Godclads

Chapter 30-15 Master of My Own Scars (II)

You know the worst thing I realized about my father?

He was right about me.

I was a piece of shit. I wasn’t worth it. I was pathetic. Every good thing that happened to me became true because of someone else — even when I did become a Godclad. Just learned it all too late. The Stillborn needed a better host. But it got me.

It got me.

Not even I want to be me.

There’s no way I’m gonna win this war. There’s no world in which I win against her. There’s no world where I get better.

He was right.

He was right.

-Aedon Chambers the Fuckbringer (Path-Simulation Iteratant: 245th Attempt)

Master of My Own Scars (II)

—[Fuckbringer]—

A duet of despair and depravity echoed across the disfigured expanse of Morobi-Ynneath in the form of alternating shrieks. Bodies hung from Aedon Chambers. Bodies partially restored to their original functions, with eyes returned, lust reduced, made to serve as unwilling audience to debached scenes of theatrical defilement.

The “stars” were the final two Godclads to fall in defense of this city. Ori Seekers. It was a real noble holding action—though pretty fucking pointless considering they had nothing they could wield against his miracles. Still. They held out longer than most. Went down swinging all Dannis-like. So. Unlike the other Godclads who he real-deathed, he kept these two alive to see how much suffering he could inflict before one or both of them cracked.

What made things spicier was the fact they were freshly in love. Oh, yeah. Made what he did to them extra raw.

See, the rash took away quite a bit more than just sex and the capacity for people to enjoy their lust without a Metamind’s filter. No. Comforting touches between people, genuine hugs that triggered some surprising feelings, passions that veered too close to the Remembrance’s Domains…

Lots of things got lost. And to celebrate the changing of the rash and the “liberation” that came to New Vultun while he waited for his dipshit of an original self to finally arrive, Chambers started a two-person stage play using the two Seekers as puppets.

That’s right! Seekers Yaobi Mazuki and Mas Nudracht were going to be stars in a piece Chambers liked to call “Lust Returned.” And how better to reveal to everyone that the rash was in remission all across the city—and in local areas where he willed it—by forcing the two lovebirds to relearn the nuances of sexual intimacy.

Sure, they struggled at first. Tried to keep their expression blank, will themselves out of their body—away from what they were being forced to enjoy. But Mas cracked first; started crying. Begging for it to stop, begging her for forgiveness, to look away from him, that he couldn’t meet her eyes. That was where she went over the edge, too, and it was a full-blown sadfest from there.

Oh, the millions Chambers kept alive within his folds and umbilicals tried to turn away. Some of them started weeping too. The fucking glassjaws. Didn’t know an emotional piece if it was staring them right in the face. And so he removed their eyelids and made them watch anyway.

But—credit where credit was due—although he forced his puppets to experience every kind of sexual pleasure possible with each other, though their cognitions tore and bled, they somehow managed to endure. They even fucking held hands—using that as an anchor for comfort as Chambers pumped them against each other.

It was pretty adorable. But by then, he was moving on to the next phase: pregnancy and childcare! ‘Course, with the vats people didn’t need to get personally involved anymore, so they could use the refresher. And though Chambers could have just connected Mas’s mind to Yaobi, he wanted both of them to have a hands-on experience.

And so, in the spirit of Ori-Thaum, he did the democratically prudent thing: he fused their genital together into a shared set of wombs after he accelerated a successful insemination. And thus began act two of “Lust Returned: The Cycling Births.”

It was pretty much how it sounded. Well, Chambers was also making them birth versions of his homunculi over into each other, so even if it did get out from the womb somehow, it wouldn’t live long.

It wasn’t proper to have someone suffer an unwanted child as an economic burden for the sake of entertainment, after all. Aedon Chambers was thoughtful like that.

This went on for a few hours. Night was drawing close. The air was getting closer; a fresh scent of petrichor hinted at the coming of the midnight rains. Yaobi birthed her “child” into Mas, and he birthed it right back into her. It was a hell of a bonding experience. And through it all, he let them keep holding hands. It was all they had. And by this point, he suspected it was all that kept them sane.

And fixating on that tickled his cruelty. So, Chambers decided to tear them apart.

He controlled then using a net of cords fused into their backs, and so prying them apart was equally easy as well. A heart-stopping shriek came from Yaobi first as the large, swollen organ connecting her to Mas peeled open, tissue parting as strands of spraying blood. A disfigured lump toppled out from the wound, carried by a waterfall of amniotic fluids and blood. Chambers’ homunculi were long-drowned, long-dead, but still effective at causing trauma.

Mas caught a glance at his “baby” and his accretion nearly shattered outright. Only the dead-grip he had on Yaobi kept him present; unbroken. And so Chambers pulled harder.

“No! Stop! Let them go! Let them die!”

“You sick fuck—motherfucker! Hurt me, you half-strand pussy. Hurt me instead! Come on!”

“Idon’twanttoseeIdon’twanttoseepleaseohgodspleasenomore.”

“Stop! Enough! Please! Please!”

Such were the “cheers” he earned from his audience. Over seventy percent of Morobi-Ynneath’s population was still alive—though half that remained entirely sane after the wonders they just witness. High art was hard to achieve, but Chambers thought he did a pretty good job. The Soft Masters would be proud of him.

But. However. It wasn’t done. Not until the snap. The crack.

With a final jolt of force, Yaobi and Mas came apart. Not unwillingly. The snap that sounded was the former’s forearm getting pulled off the bone, but the crack was what he wanted. The answer to who would break first was answered as Yaobi’s mind shattered. Ghosts and poured out from her broken halo and stained her thoughtstuff like blood infesting water. Chambers released with a flick, sending her brutalized body splashing across the pond of viscera and amniotic fluid born of her ruptured organ.

A feral series of cries sounded from her. She pawed along the ground, pulling a prolapsed and inflammed sack of flesh behind her as she made for her baby. And dangling just above her, out of reach but so close to sight was Mas, who was howling, near-madness.

“Yaobi!” He cried. The words left him like as a wheeze. His throat had been ruined from hours of screaming. Chambers didn’t let him resurrect; fixed his body when he neared death. But not his throat. The hoarseness suited the scene and his role — doomed protagonist. “Yaobi! I’m… please… Look… I am here… Let me… let me…” He shook. His skin, once fine and ebony and Guilder-smooth was covered with yellowish-fluid and thick blood. But his eyes—those deep, hateful blues still greeted the Fuckbringer with resistance yet.

Chambers frowned. Not quite good enough to break Dannis Steelhard, it seemed. “Fine. Your wish is granted.”

He promptly flung Mas next to his lover, letting him splash into their shared filth. While he sailed through the air, Yaobi picked up the ruined mess of meat that was the homunculi and screamed and screamed. Her eyes were bloodshot. All sense of coherence left her. But, Chambers was nothing if not a cruel fuck, so he started upping the lust she felt at seeing her “child’s” remains.

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Soon. Her breaths started growing hitched. And slowly—

Mas crashed into from behind, wrapping his arms around her. He pulled the homunculi out of her hands and threw it aside. She went fucking ballistic. She tore. She bit. She almost manifested her Heaven—but Chambers put than end to that pretty quick by inserting a Ghost-Link into her weakened mind.

Soon, Mas wrestled his love down to the ground and held her there. Held her as she clawed at his back with her remaining hand. As she cried and pleaded. “I need… I need to put him back inside. It will feel good! Please! It will feel good!”

“No,” Mas said. Tears rolled down his face as he squeezed his eyes shut. “No. No. Please. It’s not us. It’s not us. It…” Chambers started filling him with pleasure too. Mas grew choked. This time, he looked upon Chambers with horror. “No. Stop. Please, stop.”

“You’ve been feeling real good this entire time,” Chambers said as he leaned in close. His head was dwarfed them, so he was sure they could see every fiber of muscle on his manifested face. “But you wanna know what does it for me? The struggling. The begging. You know, I get it now. I get why my father liked hurting me so much. Because it was the only thing that was right and real and felt good to him. Because when you could hurt someone else and not get hurt yourself, that makes you special. That makes you a GUILDER! Ahem. I apologize for the outburst. But, yeah. No. You’re going to pick that ‘baby’ up, and you’re going to use it as a—”

{Chambers. Our contact just… what are you doing?}

The Infacer crackled in the back of Chambers’ mind. “Oh, hey, sparky. What’s up. Just doing some art. Any updates on the Rendombs.”

{Yes. They are on the way—they just crossed the Undercroft. Well. I guess your “idiot” of an original self managed to convince the generative AIs to give a delayed update. Thirty seconds. I…}The Infacer sighed. {So… put away your… toys. It is absurd watching you do this. So pointless.}

Chambers snorted. Well. Here they come. He licked his lips. “Just the way I was made. And besides. I’d say this is the point. The brutality. The horrible shit. The power. It’s the meaning we make. The meaning we inflict on other people. That’s the trust expression of being a god, right? Alright. Time for me to handle my original self and get his piece of the Stillborn.”

The Infacer responded with a snort of their own. Their voice crackled through the wind, with only strings representing distant radiation revealing their presence. {Do not underestimate him. Like you did earlier. I will only be able to devote to you—}

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t got the cog-cap to help old Chambers handle his problems. Big whoop. Don’t worry. I got this. You just need to trace the path of the missiles, and I’ll use my dormant Rashspores to hunt him and his consangs down. It’ll be a milk-run.”

An uncomfortable pause followed. {If you fuck this up, I am going to be very displeased, but also unsurprised.}

“Yeah? Well, complain to the High Cuntess. She’s the one who created me from the Substance-soup, right? If I’m this much of a fuck-up, then it’s her fault for fucking shitting me out. That makes her the mother of all fuck-ups.”

{Indeed. It will be something she never lives down. But it will also result in your other iterations suffering fates worse than death.}

“So? They’re not me.”

The Infacer fell quiet again. {I envy how simple and stupid—} The radiation suddenly broke apart with a burst of distortion. The Fuckbringer stared at the spot in the sky where the Infacer’s emanations were, and just chuckled. Looks like the dumb mind got fucked by his old consangs again. Ah. Well, the voiders and Omnitech shitting all over each other was frankly a blessing—last thing he needed was someone telling him what to do.

Anyway, where was he? Oh, yeah, the inhuman torture. As he turned his focus back on his playthings, he found Yaobi clinging to Mas, both of them sobbing against each other. Well. Wasn’t that suitably pathetic. A shame. He was so close to completing the play. Hmm. Well, he still had some time… “Well. Looks like you win, Seeker. You survived! You’re a real Dannis! Her, though? Her not so much.”

Cord shot out from the Fuckbringer and plunged into Yaobi’s back. Mas let out a cry. A flash of lightning exploded out from him—only for Chambers to overload his senses with all-consume pleasure. Mas toppled out of his manifestation before it could arrive for the sixth time that day, and his eyes rolled as his faculties were overloaded. When his senses finally returned, he found Yaobi swinging over in a circle, slowly building up speed. “Yaobi…”

Mas reached out, helpless at what was to come.

“And a one, and a two—” Screams and pleas erupted from the bodies Chambers had fused to his umbilical’s stem. Ah, he was going to splatter her a good few times against the ground next to Mas. If she was the anchor for his sanity, then let’s see how he did with her gone. “You did better than I thought, Mas. But the truth is… the fuckers always—”

An unseen force promptly tore Yaobi out of the Fuckbringer’s grasp. Blood sprayed out from the Seeker’s torso as the cords Chambers fused into her were wrenched free with ease. The Fuckbringer cried out more in surprise than pain, and his incredulity further climbed as he saw Yaobi spiking down straight into Mas’s open arms.

The trajectory was too perfect. It was like they were always meant to be, or another power had ensured her arrival.

A burst of radiation briefly materialized over the Fuckbringer again, composing itself as a static crown. Just then, three shapes plunged down into the valley of tissue that constituted the Fuckbringer’s base. They were cloaked on so many levels that Chambers never even saw them coming, and an instant before the Rendbombs detonated, he saw their designs—rod-like missiles that were… singing?

{Hooary!}

{Death!}

{Finally!}

And then their payloads went off. The Rendbombs were what the Infacer anticipated—and so the Crown of Decay briefly separated Chambers from local reality, scattering his being far and vast like the spreading bits of atom-shit or however it worked. A route formed within his mind, like a Phys-Sim creating three trajectories. In a few seconds, he would know where they fired from, and then he could—

A second explosion followed the first. These, however, weren’t Rendbombs. Traumas exploded out into the world. Traumas fine-tuned to carve agony into Chambers. Phantasmal shrapenel showered a radius of twelve kilometers across the Sovereignty, but with how large the Fuckbringer was, every piece cut deep into his being, into his mind.

His wards rattled as the first few hits were blocked, but the contents were double effective. It was first-person perspective of him crawling, screaming at the ceiling as his father showed him that fucking gun barrel. It was hot from being fired over and over. And a second later, it slipped under his flailing arms to brand his armpit.

The toddler Chambers had been then howled for his mommy.

And unable to overcome the scars-yet-raw, the Fuckbringer recited the same plea as well. His bellow shook the world, and more bad memories followed. He recalled the first tooth he lost—booted out from his bottom lip when he knocked over his dad’s beer. He remembered the taste of his mom’s blood as his dad bludgeoned her using the business end of their vacuum—a gift he bought for her on her namesday. He remembered the artanid he tried to keep as a pet. Four-Legged Osjack. Didn’t make it a week before dad’s boot splattered it flat.

Every bit of pain from Chambers past tore into him. The hurt built and built, and his wards began to rattle, wail, and crack.

SEVERE TRAUMA SUSTAINED

COG-CAP - 95%

“Get out… get out of my head! Get out of my… of my…”

As his focus slowly returned, he felt another presence across from him. A thin woven from magenta threads and pulsing with brilliant power lit the horrific remains of Morobi-Ynneath, and for the second time that day, the Fuckbringer faced the Lovebringer, as pathborn seethed at the original.

“Well… well,” Chambers snarled. Looks like his original self was an even bigger idiot than he thought, sticking around in person. “Thought I was going to have to go looking for you…”

The Lovebringer. What a stupid fucking name for a stupid fucking Heaven. Its form rose out from the two Seekers holding onto each other, and the link it had to them seemed unnaturally strong. What’s more, it was pointing its cunt-shaped head down at them, not bothering to face the Fuckbringer—ignoring Chambers.

A flare of anger rushed through him. “Hey! Look at me, you cocksucking half-strand.”

Slowly, the Lovebringer complied. And instead of something Chambers expected his original self to say, the Heaven of Love just sighed. “You never had a chance. You never had a chance at all. This is what she thought of me? This?” The Lovebringer gestured at the cityscape around them.

“This is what we are!” The Fuckbringer spat. He surged forward, his body elongating out from the folds that held him. Glistening sinews lined with festering wombs reached out to seize the Lovebringer. The half-strand didn’t have the Spheres for this fight—he was going to learn what it meant—

A cone of trauma stopped the Fuckbringer dead in its tracks. This time, he remembered being held face-down in the toilet while his father took a piss. The taste was foul; his eyes stang—those memories never left him. And here his original self was, using them like they were nothing.

Nothing at all.

The Fuckbringer reeled back, clutching at his skull, gagging.

“I was supposed to just leave, you know. If the trauma-patterns didn’t kill you. I was just going to break my bonds and leave. But I saw what you were doing. Felt it from across the Sovereignty. Just gotta ask, consang? Who the fuck are you? Because you’re definitely not me.”

“F-fuck you,” the Fuckbringer managed.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck me. Too late for that. The city already finished. And so did dad. But apparently he’s not done with you. And here you are, doing what he might do if he was given a Heaven.”

And that, more than any trauma-pattern, caused the Fuckbringer’s wards to finally overload. “The FUCK DID YOU JUST—”

Another blast. This one left the Fuckbringer squealing, hammering his skull against the ground to silence the flashing images, the noise—mom screaming; begging; pleading.

At night, they used to hold hands. It was all they had sometimes. He would just hold her hand as she cried. And dad would snore while facing the wall.

“Didn’t come here to have a clash of ‘Clads. Came here to stomp your sorry Soft-Master pretending, dumb-shit thinking, poor-path-simulation ass. I had a feeling about this. I had a feeling you weren’t hard. And I was right. You aren’t hard. You aren’t hard at all. You’re just a godsdamned mistake.”

Something inside the Fuckbringer snapped, and with a feral cry, an eruption of lust exploded out across the Sovereignty, consuming all.