V-18 Pacify

“Pull that crossbow away from your neck. You’re not going to shoot yourself. Stop pretending.”

"Leave me alone. You won. You fucking won. Let me have what's left of my honor."

"What's left of your honor? Don't be absurd, boy. There's no honor in this. You failed. Failure is humiliation. Failure is disgrace. Even if you kill yourself right now, you're not going to redeem yourself in any way. How could you?"

"Your goal was to overthrow the royal council, wasn't it? To establish your own free and liberated district within the capital. I let you have that. I allowed you to claim legitimacy. I even recognized your little state, and then you choked us. No, I simply overcharged you, and since you lacked a proper military, there was no way for you to compel me to adjust my prices otherwise. I warned you before. I told you that you had powerful Pathbearers among your organization. I admitted to you that I was reluctant to take a forceful approach for a simple reason: because it would cost me the lives of my citizens, and I have spent a great deal of effort trying to establish a state of enduring peace in this capital."

"Peace? You call what you did to us peace?"

"Yes, because I didn't shed your blood. No, your organization imploded on itself, as do many revolutionary organizations. It's the inevitable consequence of being a revolutionary."

"Fuck you. You don't know anything. You don't know anything! It would have worked if it just..."

"If it just what? If everyone in your governing council would have listened to you? If your attempt at absolute democracy didn't degenerate into chaotic anarchy due to the inherent vice, lust, wrath, and avarious nature of man and machine alike? Yes, I suppose it would have functioned perfectly if you were perfect people. But that's the problem with your like: you're not perfect. You're flawed, and you were made so through the trauma inflicted upon you by the state. As Kull Masalov said: ‘To reign is to delude oneself that they are a wise master, when in actuality, it is an exercise in resisting the urge to enslave and dominate; such is the inevitable urge of all yearning hearts.’”

“What… You…”

"Oh, don't look so surprised. You're not the first Pathbearer to play at revolution or to read the old literature, to dream of true equality and harbor noble ideals in your heart. I was in your place some a century and a half ago. I got further, since my goals were more pragmatic, and I was simply seeking recognition for my faction within the purview of the royal council, but ultimately, inevitably, and tragically, it collapsed. It always does. Those I regarded to be my brothers and sisters, kindred in arms, turned on each other and me, because though critiquing a system is easy and finding its flaws is obvious, fixing them is where the problem begins."

"And what I found noble and beautiful was offensive and repulsive to some of my comrades. Hence my lover trying to slit my throat after drugging me during intercourse. Hurting her was very traumatic, but she was always a bit of a fool. The dosage was too low."

"Now, shut your mouth, lift your head, and come with me. You're still alive for a reason, and that reason is that I have use for you."

"Why would I do anything… anything that you ask?"

"Because, alternatively, you will have to swallow this bitter failure eternally. This will be the defining moment of your life: to have failed, to have led your glorious revolution to destruction. But, if you want to do some good—and a bitter, narrower, far more deserved good though it might be—I have a position on my cabinet, and it's suited for someone who cares greatly about the small and helpless."

"So, wipe those tears away, hold on to this moment as a lesson, and develop. Think of it this way: I let you do this so it could be an educational exercise. You are educated now. The exercise is over. Now, the actual work begins."

-Veronica Chandler and Uriah Townsend, Master-Brother of the Union of Dawn Revolutionaries

V-18

Pacify

Non-Sequitur 104 > 106

Inertial Overdrive 170 > 173

Pillar of Orichalcum 255 > 258

Farsight 74 > 78

For a moment, Shiv thought his social offensive had been going well. Then, he was beheaded from behind, struck down so fast and so brutally that not even his Shapeless Tides spared him a death.

In retrospect, Shiv started getting suspicious when the air behind him grew colder and colder. Shiv had been paranoid from the start. Thanks to his Last Morsel, he managed to turn himself into a shadow. And between that and Non-Sequitur, he slipped into the teleportation anchor while evading the giantess's Divination Skill.

He thought he had her pacified. He buried the business end of his pan against her lower back and seized her vertebrae. But that was a stupid assumption. He was a Legendary Pathbearer as well, and it would take more than that to put him down; they were apex on Earth, unless one received divine reinforcement.

That'll teach me to feel self-assured, he cursed himself. 

He exploded into motion as his Vitae sprawled free from his beheaded body. Just like the Jotun surprised him, he surprised her once more.

He buried the fanged rim of his last morsel in her skull using a web of tendrils. The frying pan struck the giantess's head like a morning star. A sickening crack filled the air as Orichalcum teeth chipped through impossibly hard bone. The wet squelch of brain matter told him he struck home.

And as she spasmed and went down, he saw the front side of her face burst open in a spray of blood as well. But he was done underestimating her. He wrenched his frying pan free and struck her three more times. Each cut going deeper, shattering her skull, leaving her brain matter a chasm of welter and gore.

Not the only one who underestimated the other. Not the only one with other tricks. Not the only one with shit awareness. These three thoughts went off inside Shiv's head like a cluster bomb.

And then he was in the fray once more, launching himself at Urri, the High Marshal, and the scattered automaton that vaguely looked like a mechanical snake of some kind.

Urri's single eye was wide with surprise. He hadn't seen Shiv go down before. Hadn't seen him resurrect. Didn't really know what Vitae was. That bought the Deathless a half second to act freely.

A flood of static spilled out from the automaton as the spell pattern powering the teleportation anchor flared to life. It went dim a second later as Shiv drove a lashing blow down on the automaton's head. The bot gave a mechanical shriek. Its exterior was hard, low heroic perhaps, but it was ripped wide open as a surge of Shapeless Tides cleaved into it.

The rest of Shiv slammed into and wrapped around the Vulteg. Urri was tough. And the more one hit him, the more durable and powerful he got. Shiv remembered that from their prior scuffle. So instead of trying to beat Urri down with brute force, he was just going to drain the Vulteg until there was nothing left of his vitality.

A trail of cuts glided over Shiv's Vitae. Pieces of him were ripped free, but the damage he sustained was minimal. Bladed currents glided through the air, and a scream of battle fury filled the insides of the teleportation anchor. A spread of vitality drifted along the fast-flowing winds, and it painted the form of a young woman with a long trailing ponytail, hidden by the gales. Shiv ignored her for now. She might be able to leave some cuts on his body, but so far, she was the least of his problems.

"What is this strange— Nyah!" Urri let out a roar. He wrapped his massive hands around Shiv's Vitae and pulled. But the Deathless wrecked his overflow tides against the Vulteg. A clash of striped vectors pushed Urri back.

And then the coiling mess of vitae twisted brutally. The Vulteg was still strong, but he was wrestling against a legend. And though he defied Shiv for a moment, eventually his arms were pinned against the wall, and threads of red-white mana were wound over and over around his neck.

Urri gagged, but he didn't stop fighting. He never stopped struggling. "Nothing can stop Urri! Nothing!" he roared aloud. The veins of blood trailing along the corner of his eyeball widened as if from some fractures. His muscles bulged. His body grew larger. He had activated a Berserk Skill. He took a step forward and Shiv expected to struggle a bit more, but he had plenty of tides. He would hold the Vulteg down and—

Urri vanished and then reappeared right next to Shiv. The transition was so sudden and jarring that the Deathless reeled. He reeled even more as Urri struck him with a closed fist. The blow was a natural two. Instead of being a straight punch or a hook of some kind, he blinked. One second, he was a meter away from Shiv. The next, he exploded against the Deathless like a bomb going off.

Another portion of Shiv's vitae cracked and coldness climbed deeper into the Deathless' core. Despite this, Shiv converted the latter half of the blow into Overflow Tides, and he sent that back against Urri, launching the massive Vulteg back.

"I am fury unleashed. I am my senses unchained," Urri declared. It was a reverberating resonance in his voice, and it felt like there were several other people speaking from inside him as well.

Just then, another splash of dimensionality came out from the automaton. This time, instead of being a focused spell meant to activate the teleportation anchor, it took the shape of a slithering serpent, and it reared down to swallow Shiv. This anchor wasn't that large. It only had 20 meters of width to work with. 

The snake took up all of that.

"Alright, time for you to go to the trash kingdom," the automaton crackled weakly. At the same time, Urri blinked, and he appeared right behind Shiv, but then he vanished again, and this time appeared after Shiv was struck. Another portion of the Deathless broke. He failed to convert any Shapeless Tides this time. What remained of Shiv spilled down on the ground, as the broken parts of his being turned to hissing streams of vapor.

Just then, a serpent crashed down on him, and he felt a crushing pressure begin to wrench at his very bones. It was trying to pull him into the serpent, to pull him away from the world and hide him somewhere else. The automaton dimensionalist was strong, but unfortunately, it wasn't legendary. Shiv swung his pan upward as flowing vectors swirled across his dense knot of vitae. He resembled a rope lined with fast-moving saw blades surging along its length. 

With every second, his vectors grew faster, and the color of their mana turned black and static to match the dimensional spell being unleashed upon him. The serpent bit down, and it was cleaved in half from skull to tail. A spill of sparkling midnight filled the inside of the anchor, and the automaton gave an agonized wail with the ruination of its mana field.

Urri blinked. Shiv halted time. He was promptly struck by two walls of counter-chronomancy. The first was unleashed by the university, and it crashed down upon him like a tsunami coming out of nowhere. If that wasn't enough, a wall of golden mana expanded free from the Vulteg's body as well. And more than that, Urri was flickering, as if he was blinking in and out of existence while his berserk state was active. Shiv only got a glimpse of the Vulteg's skill before his temporal shell shattered, and then another portion of his body did. He only had 30% of his Vitae left, and the cold tongue of oblivion was quickly licking its way to his very core.

Stride of the Unbending Path 161 > 163

"Motherfuck!" Shiv roared internally. He needed to adapt. He needed to.

"And the Zephyrs will never yield!" The winds around him roared. All the slashing currents converged together, and it became a silvery gash that was carried down from the air. A fast-moving whirlwind slammed into Shiv, but he intercepted it with his curling strands. Crackle-force followed. The insides of the anchor groaned. This cut was stronger than all the ones that came before, but it had a weakness. 

It was a single cut, and Shiv was pretty good at stopping singular attacks by this point.

Just like with the automaton, he wielded his Shapeless Tides against the unseen Aeromancer. Her vitality imprint betrayed how much she was struggling, however. She was holding on to the silver crescent as if it was some kind of greatsword. But though she twitched and groaned, she too was a hero wrestling against a legend, and the outcome was inevitable.

Shiv gathered another buildup of Overflow Tides as he coiled strands around the cut. He even ignored Urri ripping another section of his body away as the Vulteg suddenly reappeared. He had a new target now, and he was going to eliminate her, and the automaton, as soon as possible.

Process of elimination, Shiv thought to himself, from the weakest to the strongest.

The Overflow Tides harnessed went down as he pulled his leftmost strands. At the same time, his innate tides carried his right limb aloft. All of a sudden, the air went still. The winds sputtered, and the gales died.

"No, how?" That was as far as the Aeromancer got before Shiv snapped the cut in half. A burst of uncontrollable wind erupted at the center of the room, and even that wasn't loud enough to drown out the Aeromancer's shriek.

She plunged down as a veil of air ripped free from her body. Her arms and legs were bare. They were lined with colorful whorls, especially around her hands and soles. Her torso, however, caught Shiv's attention. It was caged in a strange set of bronze vestments. He couldn't even call it armor from how odd its mechanisms were. Thick jutting ribs extended out the side of her apparel, and between them were coppery wires alive with humming electricity. 

Shiv noticed how her head was encased in a transparent bowl as well, flowing stormstuff partially obscuring her features. But her eyes were the color of dark clouds split by lightning, and her face and skin were the same kind of blue that characterized Adam's aesthetic so.

As Shiv wrapped his Vitae around the downed Aeromancer, he curled his mana hydras over her body as well. Before the onslaught of two Magical Skills and one Legendary, her resistance shattered with a burst of mana, and that worked in Shiv's favor. The repulsing force spreading out from her stunned Urri just as he reappeared. 

His body vibrated in place and he clutched his head, letting out a pained bellow.

Shiv didn't have time to capitalize on that, however. Instead, he began draining from the downed Aeromancer. Her incessant screams turned into a gurgling cry as the Deathless ripped the vitality free from her body. A flood of life force washed into him and crashed upon the flesh of reality. The air around them shimmered with crimson majesty and in an instant, Shiv was reborn, hatching free from red-white vapors.

Urri struck him again, driving a curving hook into the Deathless's midsection. Shiv didn't lose any vitae this time, but he did hiss as one of his ribs was fractured.

"Getting tired of that shit." Shiv swung the back of his hand and struck nothing. A second later, Urri manifested, knee-first, against the side of Shiv's temple. A burst of whiteness spread out from behind Shiv's right eye. A section of his helmet and skull were shattered as well. He stumbled, and the moment he did, Urri swept his legs out from under him before bringing an elbow down on the same rib that was fractured earlier.

Shiv activated Non-Sequitur before the Vulteg could do anything else. 

He snapped free from his body and watched as Urri shattered his vitality. He heard Urri snap the vitality decoy over his knee as a burst of vaporous vitae filled the air. Shiv went from non-sequitur back to the outside context skill, and Urri briefly stumbled, confused as to what just happened.

Shiv took that opportunity to be a bit of a bastard. If the prisoners wanted to be a pain in the ass, so would he. His mana hydras tore out across the room and they assimilated his recent remains. A chain of microspells manifested along the length of his Biomancy field, and Shiv swung it against the Vulteg's head. A look of utter confusion lingered on Urri's face just as the crimson hydra struck him.

But Shiv wasn't attempting to break the Vulteg's Magical Resistance. The bastard was a juggernaut in more ways than one. Instead, he projected some of the biomass he assimilated and he sculpted it around Urri's face. Shiv watched a dangling arm materialize in a flash of redness. It was connected to a section of Shiv's lower back, one ass cheek, the heel of his foot, and part of his face. That monstrosity was promptly molded into a loop and then fastened upon the Vulteg's face.

Urri gave a muffled cry as Shiv returned to context. But instead of trying to attack Shiv, Urri reached up, fighting desperately to rip the flesh cocoon away. Once more, his lacking Physicality worked against him. Urri was only Heroic here in terms of strength, and Shiv's corpse inherited the qualities of Orichalcum as well, though not the full potential of ever-escalating Toughness.

A groan came from the Aeromancer. She tried to rise, but let out a violent cough as Shiv pinched the major arteries in her throat. He used his mana hydra to do that for maximum control. She kicked and clawed against the ground briefly before her eyes blinked, and her gaze went distant.

"That's right," Shiv said, "go to sleep."

Nearby, he heard the automaton let out a mechanical cough. "Ow," the automaton said. Shiv moved to disable the second-weakest threat of the group, but then something bit into the back of his neck. He tried to move forward, but his legs wouldn't listen. His body wouldn't obey, and—and then he was free again, detached from another corpse.

A snarl of frustration bubbled up inside, his head struck the ground first, his body followed a second thereafter. But Shiv didn't have any time to vent his anger. A bleed of frost crashed into his vitae, and he felt that infectious slowness gallop through his soul, course through the marrow of red-white mana that comprised his alloyed being.

Shiv pushed back against the magic, but he lacked the overflow tides to fully overpower his ambusher. A second later, he found himself pinned against the wall. Urri slammed into the anchor’s walls beside him, and left a dash in the rusted metal. Bits of Shiv's corpse wrapper were coming free from the Vulteg's head, and he would be back in the fight before long. But he was the secondary priority.

Non-Sequitur 106 > 110

Vitaemancy 116 > 121

Inertial Overdrive 173 > 177

Pillar of Orichalcum 258 > 261

Farsight 78 > 81

Once more, across from Shiv stood a sight he didn't expect.

What the hell does it take to kill this giant? Shiv gasped internally with disbelief.

A series of cracks sounded through the room, and each of them was as loud as an explosion. Andra was standing again, and she wasn't alone. She was being propped up by a Cryomantic clone. It radiated with that stilling coldness. And to Shiv's surprise, it also carried a spark of vitality as well. There was a thin tendril of redness lining the space between Andra and her ice clone. And Shiv was at an utter loss for words. What the hell?

The Jotun's many tattoos were also glowing. They flared with the color and power of bio-mancy. And her flesh began to reconstruct itself. Parts of her skull surfaced. And every time they did, another loud explosion of cracking bone followed. A jet of ruined brain matter squirted along the ceiling of the anchor.

Shiv stared with disgust and disbelief. She had a long javelin in her hands, needle-thin and impossibly sharp. She pushed hard, driving the tip deeper into Shiv's vitae. A creeping trail of frost spread out from the point of penetration, expanding like a rash.

The Deathless focused his Shapeless Tides, and they crashed against the expanding coldness. But then, Andra's cryoclone twisted past her, bringing down an axe shaped from ice magic as well. As it fell, Shiv swung his frying pan upward. He had to sacrifice some of his tides to do so. Every action he performed, every feat of force, was an interplay of his vectors and his kinesiology. And though he managed to parry the cut, his Frictionless Vector causing the anchor to be hewed clean through to his left, he didn't have enough resources to stop the javelin from sinking in deeper.

Frictionless Vector 88 > 92

"I know not what tricks you have, Deathless," Andra said. Her words were slightly slurred and she blinked. Leftover brain damage, he blearily realized. That was probably the only reason he was still fully alive.

His thoughts and movements were slowed. He was half-frozen over. He couldn't even keep track of Urri's wild, flailing movements anymore. Meanwhile, Andra and her clone were doing their best to hold him in place. The Jotun herself struggled to control her movements and command her clone at the same time. But even so, the overwhelming advantage was theirs. Andra held Shiv against the wall. She snapped her javelin and speared him with another. 

The cryoclone channeled blasts and scything blades of ice magic that curved in from the side. Worse, the mana they radiated out from themselves was crawling into him as well. A crusted layer of dense black ice coated his vitae and he found himself succumbing, without and within.

He triggered his temporal shell once more. The campus' wards didn't hit him this time. But Andra was like an inferno of time, and that burned his Chronomancy field away. Even so, it didn't do it that fast. Shiv had a second before his partially regenerated shell was dissolved.

And during that time, he wrapped what remained of his biomass around Andra's face, arms, and legs. He would have gone for his newest corpse as well. But then the temporal wards erupting from Urri's body struck him, and the little bit of time he had turned into practically none at all.

Even so, he did manage to do something. The Jotun flinched back with a muffled cry of surprise. Instead of trying to fight the ice, Shiv wrapped a thin string of white and red around her midsection. Bits of his body crackled and broke as he forced himself through the stilling frost. But he managed, and with a burst of force further fueled by his rage, he flung Andra into her cryoclone.

This proved to be a mistake. As Andra and her cryoclone met, a burst of power erupted from them. The air grew twice as cold, then thrice. The Jotun slammed a foot down on the ground, and the insides of the anchor froze over immediately. The walls around Shiv turned dense with thick layers of frost. And instead of trying to rip the biomass free from her body, she started freezing it instead. As she did, it turned brittle, and with a flex of limbs and a brief pull at her face, Shiv's dirty trick turned into naught but shards of glint and gore.

Godsdamn it, the Deathless hissed inside.

The Jotun was a problem, and then Urri appeared behind her. The Vulteg looked more furious than ever. He clenched the mangled remains of Shiv's flesh cocoon in his right hand, and he nearly threw himself at the Deathless again.

Shiv had bought himself enough time to trigger non-sequitur once more, but as he did, he only suffered a blast of pain creeping through his body. It was like he was pinned in place, like his mana wouldn't—the javelin, the ice. Of course, he couldn't use his Magical Skills. They were frozen as well, and his Unique Skill required his soul to be fluid, too.

The Jotun let out a breath, and it billowed forth like waves of steam, masking the room in a haze. The outline of a frost giant dragon manifested behind her, and he felt the temperature inside drop to the point where even the air particles seemed to freeze.

But instead of panicking, her breath inspired him. He still had another skill to use, one he couldn't rely on against adversaries with superior Awareness—or Harlock in particular. As Urri and Andra moved, seeking to finish Shiv, a swelling tide of blackness erupted out from him as he called upon his Creeping Void.

Immediately, the difference between the two Legendary Pathbearers made itself known. Urri blinked across space and drove a fist into Shiv. A good section of the Deathless shattered, and death loomed ever closer. But Andra flinched back. Andra hesitated. She was the more cautious of the two. And that was what spared him. That and her lacking awareness.

"What is this trickery?" she cried aloud.

Urri meanwhile drew fist after fist in the direction of Shiv. But that was an apt description. In the direction. He already shattered Shiv, and now that he couldn't see where the Deathless was, he was simply pounding against Andra's ice lining the insides of the anchor.

The Creeping Void 115 > 117

"Come on!" Shiv cried internally. He gathered his power and drew on both his desperation and what few overflow tides he managed to amass. The remainder of him snapped free from the wall with a crackling noise, and then he leaped sluggishly through the air, using Urri's vitality signature as his guide. He touched the Vulteg and immediately started draining from the brute's being.

Once more, the insides of the anchor came alive with lifeforce, but Shiv had more left to offer. Urri blinked and swung another fist at Shiv. He missed dramatically, and the Deathless wrapped his growing Vitae around the Vulteg, draining from him once more.

Vitaemancy 121 > 123

With the final burst of life force, Shiv resurrected, and this time he didn't fight alone. "Orcs!" he called aloud. "Time to scratch that godsdamn itch! Bring out the bracelet too!" Shiv cut his Creeping Void right after.

And the reinforcements hiding within his cape responded without any hesitation. As they emerged, Shiv saw they were crusted with frost as well. A section of Tequila's face looked bruised, probably from how fast Shiv was moving around. Then there was Helix, who seemed utterly unbothered.

Waves of twisting Biomancy extended out from behind the orc, and they formed the shape of wings designed in the orc's namesake. Around his arm, however, was a construct of glistening golden dimensionality, and Helix punched forward, flinging it free from his body. A second thereafter, the ring activated, and from its insides expanded, and from inside came a new shape, a new Pathbearer entering the battlefield.

A chain of Veilpiercers struck both Urri and Andra. The Vulteg shrugged the missile off, but the Jotun let out a cry of annoyance. Maybe she was weaker in terms of toughness, but that didn't help if she could regenerate.

Shiv needed to destroy her body entirely, probably crush her soul to make sure that she stayed dead.

"You will be still," Andra cried aloud. She held out a hand, and the bracelet briefly began to freeze. Adam's Chronomantic form lagged in the air as well, and Shiv felt his stomach drop as he hoped his friend wouldn't be affected.

But that was when Shiv noticed Adam was wearing his legendary armor once more, and also he was using a new bow, one that looked far too large for him. As Adam's golden form plunged back into the bracelet's center, the orcs attacked.

Tequila was the first to strike, his wands flared bright and hot as bolts of Dynmancy impacted both Jotun and Vulteg. They didn't do any damage either, but the bolts didn't fade. Instead, they stuck to the legendary prisoners' bodies and immediately began pulling them upward. The bolts shivered and pulsed with power, and the gravity clinging to the Legendary prisoners was inverted.

Urri pawed at the bolt, but then let out a very uncharacteristic cry as a swarm of stinging insects crawled into his mouth and pried at the corner of his eyes and ears. At the same time, Helix wove another one of his wings, and it spiraled through the air, slamming into Andra's chest. She froze a portion of his Biomancy field. The orc winced, but then shattered that wing without any hesitation. It turned into a spray of ichor, and instead of freezing, it boiled hot. He sustained himself using his Biomancy, and he grew brighter with power, as he generated more insects from his depths.

Then whistling blades tore past Shiv's head. They glistened like stars in the night sky, falling to strike dead those who oppose the magnificence of darkness. Shiv didn't know where Whisper was, and that made him smile. The orc's Stealth Skill was a nightmare. With the automaton prisoner disabled, it was likely no one could easily contend with Whisper via their awareness.

So long as Shiv kept both the Vultegg and the Jotun busy, the Deathless launched himself forward. He slammed boulder-first into Andra's chest, and then slammed her against the walls of ice she created. Her cold constantly lashed at him, but his Shapeless Tides flowed faster, kept him from being consumed. His inertial sheath rumbled and barked with incredible force, his bones rattled and fissured. But he didn't detonate, not with the orcs nearby, and especially because he needed the speed advantage.

Andra was fast. She moved through the air like there was no resistance at all. She formed a javelin in her hand and swung it down, trying to pin him beneath her. She had a full head of height on him, a half meter's worth of height. A bit short for a giant compared to the orcs, but even so, it gave her a reach advantage. 

One that didn't matter since Shiv left context.

He slammed into her again, picking her up by her back just as the top part of her javelin clipped his vitality decoy. It began to freeze, but it wasn't destroyed entirely. Shiv felt a chill wash through his core. There was still a connection between him and his decoy, and he guessed part of her magic was crawling over, spilling over.

But he didn't have time to worry about that. He had a prisoner to disable. He buried his frying pan in the base of her neck before she could rise. A wet snap of gristle and parting tendon was his reward, but her vertebrae were made of harder stuff.

Shiv stomped down with his boot, trying to drive his pan all the way through. But then her cryoclone burst free from her body, sending Shiv stumbling. The clone cleaved and cut, blindly, summoning javelins, axes, and whips. Tequila let out a cry of alarm and then blinked forward ahead into time, barely avoiding the blow. 

Another one of her cuts struck Urri in the back, but the Voltig was such a defensive powerhouse that he didn't even notice.

Finally, Helix dealt with the blow his way as well. He dissipated into a swarm of strange-looking creatures. They resembled winged reptiles, and they flew through the air without any fear of the ice at all.

As this continued, Adam reappeared from the corner of the room, slipping out of the bracelet before he fired another few shots. One of them clipped the cryo-clone at the ankle, and it stumbled. That gave them just long enough for more reinforcements to arrive. The many rifts opened in the room were tunnels, tunnels connecting this anchor to a certain coliseum hidden underground. 

This had been Plan B. If Shiv couldn't talk the prisoners down, then they were going to meet them with overwhelming force.

Gone exploded out from the portal, and she tore into Andra's body where Shiv stood beside. The goblin was so fast that the scene before Shiv resembled a blur of violence instead of anything else. It was like a small whirlwind of death and blood had suddenly manifested before him. 

The goblin absolutely savaged the giant's flesh. Every bit of meat was peeled clean from Andra's bones. Despite this, despite countless nicks becoming thousands of nicks, becoming nothing but nicks, the bones endured. Gone was fast beyond fast, but ultimately her lack of might and Andra's passable Toughness spared the Jotun a final end.

Shiv joined the fray once more. He brought his frying pan down but gasped as he struggled to move. Then he realized that he was bleeding vitality. Not only that, his decoy had shattered, and a wave of coldness was creeping out from his center. He was freezing over again.

"Goddammit," Shiv repeated for the third time. He directed his tides inward, crushing the ice and forcing it back. If he didn't have Shapeless Tides, if someone didn't possess overwhelming magical resistance, Andra's cryomancy was a nightmare. Then, Andra's cryomancy was a fatal affliction. Just a single nick would damn you to a quiet and still end.

But while he was stunned and struggling, he still had a few prisoners of his own. Candles and Kura joined the fray. The latter exploded out from one of the rifts and besieged Urri. She was an army unto herself, and though a few of her time clones burst apart in sprays of gold, she still had more, endless more. They swarmed out from the pathway as a legion, and their bladed limbs tore bits, spraying pieces away from the Vulteg's magical resistance.

Just then, Adam appeared again, and he fired a particularly large Veilpiercer directly into the Vulteg's center eye. The Vulteg roared, and then from within the dimensional rift, there came a blast of fire, and the ice in the room began to melt.

"Alright!" a loud voice echoed from all the rifts. It turned into a maniacal cackle of laughter, and from a pathway right next to Andra, a simmering heat began to flow, and the flickers of a distant flame grew closer and closer. Suddenly, the temperature spiked. Suddenly, there was a struggle, as water started to rain down, as the ice turned fluid, as Candles entered the fray. "Who left the fridge open? I hate the cold!"

A blast of cryomancy exploded out from Andra's clone, but she did something else as well. She pointed a finger down at her original body, and a dense block of ice formed over her mangled form.

Shiv cursed as he swung his frying pan down. A moment too late, he chipped a bit away from that ice, but then it began creeping over his pan, though it failed to do any damage. As he ripped it free, he barely dodged a lashing backhand from the cryo-clone. Gone struck the clone under the armpit like a cannonball, and then vanished before it could strike back. However, Shiv caught sight of the goblin staggering away, and she was rapidly slowing as she vanished down the length of a pathway.

The Deathless winced. Just being near Andra cost Gone her full potential, but that might not last.

As Candles fully emerged, he stood before Gone and summoned a column of fire by his side. The column spread, igniting even the ice, even the air. But then, undeterred, unbowed, the cryo-clone unleashed her powers as well. The ice magic she wielded was immense, and she ignored Shiv in favor of facing her nemesis, in facing the opposite of her element.

That proved to be a mistake. The Deathless slammed himself into her again. His Shapeless Tides rattled and burst inside him as he felt the full power of her ice. She also felt his full power as well, and instead of her being frozen and him resisting, both of them were flung back. She slammed against the wall. Candles unleashed two fistfuls of fire, and they burned and burrowed meter-deep holes through her chest. Soon those holes became a tunnel, and the cryo-clone threw her head back in a piercing cry.

He rolled over and shot to his feet once more. He reached out and seized the cryo-clone's ankles. Then he started to drain. There was a slight flicker of vitality there, just a bit, and it took little effort to sever.

The clone burst apart in a spray of red, and the ice sustaining it collapsed as well. But then, at the same time, the block of ice encasing Andra's original body exploded, and from within the Jotun rose once more. She was still half-flayed, and her neck hung at an awkward angle. But the tattoos lining her flesh glowed bright, and she was rapidly regenerating.

What's more, she felt more powerful than ever. It seemed that she had only severed her connection to the cryo-clone, and instead of that destroying her power, it reset it. She was mighty again, fused with her cryomancy, and undaunted by the growing foes entering the fray.

"I am Andra, Prophetess of the Dead Realms, and I will not be denied my freedom, not by the Ascendants, and not by you."

Her words echoed as if an emanation of her spirit, while her mouth remained utterly still. Her teeth were clenched tight, and her eyes blazed with power, but it wasn't Cryomancy. Instead, violet energy spilled free from her, and she drew back her javelin and prepared to throw.

She launched it into the air, just as Shiv and Candles attacked at the same time. A veil of frost swirled around her. The Deathless crashed into it shoulder first, but found himself struggling to break through. He managed a second later, as a jet stream of hyperheated plasma plowed past her wards. But it was too late. Too late to strike at Andra, who sank down into the ice around her. Too late to stop her from throwing her javelin as well.

It soared into the air and vanished in a burst of light. And then it sailed, sailed for someone or something Shiv couldn't see. A cold feeling erupted inside of him, and he waited for one of his allies to fall.

***

"Prophetess of the Dead Realms!" Adam heard the Jotun's cry echo within his mind, and he clenched his teeth. He felt tendrils of divination coiling around him. He wasn't truly studied in this art, not like his mother, but he did have a Master-Tier Divination Skill given to him by the system. As such, he could feel, and if he could feel, he could guess, he could deduce. She was using it to trace him, to track him. She was coming for him somehow, and Adam prepared. He summoned his own Divination mana, and his eyes came alight with the same violet glow that the Jotun possessed.

Instead of focusing on her, however, he let his instincts guide him. He stared upon her javelin and saw trickles of divination spill into the weapon, and felt it connect to him as well. It was like a cord bleeding directly to his body, damning him to inevitable fate.

For a bit, Adam looked on with utter disbelief. He couldn't believe it, if she was actually going to—and then, as a veil of ice formed around her, as Candles and Shiv went and leaped out to strike her low, she flung her javelin and passed into the narrative of the world itself.

Adam couldn't describe it. He felt it move. He felt it cross over. The power she wielded over the nature of causality and stories was staggering. But he wasn't without Awareness, and he wasn't without options.

The Gate Lord focused. He ignored everyone going in and out of his pathways nearby, ignored the crafters crying out an alarm fleeing from this section of the maze they described as a nigh-impenetrable testing ground. He even ignored how the ground at his feet was freezing over or cracking with bits of blackened ice. He focused, and he followed that trail of Divination leading to his throat. Andra had thrown the javelin. She was going to strike him dead on, and he couldn't intercept her, not really, not until it finally surfaced into reality.

But it would take a second, and when you gave Adam Arrow a second, he would make the most of it. He fired his arrows. One tore a patch into existence before him, before it returned, reach breaking out as it ruptured free from the space at his side. He fired three more arrows before a javelin finally arrived, and a cataclysmic clash took place.

She struck the center of his armor, but her impact barely lasted a second. Adam shifted and took the hit on his chest. At the same time, every single Veilpiercer he fired slammed into its needle-thin side and sent it tumbling astray. It left a scratch along his armor, and Adam flinched with surprise. It was superficial damage. The armor itself wasn't ruined, but still, after so long, for something to scratch his legendary tier armor was disconcerting.

Veilpiercer 184 > 190

Vectors of the Eternal Ascent 171 > 176

The javelin struck the wall, and it burst apart into shards, but from those shards expanded patches of all-consuming ice, and the Gate Lord let out a hiss. He would need Candles back in a while. Either he or Shiv. Only they seemed to have the skills capable of suppressing Andra's Cryomancy.

“Prophetess you may be, but good shot you are not,” Adam quipped as he drew back another arrow.

***

"Candles," Shiv said, "melt it all."

"Oh, I love the sound of that," the Burning Pathbearer cried. He threw his head back and laughed, and as he did, a spew of flame erupted free from his skull-like jaws, and jets of blazing heat carved out from his every digit. The insides of the teleportation anchor became an elemental war.

Fire and ice formed steam, and even without Shiv's creeping void active, everything was obscured, everything was chaotic. The Deathless, however, didn't care. He had his own task to perform. He slammed a fist down on the ground and began channeling his Shapeless Tides into the ice itself. He let it circulate around the room. He tried to focus, tried to cultivate as many tides as he could, so that he could seize control of the anchor and crush it inward.

He was going to break the ice. Candles was going to melt it. This was effectively a two-on-one fight, and then a blow struck him in the back of the head again. This time, he felt something in his lower neck break. As he went tumbling forward, he got up just in time to wrench his Shapeless Tides in the opposite direction and intercept a lashing kick from Urri.

The Vulteg's eye was covered in a swarm of stinging bugs, and a small army of temporal clones clung to his arms and legs. They stabbed away, chipping at him, but he continued fighting on, and continued raging.

Shiv drove a fist into his chest, but then the Vulteg vanished and rematerialized behind Shiv. He swung wide and hit nothing, because he didn't know where Shiv was. The earlier hit he achieved was blind luck alone. Quite literally, he punched in the opposite direction where Shiv stood, and the Deathless did this. He moved on instinct, letting his Legendary-Tier Grappling guide him.

He rolled and coiled his limbs around the Vulteg's lower legs. As the Vulteg went down and tangled, before he could vanish, Shiv seized control of Urri's lower left leg and locked his feet around the Vulteg's knee as well. Then, with a wrench of his body and a burst of vectors, he tried to cripple the Vulteg with a kneebar. A brief pop was heard. Urri let out a yelp, but then vanished once more. Shiv guessed that he might have achieved a partial tear at most, and that was a terrifying thing considering he spent a good portion of his overflow tides, what little he had left after trying to seize the anchor.

"What the hell is he made of?" Shiv muttered under his breath.

As Urri reappeared once more, a Veilpiercer slammed into the side of his head, and he went stumbling. The moment the Veilpiercer ruptured, however, another attack followed. It was the roar of a cannon, the impact of an artillery shell. A massive blast filled the room, and Urri went flying against the wall. Another few bombs struck, and Shiv stood his ground as rippling waves of force expanded through the insides of the anchor. He pinned himself down and cultivated his toughness.

A Pillar of Orichalcum began to form around him, and just then the battered body of the Aeromancer slammed into him as well. As she made contact with him, he felt her biology with his mana and realized she was still alive and quite healthy, in fact. There were severe burns, several patches of her that were frozen, and nasty contusions everywhere, but she was very much alive. Her internal organs weren't harmed, and it seemed the same case with the Dimensional Automaton, as Shiv saw a fragment of the bot prisoner smack into him as well.

As it bounced down, the Automaton let out an "ow," and then was kicked aside by a passing orc. It was moments like these that struck Shiv with awe-struck delight. It had been one battle after another, and through it all, he just didn't appreciate how tough he'd gotten. He and practically every other Pathbearer who got to the point of Master. The things they were surviving were absurd. Their skills were absurd. A Pathless, well never mind that, an Adept would have been liquefied if they were caught inside this teleportation anchor. And here everyone was, shrugging off each other's attacks in one way or another.

A loud yelp came from his side, and Shiv saw Candles pinned to the ground now, the blazing Pathbearer prying at a long, thin javelin sticking out from his chest. He was still burning. The javelin was melting, but from the ceiling, Andra reappeared, and she plunged down with another spear-like weapon in her hand.

"The hell you don't." Shiv launched his mana hydra into the Jotun's side first. He knew it would freeze some of his Biomancy, but it was faster than trying to attack her physically. As his mana hydra hit, a burst of red filled the air as her Magical Resistance endured. And soon, as he expected, Creeping Frost formed along the outside of his Biomancy field. But then Shiv was upon her. He slammed into her midsection and dropped her against the ground in a piledriver. Something in her neck broke again, and she hissed. She swept her blade up trying to cut him, and he dodged back, barely. She took a piece of his pinky away, and Shiv used his Biomancy field to sever half of his hand so that he didn't need to deal with the spreading ice.

Inertial Overdrive 177 > 179

He grabbed her by the ankle and swung her head first into the frozen walls of her anchor. She fused with it, becoming ice herself, but Shiv was still holding onto her. His vectors crawled along her body, and so long as he held her tight, freedom was beyond her grasp. She pulled, a section of the wall came free, and Andra tumbled out with it. He drove a knee into her chin, and her head snapped back with a satisfying spray of blood.

He hooked his arm around her head, and then they tumbled. His vectors spiraled around his body, turning fast, and they were as if an alligator and its prey, doing death rolls in the water. Andra used her Cryomancy, but he battered her with fist and pan. He rolled over atop her body and wrapped an arm around her neck. Slowly, he tightened. His Overflow Vectors crashed along the curve of her neck like countless war wagons sieging the walls of a fortress. She grunted and choked. He tightened his grip, and soon Kura joined in as well.

Her time clones stabbed down upon the Jotun, and her blades pierced her skull, shredded her sides. Andra choked and coughed. She still kept struggling, and the faint glow of violet mana spilled out of her eyes. That glow faded as Gone struck again. A blur of violence exploded across the Jotun's face, and the front end of Andra simply ceased to be, along with both of her eyeballs.

"Just go to sleep," Shiv hissed next to her ear. "Just pass the hells out. I didn’t want to do this shit; I wasn't trying to—"

And then she activated her Divination regardless. It seemed she didn't need her eyes for the skill. Her fingers thrust forward, and Shiv hissed as something punched in through his lower rib. A spread of ice creeped, clawed along his abdomen. He seized Andra's neck and began to twist to the side. He started draining her vitality as well, and just as he felt something inside her about to give, a massive boot struck him in the back of the head for the third time.

Shiv was sent stumbling off of Andra's body, and Urri tripped over him as well. Holding onto Urri's back was Whisper, stabbing down with blade after blade. As Shiv looked to his left, he saw Tequila partially caked into the wall. The orc was still alive and laughing, but he was clearly in pain, and Helix was trying to reconstruct the orc Chronomancer's lower body.

Just then, a hand hooked under Shiv's armpit, and the temporal form of Adam wrenched him back to his feet. "Finish this," Adam cried aloud.

"Will do," Shiv growled. He flung himself on Andra with renewed vigor, but she turned, fusing into the ground right before he slammed down. Unfortunately, she still wasn't fast enough to avoid his Shapeless Tides. They circulated out. The vector struck something that wasn't dead, that had a soul, and Shiv pulled. With a roar of effort, he wrenched her free from her cover and flung her against the ceiling.

Her head impacted the corner of the anchor, and part of her horn snapped. She kicked off of it, however, doing a backflip and slashing Shiv's right cheek open in a startling counterattack. She moved so fast that he barely reacted, and she stabbed him a series of times before his eyes could even follow. He had no idea where the speed came from, why she was so fast.

He clamped both hands around a rising javelin, just as it sank in against his chin. A spread of ice began to tickle, but he held her in place. She lifted him off the ground. He slammed himself back down using some of his vectors. He snapped her ice, and he elbowed her in the throat. Andra gagged. He swept her legs out from under her, but then she rolled. She caught herself, and then came up with a sweeping strike. It was intercepted by one of Kura's clones, and then she promptly disintegrated as well, as the temporal wards ripped through the room.

Then Candles entered the fray. He clung to Andra's face and began channeling flames directly into her ear canal. She roared with pain, and that turned into a pitched shriek as he drove the business end, the bladed edge of his frying pan up between her legs. It cut through her armor. Her eyes, now regrown, widened as she snarled and somehow laughed with disbelief. "Agh! You utter wight!" 

And then she did something unexpected. She reached out with her left hand and slammed it into her chest. A welter of blood erupted, and she ripped her heart free.

As it came loose, he saw her insides, and his jaw dropped. His nerves screamed with terror. He flung himself back a second using his Chronomancy, and that was all that spared him from an uncertain end, him and all his allies.

For what spilled out from Andra's very core was a wave of corrosive energy. Her heart was also not human, was not an organ. Instead, it was a construct, and crackling green mana coiled around it. It resembled a dagger. It resembled something just like that which Valor was stored within.

Candles let out a yelp as the corrosive mana flung him aside. His mana resistance held, but he still found himself launched as if a dart flung by a titan. As he hit the far end of the room, Andra clenched her heart, and it became a long curved glaive. It crackled with verdant energy, and a series of Chronomantic clones manifested behind her, but they were outlined with necromancy, even if their insides were portals to an endless expanse of winter.

"You've fought well, Deathless," she said, "but now I grow tired, and now I will show you how I have earned my name. If the Ascendants are to slay me, then so be it, but I will not strike an accord with someone who uses the forked tongue, and I will never bend or let myself be taken again, not after my shame."

The Deathless got back to his feet and sighed. He held up his hand and tried to find a way, tried to think of a way to bring her down. Maybe his Shapeless Tides could hold the necromancy at bay, but if she surprised him just once, then everyone within this anchor, and probably a good portion of the university, were going to be destined for an ugly end. And Shiv didn't want that, not even a little.

"Look… listen," Shiv said. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t give a shit about—”

"No more talk," she cried. She held her glaive high. "Now we finish this. Witness the dead of winter. Witness the prophetess that will claim this world for the eternal winter"

"I can still get you out of this mess," Shiv hissed. “Why are you so fucking determined to die. What the hells is wrong with you.”

Everyone was giving Andra a wide berth now, and the Deathless's mind raced. Adam's Veilpiercers tore into existence from all angles, but they shattered around Andra like glass.

Shiv had a very, very bad feeling about this. The anchor wasn't going to sustain this, and the sheer amount of power spilling out from them, this was probably going to be a massive blip on the ascendant's awareness, so to speak. His mind spun. He called out, and he called the only name he knew, the only name that connected him to the Dragon Brokers, because if he couldn't convince Andra, then maybe throwing one of their operatives at her would do the trick.

It was his last shot at solving this peacefully and avoiding a genocidal event in the capital. "Cullywier!"

But the moment Shiv summoned the fairy, Andra cut down, and every bit of ice within the anchor came alive with the foul touch of Necromancy, lashing out at all those trapped within.