directed karma. Instead, he started peeling away, untangling into the pattern of existence as the very bonds that bound to the world ceased to hold, and all that he once was scattered toward everything, and therefore nothing.

The pathborn reached out one final time, his arms coming apart like dissolving ribbons, his body losing color, losing vibrancy and form.

“Well, here’s for me, killing the closest thing I still have left of you, dad,” Chambers chuckled. “When you go, if you see Veylis before the end, you tell her that Aedon Chambers is coming for her, and he’s going to get his consangs back. All of them. Tell her that one of hers got done in by the unworthy. Tell her that her dream is a miserable, ugly lie that’s going to collapse, and that I’m coming for her. Even if it kills me. Even if she carves me out of existence in the end.”

Chambers’ lesser self didn’t manage a response. He went as pitifully as he was made; a mistake born of the tapestry, returning to the tapestry. None of this would take back all the wrong he inflicted upon the people here; no love could make up for grief. But it was an end to their torment, and an end to Chambers’ confusion as well. His whole life, he had been telling himself things, drowning in degeneracy and pleasure, all to numb himself from horror.

But there was more than horror. And there would be more to life, for these people, despite their wounds. He knew it—and he let how he felt pour across his bonds so they would know as well.

REND CAPACITY [LOVEBRINGER] - 92%

Dissolving the pathborn took off more entropy than expected, but there were other threats across the city, and more than that, there was something Chambers needed to do.

The Nether had fallen. The Hungers were dismembered. But Love remained, love between people and things and ideas: a potential network, in other words. And so Chambers spread himself. He expanded, bonds jumping from person to person, nestling with beloved brands, spreading through vicarity starts, community leaders, heroes, and more.

From the heights of the Tiers, from the upper crest of Light’s End, through people across every corner of New Vultun—and even out from the megacities across Idheim—his Domain of Correspondence shivered as he finally began using it to its utmost capacity, as a growing matrix of love, of lust, of promise came to be.

A faint trickle of amusement entered the back of Chambers’ mind. Was this how Avo felt when he first started spreading across New Vultun? It was… overwhelming, but something about it was a realheart-filler, like he knew he was never going to be alone.

Threads of love burst out from person to person, spreading like an analogy between expanding webs and infectious, propagating shrapnel. Thousands jolted in surprise as Chambers connected to them, and he began to speak through his Heaven, off the top of his head.

“Hey, uh, it’s your boy, Aedon Chambers.” Someplace far—and also right beside him—he felt Marlowe cringe, but also sensed a new, nascent, and all-too-fragile link branch out from her being, and connect to him. He wasn’t sure why that was, considering he already had a link passing through—figure that out later; gotta spread the love right now. “If you’re hearing me and feeling me, you just got touched by my Heaven of Love, and uh…”

Fuck. He needed to find his other copies; he needed to start recruiting subjects and Citizens to his cause or something; maybe he could stop the war from happening at all with his Heaven, but…

Ah, fuck it. It’s time to do what he did best. Wing it. This time, though, he didn’t need to use bullshit: the truth was going to do.

“And I don’t know if any of you all noticed, but shit is kinda fucked right now, consangs. Very, very fucked. I just got done kicking my own evil twin’s ass—well, a version of me that was made by Veylis; fucking… long story. Anyway. The point is, things are coming a apart. Real fast. Real bad. The Substance is growing. It won’t be stopping anytime soon. Trust me, I know. And the Guilds—got some other words for you half-strands! You guys are wasting time trying to fuck each other to death while your own people are getting fucked in the Tiers. Ori-Thaum? What’s up, guys? What happened to unity? Where were you while my rash-using clone was exercising his right to demented shit on your Citizens and Seekers?

“Highflame? You there? Are you falling apart already? The fuck’s up with you guys, anyway. You know Veylis caused this, right? You know she royally fucked us all. You know what? Don’t ask me, ask Jaus. Yeah. Jaus. Get to Scale. I’m sure the savior’s got more credibility than I do. I’m just the guy who lucked into some love after all.

“And the rest of you… No-Dragons, Stormtree, Sanctus, Ashthrone… the fuck are you all even fighting for by this point? Can you even get to your Arks? Do you think that you’ll get the future you want when you can’t even muster a half-assed job for your kids and families? I can feel you shooting at each other! I see you smuggling Rendbombs into each other’s districts! You’re trying to run a war and refugee operation at the same time.

“And speaking of! Refugees. Subjects. Hells, some of you Citizens too. Once upon a time, we got fucked. Once upon a time, we were promised a better life—a shining future that awaited in New Vultun! The biggest of the megas! The greatest of the greatest. Hope for a true tomorrow and the resurrection of humanity’s dreams. The fuck happened to that? Where are we now? Getting harvested. Getting fucked and sold by guys like who I used to be. And now you’re getting pushed out from your homes in the Warrens. The city hasn’t even adopted you! You’re still a bastard ripe for death—and they’re coming for your homes too!

“Well. Here’s a counter-statement to all that: Fuck the Guilds; fuck the war; fuck the Substance; fuck everything! Fuck the world we’ve been born in! Fuck almost twenty years of not being able to actually fuck! To hold someone we care about! Fuck all the drugs and media and bullshit we use to fill the holes inside ourselves! Fuck the Sunderwilds that the Guilds never bothered to clean up! Fuck! All! Of! That!

“The Symmetry isn’t dead. Oh, no, no, no. The Strix might be taking a nap right now, but he’ll be back. He’ll settle the Substance. But the Strix isn’t just the Strix. He’s in me, in you, in everything. He’s choice! The God of Choice! And right now, I’m tell you the truth: I was never a disciple of the Low Masters, but the Pale Spider? He is my consang. He did everything he could to give me a chance, to let me be alive instead of survive, and I’m going to do the same for you!

“The Symmetry is still here! Still kicking! More alive than ever! And we’ll take anyone! Anyone! Anyone! Who feels that enough is fucking enough, that the Guilds aren’t going to save us, that paradise is bullshit if we can’t even be decent people right now? What? Are the Godclads going to suddenly agree to new and balanced laws? Are you Citizens going to feel right about living shoulder to shoulder with us thieves, butchers, defilers, and bastards? And are you subjects going to be fine with facing those fortunate shits who experienced your dreams, fueled from your death?

“Fuck! No! We’re not even good, the fuck chance do we have at being perfect?” Chambers barked a disbelieving laugh, his own rising euphoria manifesting as a feedback loop through his growing network. He targeted the lowest, the vulnerable, the starved. He targeted the privileged, the powerful, and the ones that might care anyway. “I don’t know! I don’t know our chances! But I wasn’t supposed to have this life, and I wasn’t supposed to be bearer of love. It happened though. This is reality. And I’m going to make the most of it. I’m going to try to do the right thing, and you all can too. The Guilds are in disarray. The Nether is fucked—and we have an opening. We have a moment. We have a chance of chances to change which way our futures fall. But it needs to be more than me or the Strix or anyone else alone. It needs to be everyone together, because existence is bigger than the one, but also shaped by countless… ones. Fuck. Fucked that line up. Uh, anyway, Symmetry! It needs you! Gotta—gotta join! Gotta do what’s right!

VENT! VENT! VENT!

REND CAPACITY [LOVEBRINGER] - 98%

Shit. He needed to upgrade his Hells—boost his Heavens. He needed to—

He felt something else brush against his bonds. Brush, but fail to grasp. Another pattern adjacent to his was moving across reality, and it was massive. Bigger than even he was right now. Time to pull a runner. But not before a few final words.

“Anyway! Symmetry! Join us! Keep us in your mind. I’ll—I’ll be back soon. I’ll talk to you all again—and remember; the Nether is down and the Necros arent’ watching. Time to make your own choices. Time to decide who you wanna fucking be! Uh, shit, we need a cool phrase—fucking Guilds stealing everything guh! Fucking… Keep your asses whole, consangs. And cracks… aligned.”

With that, Chambers receded. He felt, pulling himself away from the unknown threat instead of risking it. He had gone far enough today; he had done more than he expected. His bonds snapped free from all the people in the Sovereignty, and at once he jolted back into himself, into his body.

He blinked as the Voidwatch hanger greeted him. The Voidwatch hanger, Marlowe, and Cas.

Marlowe was laughing, her mouth cover her lips, but faintly, the thread between him and her still remained. It extended from her—was tied to him, and Chambers frowned at it. He thought he dismissed all his bonds.

“Keep your asses whole?” Marlowe said.

Cas just shook his head.

“What?” Chambers said. “What? It was the best I could off the top of my head, guys, I was—there was something coming for me, and I was running out of capacity! Fuck you guys! Why don’t—” His words trailed off as he realized the underground cult rockstar and the thoughtcaster could probably do better with the speech thing. “Fuck…” Chambers said, hiding his face in shame. “Was it that bad?”

The Columner stared at him for a second, and just chuckled. Faintly, a nascent threat left him and passed through Chambers as well. “Nah. It wasn’t perfect. But it was good enough.”