+Bad morning, consangs ! Welcome to a special edition of the Fateless Thoughtcast. If you're receiving this with the Nether down, with the Lovenet missing, and with all kinds of other shit, well, that's because I'm currently talking to you through a very, very special apparatus. Say hi to the warmind of Compulsion.

And that's why I call this the very special Fateless Thoughtcast. For you see, you're not hearing it live. You're hearing it from someone else who's talked to you. That's right. This thing is contagious. Memetically contagious. It's jumping from mind to mind, triggered by language. And what triggers this?

“Oh shit. I thought. We're screwed.” Stuff like that Thoughts of despair. Thoughts of hopelessness. Any of that fun stuff.

I've had a lot of thoughts like that over the years, too. Believe you, me. I've been in that dark mire, and right now, with everything that's happening across the world, with the tears being torn apart by whatever the hell that was, it might not be looking so great. New Vultunites. But I'll tell you this. It's not done. It's not over.

And, in better news, the Fifth Guild War has been postponed indefinitely, as a certain Burning Dreamer is calling everyone to a new peace conference. Where, you might ask? Well, where better than where scale used to be.

And if you're afraid of missing out on any of the details of this special conference, don't worry. We'll make sure you all catch it. In fact, we'll make sure the warmind encodes those moments into the literal words we speak every day. Into every action, into the visuals. There won't be any avoiding it. There won't be any running from the truth. You'll know exactly how the Guilders react, how the heads of each Guild reacts. And you'll hear exactly, just exactly, utterly, completely, entirely honestly, from these people's mouths, how they've been fucking us for years.

How they've been stealing our future.

How they've been ruining our godsdamned lives.

This is going to be an important moment in history, if there's going to be any history left. But afterward, afterward, there's going to be a reckoning. A reckoning, I've told you. I've been dreaming of this day for a long time, and some of you down in the gutters, oh, you must have prayed for this. You must have imagined this, but you might never have believed it. Well, believe it now, because there is a true god back among us, and he really likes the taste of eyeballs. And soon, he might get to take a bite from a few screaming heads. Just like old times…+

-Cala Marlowe, The FATELESS THOUGHTCAST

37-1

End-Times Arms Race (I)

There was more than one reason why Avo went for Ori-Thaum first. With the Majority temporarily indisposed, there wasn't a better time to assume control of their Guild. More importantly, their Guild had many things suited to Avo's predilections. Many things such as the Incubi. They made for good soldiers even without the Nether, and their experiences would be invaluable to him in the coming days when he began constructing his new Chrono-Noosphere.

After all, if there was one thing more encompassing than a Nether—a grand network of minds, it was the presence of time itself.

Ori-Thaum also had other things such as identity maskers, proxy minds, Sleepers with such interesting egos, near-conscious artificial drones constructed from Necrothergy rather than science, and ultimately they had more novel sources of Conflagration.

Conflagration. The thing that Avo was practically composed of now, the thing that powered his thoughts, the thing that imbued him with the capability to devour. The Conflagration and Ignorance were the cornerstones of the Burning Dream, and on this day he was going to consume every last flame Ori-Thaum had to offer.

With Council of Fuck shepherding the Ori elders, their Godclads in disarray, and their inner council missing in action, no one had the capability to deny Avo what he wanted. He swept into their vaults, swept into their deepest, darkest pits. He invaded planar repositories, experimental facilities, reached into hidden minds discovered using Ignorance, and from them, he took what he wanted; he took the thing that made him him

.

From all across New Vultun, streams of brilliant, screaming flame rose high into the air, surging into a golden crevice lining the sky. There, a shadow came ablaze. There, a sphere of blinding flame spread further and wider around the form of a Strix.

Avo drank in the Conflagration, and his streams of thought multiplied again and again. Before, if he was a hydra of spreading minds, now he was a nest unto himself—a constantly expanding spiderweb of flame joined to flame. Clashing infomorphs were quieted and broken from discord—each was bound and connected to Ignorance, and through the Definement, Avo.

And through it all, Avo’s ability to process, to think, to interface to the world accelerated. You could figure out a lot of things when a near-trillion instances of you were running another near trillion simulations at once, each of them within their own series of mindscapes occupied and populated by specific or random templates.

At the same time, he continued his development elsewhere. The dragon farm he hid on the planetary ring had been interrupted due to his unfortunate demise. It wasn't his exactly, but the function was the same. He was briefly gone and no one there could nurture its trajectory. But still, a zeitgeist formed, a zeitgeist of confusion, of uncertainty. But still, zeitgeist, a unified culture, expanded, separated from the world, and that nourished new dragons gave him more cyclers, cyclers he couldn't truly use due to his current nature, but cyclers still, dragons still. And with Akusande currently missing in action, he needed a new type of soldier and no one else had, a new kind of warrior, and so he's been simulated, a new ground for experimentation.

Kae appeared, Walton then manifested beside her, several million other agnostic and experts from the Sang also joined them in the project to create a thinking dragon. A weaponized dragon formed in the image of Akusande and infused with the mind of one Jelene Draus. After all, trying to mix the mind of such an entity with a normal person was too much to ask for. He required a weapon, so he was going to give it the mind of the finest weapon he ever knew.

As the research project went on, blood spilled down from the heavens. Blood was cast from a place between and a place beyond, from Avo's temporal realm. The Woundmother laughed as she blessed the land with her bounty, and the tears of New Vultun were once again drenched by a rain as midnight came, but the rain that healed were also joined with a rain that built. And soon a spire rose at the very heart of New Vultun, climbing higher and higher until it became a tower like no other, a tower that spread, its topside expanding into veins and arteries that ended as bolts of lightning cresting the land.

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As it flashed, all of New Vultun gazed up at a changed sky, an infested sky, a burning sky. Within the apex of the spire was a ring, a gateway, and a representation; a fire burned there, a fire in wreathing the form of a Strix across the massive megacity. Avo laughed as the other Guilds desperately responded. Moving forces. Scrambling observers. But they were stretched thin. Disarray claimed them. And they dared not act against him after his display against Ambition. They hesitated. Their minds whispered with fear. And Avo rooted himself within the great tower, just to sneer down upon the Guilders as the colossal structure crossed back into his dimension of time.

Once, the Guilds thought they were the highest, the greatest, the elite. Now, they were mere kindling. Same as any other. But no less to Avo either. Such was the wonder of memory. Such was the worth of existence. For everyone witnessed a different truth in the end, and the mingling of clashing realizations and perspectives unleashed such wild joy within the Burning Dreamer.

"People of New Vultun," Avo said, his voice echoing, not as a thought cast this time, not as anything more than literal sound, literal sound transmitted through the bass of blasting thunder. "I have staked my claim. I proclaim my position, not as sovereign, but as Overheaven, as God of gods, as your soul and solitary defender, while the Guilds break themselves, tear themselves, tear at you, to feed their war, to feed a war that can no longer be. Look, those of you at the Light's End, look if you are high enough, gaze at the horizon, see, see the shadows moving, see the Sunderwilds twisting and breaking, see what comes."

And Avo's mind was vast, his many flames spread across the veins and arteries, and he saw their perceptions splash outward, so many lanes of perception, they spiked pathways toward the distance, and horror followed, absolute terror consumed the city as they realized his words were true, the Sunderwilds were shifting about.

And a perpetrator, though unseen, could be felt, could always be felt. Its voice echoed across the world constantly, and little did the people on Idheim knew, it went beyond their meager planet, beyond everything, beyond even what Avo could have imagined. The entity known as Aambition was drawing the Sunderwilds, tighter and tighter. As it did that, it commanded every last bit of entropy gathered across the ruins of existence to close in. The outside of ruined existence became as if a tightening ball of yarn, and soon, perhaps all too soon, all of that entropy, all of that Rend, would collapse over the last existing planet within the known universe.

Once that happened, there would be no story, even if the Ladder arrived, there was nothing but Ambition that could emerge from that much Rend—that could thrive and channel that much rend, the deep ones, the deep ones were broken, driven mad, Ambition was similar in a sense, but ultimately, it was ruin-forged, rather than ruin-dwelling.

"This thing," Draus said inside of Avo, "this thing's gonna be a problem, I don't reckon, we got an easy way of killing it."

"No easy way, but can make it uncomfortable, can force it to react constantly, distract it."

"And how are we gonna do that," Draus asked. She already knew the answer; she was connected to him, but she wanted to hear it, she wanted to hear him say it.

"I'm going to build you a bigger gun, Redaction Round, too limited, I'm going to offload all the Rend I can find into you, and you're going to constantly fire at it."

"Keep going," Draus said.

"Constantly fire at it from across time. Never stop. Always force it to fight. It is a broken, mad thing. Cannot respond accordingly.”

“So, you're gonna spawn another iteration of me, that's gonna keep shooting at this half-strand out in the Sunderwilds, thus delaying the inevitable death of our entire world, and the last remnants of humanity."

"Yes," Avo said. "You sound exorbitantly pleased."

"Fucked up enemy and a gun to kill it with: Kind of everything I can dream about," Draus said. "Now, if I do manage to kill it—”

"You won't."

"If I do," she said, "I'm gonna ask you for something.”

"I'm already going to commission a series of ships, ships shaped like guns, ships capable of punching holes through planets, what more do you want?"

"More shit like that," Draus chuckled, "but also, I want to be back aboard, back aboard, on the next flight to the sun, the Infacer, he snuffed the original version of me, I intend to snuff this version of him."

Avo grunted. He devoted a major portion of his thaums to recreating Draus's Arsenalist. Once more, a shape emerged from his place above, a shape of a gun, swirled and shrouded by other guns.

Its spiral cannon came alight with a golden glow, and time shuddered as it was transformed into ammunition. From there, the first shots of an unceasing barrage began as Avo poured his Rend into this instance of Draus. Redaction Rounds plunged down through gaps formed in space and time. The projectiles moved at impossible velocities and their progress was something common minds couldn’t behold without suffering trauma.

In a few scant seconds, it traversed over the horizon, and the entity known as ambition was forced to respond, forced to layer itself using the Sunderwilds to avoid certain death. Time was still no one's ally but Avo’s, and that was something he was going to exploit, with the dragons, with Draus, with every single advantage he could maintain.

As she fired, he felt Ambition do something to the tapestry; it shifted chronology, it dashed from place to place, but he could also perceive ontology, and he kept a close eye on everything it did. One certain weakness Ambition had was its lack of subtlety, its lack of focus. It took little time for the beast to lose control over itself.

Even now, it suffered from a constant struggle between Avo’s original self and Veylis. Ambitions rationality and focus frayed and hardened between the seconds. But its sanity never lasted.

"Avo," a thought echoed from far below. He sorted it out from the countless other minds calling out to him, worshiping him, the people of the gutters were looking up, and they dreamed every night of his presence, of his fire. The people at Light's End reached out, grasping, seeing, and witnessing the Conflagration that continued to spread, but this voice he knew, this voice had served along him for nearly the entire journey.

"Cas," Avo replied, a bolt of crimson lightning cast down an instance of Avo. He forged for himself a new body, one of flesh and matter, but lit by his divine flame. As soon as he manifested in person, he found himself in an empty void watch hanger. Cas and a few dozen chambers were directing some Ori-Thaum Guilders around. The former rebel rock star and cult leader looked as uncomfortable as the Silvers he now found himself in charge of.

"Is there something wrong," Avo said.

Cas eyed the surrounding ori and clenched his jaw. "Yeah, I want to talk to you about something."

"Is it about revenge?" Avo asked. “About your loathing for the Guilds? About what I am doing? And the sustainability of this negative peace.”

Cas paused.

"I am a god of the mind," Avo hissed with sibilant laughter.

Cas nodded very slowly. "Yeah, let's talk about revenge. Let's talk about what we're going to do. And these assholes," he gestured at the Ori, "and the other half-strands," he waved vaguely, "get together and start trying to kill each other, because they're going to do that. And what about all the people they hurt over these years? What about everyone they killed to feed their war machine?"

Avo regarded Cas, and then he let out a pleased hiss. "Yes, I was considering talking to you about this first, but beat me to it. Let’s talk about what the Guilds have coming to them.”