Godclads

Chapter 30-16 Master of My Own Scars (III)

There comes a point where you must step beyond who you were before, to face all history and shed your scars. To cling to pain is to build your own cage and to seal your own fate.

But to choose. To choose change is to go beyond, to make yourself wings from your past and present, and seek the skies of a future to be.

For that is the highest form of belief. Possibility. The dream of what might be beyond that which is, to reach who we might become.

-Jaus Avandaer

30-16

Master of My Own Scars (III)

—[Chambers]—

If Chambers had one flaw, it was sticking to plans. He was bad at that. He was bad at recalling the exact things he needed to do during a complex operation in the heat of the moment, he was bad at staying the course in a simple milk run, he was bad at anything that required any kind of organization whatsoever.

Most times, though, it wasn’t really his fault. That’s what he thought, anyway. Unexpected shit just transpired. Things he couldn’t have predicted, or opportunities he would have to be stupid to miss. This time, though? This time, Chambers knew he was choosing to be a dumbass, because he had every opportunity to demanifest and leave.

Love. He loved those fucking drone-missile things. Loved them so much that he started sobbing back in the hanger when they crashed. As expected, their Rendbomb payloads did less than jack shit. The Infacer—being the most devious bastard in New Vultun—had pre-planned some advanced Heaven-fuckery no one could have anticipated, but they were clearly distracted too. Being caught in brawling with the Bleaks was probably the only reason why Chambers had a clear shot at the Fuckbringer’s mind; the Infacer couldn’t maintain that crown of everything proof bullshit for long and didn’t show up in time to intercept those traumas.

Such was how Chambers knew his guess had been right: other him was built like a house made from wet shit. All it took was some messed up memories, and they were coming apart at the seams. That being said, they still had Conundrum wards, so smashing through required a few thousand different fucked-up moments instead of one really big punch. This too was something Chambers anticipated. Such was why he made his trauma-patterns go off like fragmentation instead of a big blast.

However, what he didn’t see coming was love. A big fucking nest of love running between the people still fused to the Fuckbringer, love going from parent to child, lover to love, even surviving nu-pets and their owners.

And an especially strong bond gleamed bright through the hellscape of block-sized sores, the fucked up vaginal-fold-valley-of-issue that was the Fuckbringer’s foundation, and all the questionable fluids slathering all there was in a glistening film that stank something bad too. This bond was strong. Most others were like strings or chains. This one was a fucking nanotech lattice that was hardening at the moment, reforged and strengthened through an unspeakable ordeal.

Chambers felt them first about a hundred kilometers away from the Sovereignty. Their connection was like a thin trace of magenta upon a vast canvas of miserable black. As his drones were lost, and he prepared to recede back into his own sheathe with his alternative self’s weakness confirmed, Chambers caught sight of them for the first time.

And did a double take at the stomach-churning abuse they had been put through.

They were Godclads too. He could feel that. Aside from him and the Fuckbringer, they were the only two beings that gave off the weight of thaumic essence and Soulfire. To describe them as tortured was an understatement. Both were stripped bare and coated with filth and piss and shit and all kinds of others fucked up stuff. And then there was that cocoon of flapping flesh extending from their raw-red groins. The Lovebringer and Bioigniter both identified the makeup of the organ as something womb-like, and no far from them, Chambers found a homunculus leaving a trail of fluids back to the ruptured sack the two Godclads once shared.

But all that paled before the shine of their bond. It burned bright. It burned desperately. It burned because, by this point, it was all they fucking had left of themselves. Chambers watched as the Fuckbringer tore the girl from her guy and, well, not much was left of her mind but drifting shards and her beau’s was teetering on the brink as well. Fuckbringer reared back, preparing to bring her down as a bludgeon, meaning to break both couples mentally, physically, ontologically even as the drones zipped down into his folds.

And Chambers—acting off raw, stupid instinct rather than following his plan, reached out and clutched the lovers’ bond. That grounded him in place. Prevented him from reeling back to his body, but the sheer density of their bond was… well, shit, he never felt anything as hard as that. Desperately hard, because it was the only choice they had left, the only comfort they could hold on to, even after their bodies had been used as instruments of brutality against each other.

And so Chambers pulled. He pulled the girl out of the Fuckbringer’s grasp, back along her bond, placing in a place of comfort. And in doing so, he pulled himself in — grounded himself in the district as a surge of aching love overtook his senses and overcame his good sense.

Across the city, back in Loathing where his sheath was, he felt Cas shaking him. But that didn’t matter now. Chambers had opened himself to the Domain of Love as he promised himself he wouldn’t, and there was no stopping what was to come. Instead, he rooted his own Heaven deeper upon their bond and opened his heart to all the other lovers around him.

There was so much pain here. Briefly sinking Ghost-Links into the minds of the Godclads and the other victims, Chambers flinched away. Chambers caught just a glimpse of what they endured; he saw a little; he saw too much; he saw enough. Flashes of their pain coursed through his mind as their love flowed through his Heaven. He became the nexus of who they were—defiled to the brink of madness, but still here, clinging to meaning despite the presence of despair. Because people wanted to live. They wanted to survive.

And, be it a hallucination or something more, a shadow formed over the lovers clinging to each other, weeping into one another’s embrace even after the Fuckbringer rose, riddled with trauma, chasms of instability spreading across its halo. The shadow looked up at Chambers, its form one of proud mutilation. They were missing an arm and a leg—with the arm forced up his bleeding ass. Every other tooth was missing, and his severed dick hung around his neck like a mocking necklace. His hair, though, was still perfect, and his jaw still strong. The truth that was Dannis Steelhard stood over the wounded lovers—he their personification, and Chambers his truest disciple.

Chambers didn’t have the words. He felt… love and shame and horror that Dannis was here to see this. Time practically stopped as he faced his hero, the icon of his perversity now turned to disturbing nobility. I… fuck, I’m sorry. I wish I…

“No. Fuck him.” Dannis said. “He isn’t you. He thinks he’s with the Soft Masters. He thinks he’s the fucker in this story. Maybe. But he’s not his own fucker. He’s not even a person. He’s Veylis cock. A soft cock that thinks if he’s the one doing the hurting, the torture, and the raping, he can’t get hurt, tortured, and raped back. Lots of people tell themselves that. Your dad sure did. And look at him in the end. Dead after a life wasted.”

The Fuckbringer was surging forward. What remained of Chambers’ logical mind pried him; screamed at him to run. The Lovebringer opened its tethers, drawing more love in like an addict, drowning the base of Chambers’ thoughts in feel-good emotions—a substance beyond joy. There, in the depths of his mind, where the ever-shrinking perfect alloy of Chambers resided, a choice had to be made.

I don’t know if I’m better. Love and lust and all that… it feels too good. All the stuff I watched. All the messed up shit I’ve done… All for a hit…

“We’re all looking for a hit, Aedon. But you always wanted to be me while that thing wearing your face only dreams of being on the other side. You aren’t perfect. But you dream of being greater than the pain—beyond it. He? He’s soft. He got swallowed. He drowned. You could never be him. Not even in your darkest moment. Veylis never knew you. But I do. And so do you. Stop running from who you could be, Chambers. And don’t be ashamed of who you were. Face it. Face it all. You survived everything before. You’ll do it now.”

The love… it feels…

“It's supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to hurt you. Been without all your life, and now it's all coming in. So let it come. Let it hurt. You don’t need to win and master it today. Just survive and endure long enough to make sure he loses—”

And before sensation could overcome his will, a choice was made. The Fuckbringer descended. But Chambers unleashed a cone of trauma against the Sovereignty-sized monstrosity descending upon him.

Soft. Like Dannis said.

Soft of mind. And soft of spirit.

Bonds exploded out from the Lovebringer as ecstasy overcame its coherence. But even so, there was enough of Chambers left to stop himself to including a final figure in his hollow heart.

His shadow. His Pathborn self.

He was going to break that half-strand. And he was going to enjoy doing it.

—[Cas]—

+Chambers… Chambers! Godfuckingdammit, Chambers, demanifest! Now! Now!+ Cas’ casts built with frequency and intensity. They went ignored. The Columner gritted his teeth and prepared to prime the cortex bomb. He knew he might’ve needed to do this, but everything still felt—

“Wait!” Marlowe cried, halting him.

Cas growled. “There’s no time. We wanted to see if Veylis’ puppet was mentally frail—we saw. Now, we wait for it to retreat or bring it down through asymmetrically projected traumas. That’s the—”

“He’s winning,” Marlowe cried, she pointed to the high-resolution satellite feeds their phantoms formed of the ongoing battle. They severed their Ghost-Links with Chambers when the Lovebringer fully manifested and were preparing to do what needed doing when shit went off the rails.

The strike had been a success. Until Chambers veered from the plan, clicking to what looked like two desecrated corpses to engage the Fuckbringer in ‘Clad on ‘Clad combat. Cas’ stomach had dropped after that. The Fuckbringer was more than Chambers could handle straight on—probably could overload its original counterpart with a single vent.

Yet, that fucking half-strand decided to do the stupidest thing possible. And he couldn’t tell why until he saw the bonds extending out from the Lovebringer. Until he saw Chambers connecting to the many little bodies that still merged with his Pathborn self. Love. Love made fools of commoners and kings alike. And love compelled Chambers to stay and fight for the people in the district.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Cas should have seen this coming. Obsessions, relationships, and love had killed more than a few of his assets. And now Chambers was the God of Love — power he wasn’t ready for at all, far beyond his ability to control.

But yet, there was something different this time. Chambers wasn’t just extending his tendrils everywhere. Cas and Marlowe remained untouched for one, and Chambers seemed composed enough to project traumas at the ongoing Fuckbringer instead of greeting it miracle to miracle.

Like Marlowe said: He was, somehow, winning. For now. But the risk was too high. “I can’t risk it,” Cas said through clenched teeth.

Marlowe protested. “But he’s—”

“It just takes one mistake! Just one!” Cas snapped. He took a step toward Marlowe. “He’s done. I’m frying him. I…” He saw the Fuckbringer reeling back. It was like all reality flinched with it. The Sovereignty, already twisted into being a part of the Fuckbringer’s tumbled backward. The landscape was so vast that only a set of continental-scale feeds displayed the extent of the Fuckbringer’s movement. Tissue stretching hundreds of kilometers folded and bent. The nightmarish counterpart to the Lovebringer screamed so loud the air itself shook. But it was flinching away, its mind shattering as Chambers drew close.

Inside Cas’ own heart, a treacherous candle ignited. It was a flame he smothered often. It was like he kept dim to avoid imbibing anguish. Hope. Belief. Chambers was winning. For this moment. Chambers was winning. Cas—being a damn fool himself—hesitated.

Chambers said something to his false-self, and whatever stinging insult or truth he cast from his heart, they were sharp enough to pierce through the crumbling fortress that was the Fuckbringer’s wards. The beast let out an incoherent wail and—

And a tidal wave of festering power exploded out from the Heaven of Lust. Sores erupted across its body as jets of viscous fluid sprayed out from their depths. The Sovereignty was consumed, and the visual feed winked out just as they displayed {VISUAL-MEMETIC ANOMALY DETECTED; COUNTERMEASURES ACTIVATING}

“Cas,” Marlowe said. “Have some faith.”

He choked. What a choice of fucking words.

—[Chambers]—

All the world was lust, and lust was him.

A jungle of lustful patterns blossomed out from the Fuckbringer, seizing all who could feel desire and bringing them to unspeakable heights of euphoria. The Heaven of Lust’s cords splattered against Chambers’ bonds, and though they were not entirely aligned, Chambers himself was a vector for lust—an addict to it—and so the Fuckbringer exerted its influence on him as well.

“FUCKING THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME!” The Fuckbringer pulled. And Chambers lurched forward. The only reason he didn’t go shooting off into the Fuckbringer’s grasp was because the bonds that connected him to the couple. Love was his personal Domain, and still it held strong against the foulness of desire. But love wasn’t something Chambers understood; it was a stranger, taking up room in his heart, and before the familiarity of lust, its influence over him was flagging. “You’re not better! You’re not! You’re just a half-strand piece of shit too! Those are your memories, MOTHERFUCKER! Mom left you! Dad hurt you! I’m not real! I never actually got hurt! That was you! You! You!”

A flood of thought-consuming desire was injected across the connection, and they began boiling new tendrils into the Lovebringer. These bonds were caustic and stained; a boiling darkness signifying the insatiable lust lurking within the heart of mankind, and in few hearts did it lurk deeper than Chambers.

He should have fallen. He should have lost himself right then and there. It would have felt good. All his life, the only thing he ever truly wanted was to feel good. But Chambers didn’t. Chambers wouldn’t. And couldn’t even if he wanted to. Because he wasn’t who he was anymore. Because the bonds that clung onto him made him not just himself, but the Lovebringer as well, and the Lovebringer’s ontology clung to the people here like fingers tightly interlaced.

They were lust-consumed as well. The two Godclads—the strongest of Chambers connectors—lost themselves to passion immediately, running fingers and lips over each other’s festering and fluid-stained bodies with abandon. They possessed no means to resist. But where lust existed, so too did love. Love, that the Fuckbringer lacked. Love that the Fuckbringer refused to face.

The Heaven of Love’s colossal fingers closed around the Lovebringer. That did jack and shit against the latest bolt of trauma leaving Chambers. An entire chunk of the Fuckbringer’s mind shattered into bits, and it began to sob. Like a child. Like Chambers did when he was a boy, hugging himself and facing the wall after the latest beating, dad drinking, mom nowhere to be seen.

The cries roused Chambers. Pulled him out from beneath the waves of pleasure and overwhelming sensation. Provided a dissonant melody to use as separation against the rising sea of joy and romance he was now becoming. Chambers blinked, and it was like waking up for the first time in his life. The Fuckbringer’s sore-lined hands formed a cage around him and the two lovers. Moans sounded from them, while Chambers felt the pulsing power of entropy leaking foul-smelling water from each over-sexualized slit dotting the Fuckbringer’s hands.

His other self had been on the verge of venting. All it would have taken was a moment’s distraction from love or lust for a thaumic overload to be Chambers’ fate. But he wasn’t distracted. Was just hard enough to gather himself—not winning, but surviving. And that was enough. Enough for him to strike back once more. Enough to remind the Fuckbringer who he wasn’t.

A struggling series of whimpers sounded from the Fuckbringer. Hate stewed inside him. Hate and self-loathing and despair. Hate for who Chambers was and who they weren’t. The Fuckbringer still wanted to kill him, but it didn’t have the wholeness of self to quite finish the action.

And as Chambers took in the miserable nemesis Veylis molded from time and memory to face him, he managed to snicker. He managed to laugh. “He was… right.”

The lust was still there. The love was overwhelming. But as he watched a version of himself that couldn’t know love—shaped so by the will of the High Seraph—he glimpsed an ineffable truth from the tapestry. Earned a realization about himself as well. Love was too much for him still, but so living through all that he did. He let his heart go barren because he wouldn’t have survived if it was full; would’ve gotten killed seeking it as a child to a heartless father and a city that knew only horror, hunger, and death.

But love was more than him. Love was other people, too. It was the Godclads he hung onto. It was the families and friends that lived in this Sovereignty and all across the surviving remnants of existence. It was all Avo and Draus and the others did for him. It was when he shielded Kae from Zein. It was what his mother gave him, weak as it was, with what little time she managed to make it last. It was more than just an emotion.

It was action, sensation, and idealism all as one. It was the bright that burned enduringly even after the boiling embers of lust cooled. It was all these things and more. It could form. It could break. It could die. It could be reborn. And he was it, and so he was more than who he was.

For so long, Aedon Chambers saw himself as just a man. An unworthy gutter-rat who got lucky time and time again. Just a mortal. Just a subject. Just a bastard.

But look upon the lovers, and stripped of dignity and sanity, they still chose each other. There was a breaking point to that love, but its existence in the present was absolute. And there was choice. Choice everywhere. Choice all around him. Some succumbed to despair, turning into little more than feral animals. But some held on. And for some, the cords of lust were shriveled things before the glowing strings of resplendence that formed the Ties That Bind.

And a final separation revealed itself before Chambers. Where lust burned and begged the animal to breed, to love was to seek, to experience, to lose, to grieve, and to rise again. To do any of these things and none of them. But to choose. Always to choose. And so because love battles, because love wars in the hearts of man and all architects of meaning alike, so must it be something of impossible idealization—a true concept of what it means to be divine.

Suddenly, Chambers wasn’t just an outlet or junction for love and lust to flow through. When he felt was part of the experience, but what he controlled was more. He was there with everyone—beyond the limits of his mortal mind, mortal heart, mortal flesh. And so too did he need to be divine.

Fuck worthy.

Fuck unworthy.

Fuck his dad.

And fuck this shitty embarrassment that could have never been him on his worst day.

Chambers wasn’t a Godclad because of dumb luck or fate, and he was more than some mongrel animal to be remade by life’s casual use and abuse. He was a Godclad because he fucking chose to be. He protected these people because he chose to care. And only an ultimate half-strand like him could have ever borne the mantle of love properly.

Because if you never stood apart from something, then how could you embrace and become?

The bonds connected to Chambers went taut, and countless more burst out from him. His Ties That Bound exploded in a grand acceptance, reaching out to touch everyone across the Sovereignty, across New Vultun itself, and, more than anyone else, his fallen self.

“I changed my mind,” Chambers said, his mind drowned but his senses clear. “You do deserve this. You should feel this. Have a taste. Find out what it means to be me.”

The Fuckbringer strained its hands once more but the final bit of that action—that last part of what it took to kill… That was gone. And all Veylis’ monster could do was beg. “N-no, stop. Please…”

A hair-thin thread left the Lovebringer as Chambers chose to take his other self into his Absentheartedness. And with this chosen act of self-love, he felt pity, horror, and disgust anew. “You never had a chance, you poor piece of shit. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Kill… go fuck…”

Chambers extended another connection toward his Pathborn clone. This time from his mind. A Ghost-Link joined them each to each, and Chambers felt all that festering misery and resentment, while the Fuckbringer felt love. Just love.

And it was all too much for it to bear.

A resounding crash shuddered through the Fuckbringers mind as the last pillars holding up its structure collapsed. And its ontology followed, the Heaven collapsing in on itself, fading away without sound or fury, letting the surviving millions still held within its grasp free, sending them falling from the air.

They didn’t drop long. Bonds shot out from Chambers. His love grew. And anchored to so many others already, his anchoring was solid, and their weight was paltry. He caught them, and flinched at the brutalized states of their bodies. So many were close to death. And the Rend for his Lovebringer was already reaching full capacity.

But he wasn’t just love. He was a dream of flesh-from-flame, and so, using his bonds as a channel, Chambers called upon his Bioigniter, and performed an act of devotion through the use of two Heavens.

“Two,” the Lovebringer breathed. “More than one. Such is our path. Such is what we give ourselves. To those that have given to use. And those we have yet to give ourselves to.”

VENT! VENT! VENT!

REND CAPACITY [LOVEBRINGER] - 98%

REND CAPACITY [BIOIGNITER] - 1%

A burning phoenix exploded out behind the Lovebringer, manifesting in the shape of a cross. A jungle of tissue and wood and biomass formed an enduring crucifix, and they flowed across his bonds, mending the broken, sparing the dying.

Before the Lovebringer, a broken, hollow-eyed parody of Chambers knelt, and above him countless millions connected by bonds rose, pulled away from the ruined Sovereignty, granted sanctuary by his touch and power.

At the heart of the Morobi-Ynneath, an insult born of the paths was broken, and a hero forged from choice was born.

—[Marlowe]—

Marlowe gasped, her own heartbeat climbing with incomprehension and disbelief. A bond had burst out from Chambers, passing through her and Cas at the same time. Both of them had been drawn close to his Heaven, but instead of being overwhelmed like last time, they were included—the raw overwhelming sensations rushing through them like currents, but not lingering in place.

She saw through Chambers’ Heaven—witness what he had done, even as she existed in two places at once. She could… she barely understood what had happened, but she knew he had won. Somehow. All that for some Guilders, too. All that to save some people. People that were supposed to be his enemy.

“Holy fuck,” Marlowe said, unable to help herself from chirping with laughter. “That was… I think Chambers kicked the Fuckbringer’s ass? Kicked his ass before he ever had a chance to—Cas?”

And Cas was standing behind her, body stone still, with tears running down his cheeks. He was in there with her as well. So close were they among the bonds as she felt what he was looking at. The burning cross. A symbol. A choice. A dedication to him as well.

An act of… love?

“Cas?” she said. Back in Loathing, she reached out and squeezed his arm.

“The imperfect vessel,” Cas muttered as if lost in a rapturous daze. “Imperfect fucking vessel.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but something told her to nod and grin. “Yeah. Chambers is pretty nova, isn’t he?”