V-2 Morsel (I)

Attention, citizens. An unexpected disaster has occurred at the Yellowstone Rubix Well. Please seek immediate shelter and prepare arms. Repeat, please return to your house or nearby shelter and prepare arms.

Wait for the alarms to subside before emerging. This is not a drill. Find shelter. Seek the protection of a member of the Prismatic Guard if shelter is unavailable, and you are incapable of combat. Prepare for active combat if you are martially capable.

Defend your family. Defend your homeland. The light endures. The Ascendants will deliver us to salvation.

May our faith never waver.

-Emergency Notification Dispatched by Auroral Council

V-2

Morsel (I)

As all was bathed in light, Shiv felt himself get carried across by waves of pressure. To where he was cast, he didn't know. He tried to fight it using his Shapeless Tides, but though his skill was legendary, the power arrayed against him was overwhelming. He might have been a leviathan, but a leviathan was still smaller than the sea itself. Shiv struggled on, however, because he was Shiv, and struggling was what he did. He didn’t know how to be any other way.

Inertial Overdrive 167 > 170

Vitaemancy 114 > 116

Pillar of Orichalcum 249 > 255

Sticks and Stones 52 > 56

Plaguefueled 76 > 79

A few seconds drew on, and suddenly the pressure began to fade. A thud followed, and a sudden impact greeted Shiv's body. His splaying Vitae spread out, and he found himself lying upon a cold, hard surface. Yet the ground beneath him felt uneven, cracked, fractured, disjointed. The air was hot, and growing hotter with every second. For a moment he wondered if the mana core hadn't been completely destroyed, but when his soul remained unseared, he knew he was someplace else entirely.

Just then, the last of the brightness vanished, and he took in his surroundings. True to his tactile senses, the ground was fractured. Fissures ran across a large and mangled room. It was partially collapsed along the left side, seeming as if a landslide of Orichalcum had plowed its way into the chamber. Shiv blinked, and frowned internally. The landslide now resembled more of a slope of Orichalcum that had been jammed inside another Orichalcum chamber.  It ultimately just seemed like two cubes of Orichalcum had been mashed together in an awkward mesh.

Shiv remembered how Dimensionality and spatial magic shouldn’t be able to hurt someone. But this looked pretty harmful, and there was no telling what that divine mana did to the Rubix Well either.

The slope melded into the ceiling, and the left side of the room was partially subsumed by another structure—one that resembled some kind of large statue or turret of some kind. It was too engulfed by red-gold metal for Shiv to be sure. To his right was a set of halls designed by a schizophrenic. Shiv could only describe it that way because he saw how the hallways were interconnected. There were walkways leading straight, and then they bent diagonally. Then there were other walkways pointing down from the ceiling at an angle, lodged into the former pathways Shiv saw. It looked like someone ripped and drove a mess of different hallways together, creating a sort of tangled mess.

And within those passages came flickers of light. Usually it remained dark, but every now and again something would flash. As Shiv focused his Farsight, he realized it was the yellow eyes of an orc. And not just any orc.

Mortar!

The big automata-clad brute was fused into the wall, and the Deathless could hear a pitched whine escape him. “Is someone bloody out there? I’m stuck! I’m stuck and I can’t get out. So. If you’re there, can you come out and kill me? Or set me free? Either’s fine.”

The orc’s voice was so choked and weak that a breeze would have masked it. Shiv crawled closer, and it was then that he remembered he had been slain at the end of that last engagement. There were notifications before him that he hadn't regarded, and one in particular caught his attention over all his new Skill Levels.

Equipment Obtained: [The Last Morsel]

Tier: Legendary

Condition: Perfect

Composition: Narrativium; Orichalcum

Enchantments >Mince the Minceable; Cook the Uncookable; Bash the Unbashable; Indestructible; Binding

The Last Morsel, Shiv muttered to himself. But as he looked down, clutched within a tangle of vitae, was a new weapon, a new weapon that had consumed his stolen dagger. He was utterly surprised by its design, mainly because it looked utterly ridiculous. The Last Morsel was a merger between a knife and a frying pan. At its center was a round rim, yet a ring of bladed edges jutted free from the pan itself, extending a few centimeters to serve as a slashing instrument.

A contrast between the blade and the pan itself followed. The body of the pan curved inward, and it was the kind of black that drank light itself from the air. That was no exaggeration. It was a darkness that radiated, a darkness that consumed, a darkness that desired to be fed. And where the room grew hotter by the second, coldness radiated from the pan, as if it led to a bitter expanse out in the void.

The blades framing the pan were Orichalcum edged with narrativium lining their cores. Veins of darkness crept into the red gold, and at the very head of the pan was a jutting spear tip. The entire thing was the size of Shiv's head, and though it seemed unwieldy and looked garish, it was practically a feather in his grasp.

As he held onto it, everything around him came aglow with pristine light. The Chef Unwavering skill triggered and never stopped triggering. As Shiv clutched the pan tighter, the skill only grew, and it seemed to regard everything as a cooking ingredient. The walls, the air, the darkness, the light, himself. Everything.

Yet, whatever he focused on for long came alight with a black grid. The grid called out to Shiv, and the pan rattled—its bladed edges flared bright.

What the hell? Shiv muttered to himself internally. A rush of anxiety pulsed through him thereafter as he realized Adam and all the others were missing. Shit, I need to get moving. Get mortar out first. 

The core's detonation must have caused some kind of dimensional collapse. Mix that in with the divine mana collapse and now Shiv had a guess as to why the cube he was in was so messed up.

He had no idea how to find Adam or anyone else, but if Mortar was here, maybe they hadn't been displaced too far either. And ultimately, if he couldn't find them, maybe he could make enough noise that they could find him. That carried a risk, however. The Ascendants would also come looking, but right now he wasn't going to leave Adam in this place, wherever this place was.

The Deathless moved, and as he did, he absorbed vitality from the world itself. The fabric of reality tore, and through it came tumbling distortions and anomalies that spewed all manner of unstable mana into the already destroyed chamber. Without anywhere else to go, and unwilling to rip open the walls before he explored, his most obvious exit was to continue down the hall and make his way toward the automaton. 

By the time he reached the trapped orc, he had resurrected, and there was a magical rupture in the room behind him. Lashing bolts of flame-infused lightning lit the Orichalcum behind him on fire. In seconds, the walls and floors were burning as if they were wood, rather than a nigh-impenetrable alloy.

The temperature climbed even faster after that, but it was a heat Shiv could bear. It was a natural heat, not a magical one. As he felt the weight of his new weapon in his hand, the orc wheezed at him once more. "Insul? That you?” Mortar squinted. “Get me out of this bloody place. Or… Just stab me with that…” The orc blinked. “Is that a pan?”

Shiv looked down at the trapped orc. "Is your body melted into the wall, or are you just trapped there?" Shiv asked.

"Don't know," the orc said. "Just get me out! Get me out! Please?”

Shiv began harnessing Overflow Tides. Orichalcum was a hard metal to breach, so this might take a bit of struggle. But there was a risk that when he tore the walls open, he might utterly crush the automaton as well. As much as Shiv wanted to boast about his control, guiding his many overflow tides and applying enough force was still something of a delicate operation, and he wouldn't describe himself as delicate at all.

Just then, however, the walls before him flickered again, glowing ever brighter with The Chef Unwavering guiding his instincts. Something told him that he needed to cut the walls. Something told him that they would part before him if only he followed the black grid. Black grids, Shiv thought to himself. Why does the grid’s color match the absolute darkness radiating from my pan?

Shiv looked down at his new Legendary weapon and also at the corresponding grid forming in front of him. It seemed to want him to cut a tight square around the automaton. After a moment's hesitation, he followed along with it. As he cut, he felt the Mince the Unminceable Enchantment activate. 

For the first time, he tested his new weapon on Orichalcum, and Orichalcum parted before him like butter. There was no exaggeration; it was genuinely butter. The red-gold metal offered no resistance as it simply slipped apart. The darkness at the center of his pan grew ever more intense and the red-gold edges of the blades flared bright, as if they had been left over a naked flame for hours.

As Shiv finished cutting the square out of the wall, his Deepest Edge caused his strokes to go all the way through, and a second later pooling sludge erupted free from the gaps. It struck Shiv's body in a spray of brilliant color, and as it hissed against his badly wounded Voidmantid armor, he realized it was magma gnawing at him.

"Magma," Shiv muttered, and his mind caught up to why a second later. "Ah, hell, the volcano's flooding in."

"Hurts," the orc moaned. “Feels like my arsehole’s being cooked from the inside out.”

"It probably is. Alright. Let's see what I can do." Shiv pulled the carved chunk of Orichalcum out of the wall. As soon as it slipped free, he saw a rush of molten rock come barreling toward him. Shiv put his overflow tides to good use. He seized the walls and began to twist with his vectors. The Orichalcum groaned under Legendary pressure, the Deathless hissed with strain, a wave of magma slammed into his chest. He triggered his Pillar of Orichalcum to resist the climbing heat, and the struggle continued for about five seconds.

With a final exertion of force, Shiv managed to twist the remaining Orichalcum into a nub that stymied the flow from the outside.

The ground was bubbling with orange-hot liquid, and from the room Shiv entered crawled a creeping flame unleashed by the rupture. It wouldn't be long until everything was consumed by fire. But before then, Shiv had someone to free. As he carved more of the Orichalcum block holding the automaton in place, the center of the pan groaned as it began to inhale, genuinely inhale. It was like there was a monster on the other end trying to suck something across. Shiv's heart did a backflip when the loud whistle of air filled the hall, and a rush of wind began plunging inward to the epicenter of his new weapon.

He stopped what he was doing and studied it for a moment, and after a beat of apprehension, he reached down and picked up a slice of Orichalcum he had carved free. 

"You want this?" Shiv asked. The pan wasn't exactly intelligent, not like Uva’s shield was. However, it intermittently breathed in and calmed, and that was as much of a signal as anything, Shiv guessed. He awkwardly fed a piece of Orichalcum into its depths, and to his surprise, the entire thing vanished into the black. Though the Orichalcum was a large sheet, it began to curve and bend, as if falling somewhere distant, down a long well, before vanishing. Just then, the pan began to growl.

Shiv's second enchantment activated, and the room around him pulsed with new color. Gone were the black etchings marring the walls. Instead, now the darkness was focused on the magma at his feet, or frankly the fires growing closer behind him. 

The Deathless blinked. You want me to put a fire inside here? The edges of the pan came alight. Alright, you want me to cut a fire? They grew even brighter.

Shiv followed his instincts, and absurd though it seemed, he sliced a piece of magma apart. Just then it broke free, turning gelatinous, a thick cube-like substance. The change was so sudden and jarring that the Deathless took a step back.

"What are you doing, Insul? What’s happening!" the orc groaned. “I’m facing the wrong way—I can’t bloody see you. Also, there’s a fire coming for us, so maybe hurry.”

Shiv ignored Mortar for now, observing what he had just done with his knife. As he picked up the gelatinous cube of magma, it was still hot but was easy to hold. Furthermore, it was perfectly sliced. "Mince the Unminceable indeed," Shiv said. He picked it up and dropped it into the center of his pan, and once more it rumbled with delight.

Suddenly, a black lid slammed hard down upon the rim of the frying pan out of nowhere. Shiv nearly jumped out of his skin when it happened. A notification appeared before his eyes, and a countdown followed.

Cooking in Progress: 5 Seconds

Cooking? What the hell are you cooking? He got his answer about four seconds later, when a new meal manifested before him. The Deathless was utterly speechless, and for the first time, he was genuinely touched. The system had gifted him something for closing the mana core, and this something was designed to charm his heart in every single way.

System, you absolute…

"Shiv!" Mortar cried aloud. "Shiv, I'm gonna shit myself if you don't get me out of here soon!"

As the lid vanished in a puff of dark smoke, Shiv beheld his meal for the first time. It wasn't a mess; it was a wonder. The Orichalcum had been turned into glistening strips of red gold, and a pleasant aroma, hot, humid, but ultimately delectable, burrowed its way into Shiv's very nose. His appetite sang while his mind twisted and tumbled. It shouldn't be edible; this was made from a scoop of magma and strips of Orichalcum. Despite this, the texture looked so inviting.

"Ah, what the hell." Shiv reached down into the pan and pulled out his new meal. As he did, the pan suddenly got lighter, returning to being as if a feather again. Shiv hesitated for a beat before biting down. As he did, his teeth sank clean through the new meal. It didn't feel like a piece of meat, nor did it feel like any kind of vegetable Shiv had chewed through. The closest thing in texture was a piece of fried dough. It gummed around the corners of Shiv's mouth as his teeth pressed down. Then, it melted upon his tongue, unleashing tumbling streams of heavy flavor down the back of his throat.

The only way he could describe this meal was that it was juicy, and as he imbibed more of it, his body began to change. At once, his skin turned red-gold as his physiology grew even more like Orichalcum. A moment later, however, his insides came aglow with magma as well. Shiv felt himself gain an immunity to heat.

Cook the Uncookable Activated

Orichalcum Resistance Obtained

Heat Absorption Obtained

Rather than simply being able to ignore it, the rising temperature flowed into him for a moment, and he drew power from it. He was like a conduit for the flames, for the magma, and all the roaring blazes outside were wrenched over into him as if he was magnetic. Yet just as quick as the effect triggered, it faded.

As Shiv felt the magical transmutation die down, he heard his heart thundering in his ears, felt his breath coming faster and faster. "Broken Felling Moon, that's a hell of a kick!"

Shiv shook off the rush of adrenaline and returned to freeing Mortar. With every stroke of his knife, he chipped more of the orc's body free. As he did, he winced as he saw just how badly wounded his orc was. 

Mortar had high Toughness, but high Toughness didn't do much when most of your inner organs were compressed in a space too small for you. Shiv's mana-hydra swelled around the badly mangled orc, and it took a while for him to crystallize all the injuries. At present, his ribs were residing where his kidney should be, and his heart was among the few biological processes within his body that still functioned. That was the entire reason why Mortar was still alive. His lungs had popped, his stomach was leaking acid over into his intestines. It was a general nightmare, but Shiv managed to heal the orc.

As he did, though, Mortar's body came alight with that glistening glow as well. He, too, was considered an ingredient, and just then a blackened grid slid over him as Shiv's focus lingered on the orc for too long.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Insul?" Mortar gasped. "You seem hungry. And what's that you're holding?" Mortar squinted. His piss-yellow eyes turned to glinting beads, and then they suddenly widened as the orc choked. "Are you seriously holding some kind of bladed frying pan? You used that to cut me out of the wall.”

"Yeah, I’m having a hard time accepting it myself," Shiv said. "Listen, did you see the others?"

"What do you mean, did I see the others? You popped the core. I was busy getting my guts kicked in by some bastard I couldn't even react to. Half the other orcs died immediately without getting to enjoy the fight. And now I'm here. I woke up halfway embedded in the walls."

"Alright, I guess that was too much to hope for," Shiv said. He reached down and pulled Mortar to his feet. The orc grunted, and thanks to Shiv's healing, found himself still among the living. The orc sniffled, and he regarded Shiv's armor. "Is that thing still alive?"

"What, my Voidmantid?" Shiv examined the conditions of his armor and scowled. It was badly wounded, but still functional. "Right, I think you should be able to track the others using their pheromones."

"You sure they're going to be nearby?" Shiv asked.

"Probably. It makes sense, right? We've been displaced into the same area. I would say it'd just be luck, but consider how messy that blast was, and those waves of pressure, I think most of us got carried an equivalent distance. Including the avatars.”

And that made Shiv’s insides tighten. He clenched his new weapon tighter. And snorted. The idea of smashing a frying pan over Daughter’s head was ridiculous—but he loved it.

Shiv nodded and focused on Adam's scent. He hadn't used his armor's Awareness enchantments nearly enough, but right now was as good of a time as any. The Gate Lord had a faint taste of spring about him, and right now in this place, spring was easy to trace. Shiv closed his eyes and gave the entirety of his concentration over to his awareness. "Come on," he muttered to himself. "Come on, be somewhere nearby."

Once more, the system answered his prayers. 

A crisp, minty flavor glided up into his nose, and at the same time he felt a tremoring vibration rush through the ground. It repeated too often to be a one-off. It felt like someone was running somewhere or pounding against the floor, and Shiv followed the taste. It was a good thing his armor allowed him to sense pheromones, otherwise he would have found himself lost in the strange tangle of winding hallways. 

He used the smell as a compass, and after turning left, right, and dropping through a vertically placed hallway, he found himself squeezing out from a narrow crevice that used to be the top side of a door that was now sunken into the ground.

Once he was through to the other side, he found himself in a new chamber. This one was far smaller than the one he regained coherence in. It was an office from the looks of things. However, a fourth of it had been compressed by a mess of staircases. They jutted from the walls like ribs sticking out of skin, and hanging from them were a few other orcs. Shiv winced. 

These orcs weren't so lucky. Some of the steps had been driven through their skulls. For a while, Shiv wondered if dimensionality did that to them, but then he noticed how the blood spray was splattered only on one side of the wall. Someone had impaled them upon the stairs from the left side

There were still enemies about. Ascendants. Avatars. "Mortar," Shiv muttered under his breath. “Keep your eyes wide.”

He looked around, trying to find a doorway, and that minty taste bade him to look up. Shiv blinked and found another room conjoined to this one. And as he spent a moment longer observing it, he realized he was staring up into a massive prison cube, a prison cube intersected with another. It seemed to be a cross shape, and inside Shiv saw hundreds of small shadows falling from on high.

The first of them landed with a brutal thud, and Shiv realized what was causing the vibrations earlier. Some of the wardens had been displaced poorly, and now they were bouncing off the Orichalcum walls, slamming down from heights that weren't there before. With how tough most wardens were, Shiv suspected they'd survive, but from all the groaning he could hear, a few of them were definitely injured.

“Uh, Insul. Got a bit of a problem.” Mortar's voice came from under the crevice. Shiv paused, and then he grunted in understanding. He might have been able to squeeze underneath the frame, but Mortar was the size of a small building. Shiv was prepared to use his legendary strength, but then paused. Once more, he focused on the doorframe, and a black grid appeared. "Alright, Morsel, let's see you do your thing." He slashed. The wall came apart in a burst of diced bits. It rained down, and Shiv caught it in the center of his pan. But that wasn't enough to start the cooking. It needed a fire. It always needed a fire. He summoned a burst of Pyromancy atop his palm, and he grinned as it glistened like an ingredient and then was lined with a cutting grid right after.

Shiv left the Orichalcum inside the base of the pan for now. Mortar staggered on through, and he regarded Shiv's new legendary weapon with less humor and a great deal more apprehension. "That thing looks like a child threw it together, but by the Challenger it cuts deep.”

"It cooks as well," Shiv said. "Managed to make something edible out of the Orichalcum and a piece of magma I diced up earlier." The Orc just stared. "I’m not joking, that actually happened. Turned my flesh Orichalcum and made me able to drain all the fire from the air. I think it just… feeds me the properties of whatever I eat for a while.”

"Oh," the orc hummed. "You what? I think I wanna try a bite later."

"Yeah, later," Shiv pointed up. "I think I got a guess where some of our friends might be, but they might not be alone."

"Oh, we got another fight on our hands, do we?" Mortar chuckled. "Well, after you, Insul."

Shiv seized the orc with his left hand and launched both of them up through the entrance leading into the prison cubes. 

As they climbed, Shiv saw a small mess of wardens lying against the ground. Many of them were clutching their limbs; a few were tending to others. Theirs was a mixed lot. Some of them were armored in adamantine plate, while others were logistical Pathbearers, dressed only in uniforms, and some weren't even properly dressed at all, only clad in undergarments. Some of them pointed at him as he went up, and Shiv paused briefly in the air. 

He looked at the wardens around him, and he saw several lift their weapons.

"I can just blast them right now," Mortar said, angling the large cannon on his back. “Just say so. Please say so.”

Shiv didn't see a need. "Listen," the Deathless called out. "I broke the mana core to this prison. Right now magma's flowing in. You can stay here and wait for the ascendants to recover you. I'm finished. I'm leaving. And if you take a shot at me, or you throw a spell at me, I'll come down, and I'll rip your arms off, and then I'll feed them to you. You don't do that, I'll be on my way, and that'll be that."

A bead of crushing silence followed, and Shiv watched the wardens closely. A few of them twitched, uncertain what to do, while others looked to specific members among their party. A well-built elven woman bearing a pointed spear glared up at Shiv. "You've made a terrible mistake, prisoner. You—”

And then Shiv's deathless notification triggered. Whatever she had to say next died in her throat as a choked gasp, and a series of fear chains flowed out from them, fueling Shiv with new power.

"Yeah," Shiv deadpanned. "Look, I'm gonna ignore the whole 'you can't escape, the Ascendants will hunt you down' speech. I don't give a shit what they're going to do. I'm leaving. Now, you stay here, you mend your wounded, and you keep your heads down. It's your best shot at living, so please don’t make me take your lives from you. I’m tired. I just wanna cook and get out. Also, I don’t want your blood on my new pan.” Shiv held up his weapon and glared.

When the wardens did nothing, Shiv looked down at the orc and nodded. "All right, up some more."

Mortar let out a deep sigh. "But I wanted to obliterate a few of them."

"And I appreciate your sacrifice, Mortar.”

As Shiv said that, he felt his Sticks and Stones Skill trigger as the orc’s body briefly turned transparent like glass. Huh, wonder why that happened.

He flew another four hundred meters higher into the air and made for the edge where another valley intersected this one. The taste of Adam grew ever more intense, and just as he rounded the corner, the Gate Lord slammed head-first into him. 

Both of them grunted, Shiv in surprise, Adam with a slight rasp of pain. As the Gate Lord recoiled, he'd managed a half-drawn arrow before he came to a stop. A rasping breath escaped from him, and a look of relief washed over his face.

"Shiv, good hells. What did you do back there?"

"Collapsed the core," the Deathless said. "Just didn't expect it to shit us across different places. You got any idea where we are?"

"At the bottom of the supervolcano," Adam replied. His eyes were flashing bright, and Shiv realized he was using a Seer of Horizons to figure out their general location. "The cubes are currently tumbling through the magma, and that's not all. A set of wards have been placed around this area. I can feel them pressing against me. If we try to teleport, we'll be pinpointed immediately. We'll be dragged into specialized anchors. The ascendants are down here somewhere as well. I managed to avoid Daughter earlier, but the others, not sure where they ended up."

Shiv looked behind him and saw Can Hu being carried by Kura and Whisper. The Penitent was missing most of its lower body again, and its right arm was gone as well. 

“Can Hu? You alright?” Shiv called out.

“Minor damage sustained compared to some of my earlier missions,” Can Hu said. “I will recover. And my Toughness will return to where it once was when I reconstruct myself.”

There were about a dozen other orcs with the group, and Tequila had Candles strapped to his back as well. The burning path bearer was unconscious, and Shiv winced as he caught sight of Candles's skin for the first time. The pyromaniac was charred. His body looked like raw gristle. Shiv could see blackened tissue and exposed muscle shining free between lengths of pale bone. The Deathless dipped his mana hydra into the disfigured path bearer and realized he was still alive. Worse yet, he realized that the state of his body wasn't actually an injury, but probably a natural result of his skill evolution.

What the hells, Shiv muttered. 

Then there was the final member of Adam's group. 

Far behind them was the Educator. Her robes fluttered, that tome rattled behind her, bound to her chest by a series of chains. She looked at him with a sneer. Over her shoulders was the rest of the prison valley, but it came to an abrupt halt as a massive wall of Orichalcum cut it off. It seemed like the exterior of another cage had been placed along the path, effectively making a dead end.

Adam turned, and he let out a sigh. "She's with Udraal," the gate lord said, his suspicion lingering aloud in his voice. “Decided to slip in and help us out when the Ascendants jumped. Apparently, she was how Udraal managed to cross into the prison in the first place. She knows a back door. A way out.”

"Great,” Shiv grunted. “But we’re not using that. We go with her, and we might all end up stuck between the pages of some book.”

Shiv landed on the ground and slowly walked toward the Educator. Adam flanked him, and soon, the orcs parted to give them space in case a new battle was to unfold. And to his delight, as he focused on her, she glittered with Chef Unwavering, and she was parted into blackened grids as well.

"Deathless," she greeted him. "It's been some time. I see you—" Her voice trailed off as she noticed what he was holding. "What is that monstrosity you’re holding.”

And just then, Adam noticed it too. "Shiv, where did you find a… is that a frying pan?"

Shiv held his new Legendary weapon high with pride. "Yeah, it's a bit more than that, too. Actually, I think it's our way to slip out directly?” Shiv turned his gaze on a nearby shadow, and to his rising glee, it was separated into a grid as well. He could cut shadows! “How do you feel about taking a dip in lava while perfectly hidden from the Ascendants, Adam?"

"Not particularly enthused. Especially because it's not magical lava here. I suspect it won’t be good for my skin.”

"Well, what if I tell you I got a way to make you immune to the heat? And to wrap you in blackness so no one knows where you are?”

The Gate Lord paused. "How?"

The Deathless smirked, and leaned down to slice into his own shadow. “With a bite. Let’s see if this cut actually gives me anything. And what I can cook up with a slice of darkness.”

Adam just stared as the Deathless started chuckling. “Shiv… Are you alright? Did you—did you have a stroke?”