IV-14 Riot (I)

Alright. So. You’ve been captured. First thing about getting captured—tell no one you were a pupil of mine so I can be spared the shame, at the least. There are Pathbearers that say getting captured is an inevitability if you live and fight long enough. They are full of shit.

Getting captured means one of a few things. The most likely thing it means is that you surrendered to the enemy, which is not ideal. If you’re high-tier, they might sell you back to your people or just kill you, depending on how existential the conflict is, so there is some room for negotiation.

Not so high tier? Well, things are going to get very ugly, and you probably want to think about escape or the other thing.

What do you mean, “what other thing” Harrison? What other thing could I be talking about? Yeah. I know no one wants to die, but if I give you a choice to finish yourself off or be kept alive by a group of psychotic Biomancers while they make leather coats from your skin, which will you pick?

It sounds ugly, but I’m going to put it plainly to you kids—Self-resolution is always an option. It’s just a relatively unappealing one.

Now. Escape. If your enemy knows what they’re doing, and you’re high value, this is not likely. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but if I’m holding a Hero, I’m going to have my Biomancer disable their spine or other motor functions and then have a Psychomancer keep them trapped in a dream or something. If they’re valuable enough to sell, they have good odds of being a nightmare to contain. Continued pacification is the way here.

If you’re weaker, though, you might have a bit of a better shot. The main reason is that they’ll probably not waste so much effort trying to keep you sedated. Most times, the reason a weaker Pathbearer is still alive is slavery. The Integration is a savage place, and if you got High Physicality, you make a good mule. Magic? Great. You’re going to be made into a tutor or some kind of mana battery.

It’s going to be hell, but it also gives you openings and opportunities. There is no perfect way to keep someone in bondage without dedicating a continued amount of resources to the process. And in my experience, sooner or later, all systems tend to break down. Keep your eyes open and observe. Watch. Find the points of failure and use them to your advantage. I won’t say your odds of getting out are good in these circumstances, but they aren’t nothing.

Chaos opens a lot of doors. And chaos you can always count on. The system loves it. And the system loves a good rebellion when one gets going. Just don’t assume that this rebellion is guaranteed to end with you alive. 

-Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy

IV-14

Riot (I)

Shiv was going to do terrible things to City Lord Stormhalt's orifices with a knife. He wasn't sure how he intended to bring down the Avatar, but he would. He would find a way, and when he did, he would bring Stormhalt to the precipice of pain, and continue going until the Ascendants themselves came to beg on Stormhalt's behalf.

"Godsdamned felling false god—bastards, pieces of shit," Shiv growled as he slid his left arm deeper into his Voidmantid armor and tightened its unfolded architecture around himself.

The Voidmantid was still badly damaged. Parts of the midsection had yet to fully regenerate, and portions of its mycelial network were missing. As such, it wasn't as reactive as it was before, and Shiv felt like he was lugging a bit of weight. However, a few kilos were nothing to him now, since he was Legendary-Tier in terms of Physicality. The prismatic armor he stole from the wardens lay on the ground in crumpled pieces. 

After learning about Adam's capture, Shiv got a little angry, and that brought him a bit too close to his Berserk state. After a brief but violent stress release session that involved him crumpling the set of adamantine armor he wore into small balls, he found himself more capable of focusing in the aftermath. And now he moved on to the harder part, figuring out a way to extract Adam from wherever he was, while not getting recaptured by the Ascendants in the process.

"Need a new plan…" Shiv muttered. He strode up to the mana interface that Five was using earlier, and began swiping through the magical representation of the Rubix Well. The prison glittered before Shiv, and he located his cube once more. However, he frowned as he saw several other cubes closing in on them on the magically generated map. They were going to have company soon. 

Frankly, Shiv expected an Ascendant to teleport in at any moment. He and the others couldn't stay. They needed a new direction—a place to go and regroup.

"New plan," Shiv repeated. He regarded Five and the Rebis. "I can help you to get out. What I'm going to do, is I'll bring you in my cape, and I'll take you beyond the boundary of the loop. I can probably drop you off somewhere safe, maybe in the lower security sections of this prison. After that, you should have an easier time to break out, especially with me drawing the Ascendant's attention."

The wolfman tilted his head at Shiv and didn't say anything for a moment. "You would do that for us?" Five finally spoke. "I find that rather sweet, my good Pathbearer, but I think I'm going to have to decline."

That caught Shiv off guard. "What do you mean decline? It's the best I can do for you. I'm not leaving this place without Adam and I don't think I can take you all the way out and get back before..."

Five held up a hand, cutting him off. "No, you misunderstand. I wish to follow through on this, just like you. I think Rebis would agree as well."

Slowly, Shiv began to understand what the wolf-man was implying. "You want to help me?" he said. He was more flabbergasted than touched. "But why? I'm practically going to commit suicide here. Well, maybe suicide for someone else. They want to recapture me for whatever felling twisted-shit experiments they have planned.” Or maybe they’ll eventually just execute me to make a High Legend avatar.

"Oh, I agree. It's terribly irrational," Five said, rubbing two of his claws together. "However, irrational is the very definition of being a Pathbearer. If we were rational, we wouldn't be scholars or stuffy magi hiding away in our fortresses, libraries and towers. No, we left our homes. We left safety and ease, and we pursued our Paths. We are here for good or ill, and now I think it’s time to make this our good and their ill.”

"Here," Rebis said. His voice was a mix between a human snarl and a mechanical drone. "Here because, because Ascendants! We need to kill. We need to kill." His wings were twitching. The air around him vibrated with that faint white power, and Shiv was close enough that he tasted the Rebis's capability for the first time. 

Trails of sharpness flicked across Shiv as an oscillation of mana pulsed out from Rebis. The Deathless let out a grunt as his skin was opened and blood began to well. Instead of reacting violently, he was simply surprised. He hadn't been focusing on his Pillar of Orichalcum, but still he was far tougher than he used to be. And Rebis had cut him open without even laying a wing on him. Just being near the amalgamated Pathbearer proved to be dangerous.

"Rebis, Rebis," Five said, trying to get Rebis to calm. “Compose yourself.” He chastised the cybernetic Pathbearer and pointed a finger at him. The automaton skulls lining Five's back lit up, and a pulse of electricity jumped from the point of Five's digit into Rebis's skull. Just then, Rebis let out a crackle of discomfort, and he clutched his head. His automaton side was sparking and spasming, while his human parts twitched violently. His organic eye and his face expressed a moment of lucidity as his gaze cleared and his features softened.

"I, I'm sorry, I briefly..." he held out a shaking hand and stared into his palm.

"It's all right now, Rebis," Five said. "I know that they mutilated your mind, but I told you before it's not impossible to control. The machine is bound to you, and you're bound to it. The more you fight its patterns, the more it will punish your brain chemistry. You need to try and maintain general alignment."

"It's hard," Rebis breathed, "very hard." 

In that moment Shiv saw Rebis for what he was. A man caged in his own body. An automaton caged by a man, but a man also caged by the machine-half he never asked for.

"It's hard," the automaton section of Rebis echoed. "We were once apart. We were never meant to be together. We made a mistake. We want to be apart again. We want to be apart again. We want to be apart again." And by the time Rebis repeated the third sentence, both the automaton and the man were speaking in unison, and the separation was lost once more. "Ascendants!" Rebis growled. “Need to kill… Need to split them. They did this… They did this…”

He stared straight at Shiv's face this time, and the Deathless looked back at him. But something told Shiv that it was the right thing to do. Though Rebis flinched, he studied Shiv and searched for something. Perhaps judgment, perhaps pity, perhaps any hint of emotion whatsoever. But underneath that helmet, Shiv stared on impassively. Life wounded everyone. Only Shiv emerged from death stronger. Everyone else paid a price. And whatever happened to the Pathbearers that made up Rebis was practically a half-death for each of them, coming together to make a full demise. "Ascendance. They must pay for this. They must pay for what they did to us, to all of us."

"Yeah," Shiv said, nodding at Rebis, "we all got a score to settle here." He shot Five a look, and the wolf-man's gaze was dangerous and predatory. He already knew that Five had spent a near century in this place, languishing in that narrow cell when Shiv first arrived. Doubtless, the wolf-man desired his own retribution, and that made three of them.

Finally, there was Bonk, who really didn’t want to be left out. “Since we're planning a new suicide mission, how about I volunteer to play the Vanguard?" the orc said cheerfully. "I think I need a new nemesis. With Sullain resolved, maybe a proper god will do. Yes, I do think that's superior to a Legend. Wouldn't you agree, Insul?"

"Makes sense to me," Shiv replied, "but I think we need a strategy or a plan. Just throwing ourselves at them probably won’t go so well. I want to know where they're holding Adam…" 

He trailed off as he tried to compile all the details that might be helpful for him. Planning an operation on the go was unwise, but he had a Five, he had Bonk, and… Well, Rebis was likely not that useful in terms of the planning department, especially since he could barely control his own thoughts sometimes. But he was impossibly fast, and his glow-slashy skill might prove to be lethal against an unprepared Ascendant as well.

"Okay, let me lay out the things we might need and you guys can add to it. I'll just be honest with you, I'm not the best at planning yet. Usually come up with a simple idea and go with my gut. If you got something better, just spit it out.”

"Oh, don't worry, we will tear your worst laid plans apart," Five said, "and then we'll make them better."

Shiv offered the wolf man a nod. "So here's what we do know. We know that…" he paused. "Okay, we don't even know if Adam is here. The Ascendants might just be lying to us, trying to lure me out so that I’ll just surrender without offering any resistance." The Deathless sighed. "We need a way to make sure that Adam actually got transported into this place. Proof of something."

The wolf man narrowed his eyes and tapped a finger against his snout. "I might have a suggestion there. We kidnap one of the wardens. They are tapped into the same psionic network. I tried to listen in, using the spell patterns flowing through the mithril earlier, but there was too much to sift through. Psychomancy is not my expertise.”

"And automatons are easier for you?" Shiv asked. He was trying to figure out Five's skills. “You got Biniaric Sovereign or something?”

The wolf man gave Shiv a surprise look. "You're aware of it?"

"Yeah," Shiv said, thinking of Can Hu. "I have a friend that had that skill too."

"Interesting. And your friend is a specialized automaton built to compromise those of its same kind?”

"Yeah," Shiv replied. “But I’m wondering how you got the skill.”

The wolf man gave a simple shrug. "When you dabble with machinery and get to fusing your internal biomatter with certain mechanical transplants, the system takes note and lets you proceed down a certain set of evolutions.”

Shiv didn't have time right now, but he wanted to ask Five how he managed to fuse his flesh with metal. Meat and foreign materials don't go together very well. Not without incurring some pretty nasty infections.

"Alright, some other things I need," Shiv continued. "If Adam's equipment is here, I might have a use for it. Mainly his Necromancy vambrace because I need—oh, shit, I can make a bomb!" At that thought, he began constructing a Vitae Golem. The white and red mana of his unique magical skill began to swirl around him, and the wolf man took a step back. Comparatively, Rebis leaned in closer, his human expression going from pain to fascinated in a scant second.

"Can I come out now, Insul?" Bonk said. "It's very awkward for me to be participating in this mock war cabinet while being hidden inside your cape. It also feels demeaning."

"Just a second," Shiv said. He took infusions from his Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides skill and then added Chronomancy, Vitality Drain, Inertial Overdrive, and Pillar of Orichalcum as well. With the final flourish, he detached the Vitae forged clone of himself and fought to keep his legs from shaking as a rush of weakness crawled through his body.

"What was that?" Five said. He stared upon the Vitae Golem and studied it with a rapt fascination, much as Rebis did. "The mana here, the composition of this clone of yours, I've never quite seen it."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that," Shiv said, but he didn't elaborate. "I have a surprise planned for whatever Ascendant comes to get us. Do you have a Necromancy Skill?" Shiv looked at Five first. The wolf-man shook his head, but he pointed toward Rebis, and just then a flash of corrosive energy filled the air. The automaton half of the amalgamated Pathbearer came aglow with that decaying taint, and a spirit-tipped piece of its mechanical wings detached. A rush of green mana danced along the other wings, mutilating the propulsion with festering hues rather than bright white emissions. The fragment of Necromancy danced beside the amalgamated Pathbearer and trembled in the air, building up kinetic energy.

"All right," Shiv said, holding his hand up slightly as he winced. "Don't release it yet, but if you can potentially prime it somehow or just keep it pinned to something—keep the Necromancy active inside of it—I’ll have the golem slam into it when an Ascendant or some reinforcements arrive."

"What will that do?" Five asked.

"Make a pretty nasty bang. The kind that sets your soul on fire."

Five blinked. "You’re jesting?"

"Nope," Shiv answered with a vicious chuckle. "Orichalcum should be able to contain the explosion too, or at least I hope it can."

"Only if there are people making contact with the soul-bronze," Five replied. "Orichalcum feeds off of willpower. Without it, it's scarcely harder than adamantine, and when given to someone with weak will, often brittle."

"Good thing that one of the Ascendants will be standing in this room. Or several of them," Shiv said. It was a guess, but probably a good one. He couldn't see the Ascendants wasting wardens on him. Not unless they particularly liked killing their own soldiers. But by this point, who knew? They were already willing to do twisted experiments with Rebis and run what was effectively a nightmare prison. Wherever the hell this place was. 

I guess I really didn't know my own Republic at all, Shiv thought to himself. But that gave him another thought. He couldn't blame Roland for this, either. Roland probably had a better understanding of the Republic and the Ascendants than most Pathbearers or citizens. But Tran wouldn't have believed this, neither would Heather, nor most of the people at Blackedge. 

No, Shiv was firmly in the "knows too much about the Republic" category now. It didn’t make him feel much better.

Just then, another warning klaxon sounded. "Unauthorized teleportation detected." Shiv saw motes of Dimensionality spilled out from the teleportation anchor, and a surge of incandescent mana followed.

And they’re already here. Fuck.

"Shit. Figure the rest out later. Everyone inside my cape now."

Rebis responded immediately, vanishing from sight. Shiv had assumed he was in the cape, but the floating shard of Necromancy remained in place, hovering where it was. By the time he had turned to his Vitae Golem, Five dove into his cape as well. Bonk let out a loud cry of greetings, and Shiv had briefly heard Five call out to Rebis, telling him not to kill the orc. Shiv had ignored all that chaos for now. He activated Creeping Void to flood the room with darkness, just as an incandescent presence entered the room. The jingling of chains sounded aloud, and the gleeful laughter of a young girl greeted Shiv's hearing. 

He didn't spend any time questioning why a child was here. All he knew was that he was in grave danger, and he needed to leave now. He cast a telepathic command to his golem. “When the Ascendant gets close to you, touch the corrosive shard.”

Shiv went out of context and stopped time. The world was cold. He didn't have that long before the last of his vitality was expended. But his Legendary Physicality flooded his Reflexes with more power than ever before, and Shiv found himself with plenty of time left before he dissolved down to nothing. He blasted toward a far wall, gathering ripples as he prepared to make an emergency exit. He considered directing his force vectors through his new blade, but realized that would likely just damage the enchantments. 

Shiv was his own Magebreaker now, so he had to be careful with how he interacted with magic, but he could be far more aggressive when faced with enemy mages, and far more vicious when faced with any kind of spellwork.

Once more, he slammed his index finger against the Orichalcum, and a loud pop sounded as the red-gold metal was ruptured. White and red mana exploded off of his body, and then a peculiar smell greeted him. It was the smell of daisies and roses and strawberries mixed as one, and a loud childlike laughter filled the room. He looked over his shoulder, and saw a figure burning even through the dark of his Creeping Void. 

The figure resembled a young girl wearing what seemed to be a metallic dress, but the way she moved was unnatural and quick. She was burning with divine power so he couldn't get exact detail from her, but the sight of her alone sent shivers down his spine. There was something deeply wrong about the girl, deeply wrong about the overflowing joy that escaped her in bursts of giggles.

"Oh hello, Deathless," she said, as if a child greeting a personal playmate. She spun a wicked looking dagger in her hand, one that was far larger than that which she'd carry right now, and she pinched it with her other two fingers as she skipped toward his Vitae Golem. And so far she hadn't noticed him. He jammed the tip of his blade-wand against the hole he just made and projected his Beamcast out through the gap. He didn't want to find out what this Ascendant was capable of firsthand. Not just yet. 

His golem had the same Vitae signature as he did, but even so, the masquerade didn't last long. His body pulsed, the notification marking him as the target of the hidden quest flashed before his eyes once more. 

Suddenly, the Ascendant was looking at him instead of his golem, and her eyes burned with violet mana.

"What’s this?" she called out to Shiv. “Oh, are you trying to distract me with a clone? Very tricky, Shivy. Very tricky.”

He channeled his Beamcast a bit longer, and the rest of his body was injected across the blade, flung into the crawlspace beyond. Just as he left, the insides of the guard station came ablaze with fire. Orichalcum was an interesting metal. True to Five's description, it hardened based on the willpower of the people inside it. And it was then that Shiv remembered he left a group of wardens laying inside the teleportation anchor.

"Oh godsdammit!" Shiv growled at himself. "Fucking careless idiot!”

As he fully materialized in the crawlspace, a jet stream of soul flames slashed out toward him, and he dodged to his left. It still scored a hit on his helmet, ripping a clean gash through the outer chitin and bone-adamantine. Yet that stream of soulfire kept going. It sheared through the gears beside him, punched a hole into the next cube over. 

A bright red hole was left through multiple layers of matter. It took a few seconds for the stream to punch a fist-sized gap into the Orichalcum of the next cube, and then the gears nearby started turning. A loud screaming noise of straining metal filled the air, and the Deathless felt his inner ear begin to vibrate violently. That cube ground along the other side, but promptly dislodged as well, as its gears were slashed in half by the persisting stream of soulfire. 

As it derailed, another cube slammed into its side, or at least Shiv guessed that was what happened considering the sheer force of the impact. More booms followed. The gears before him shattered and broke. One of the large mechanisms tumbled through the air, coming right at him. Shiv reached out with one hand and intercepted its kinetic energy. Pulsing vectors danced along his right arm, each rush of force spilling inside him as striped mana signatures. 

A blossom of destruction erupted out of Shiv as he lost track of a few other overflow tides, and he cursed as he was suddenly launched to his left by the involuntary discharge. He crashed through an already damaged section of crawlspace before finally bouncing off a magically infused Mithril pillar. As he recovered, he found most of the spell patterns lining the pillar fraying apart. Shiv's body had been like a falling axe head kissing a rope, and now only scant strands of mana clung together, unveiling the surface of the crystalline column.

Creeping Void 114 > 115

"Whoa!" a voice came from Shiv's left. A small hand draped itself over his left shoulder, and the chubby face of a young girl leaned past him. "That was a pretty big gear you caught there with just one hand. And what was that trick you just pulled with that glowy clone thing of yours? You nearly cooked my skin." She breathed on a red patch splotching the top of her tiny hand.

The surrealism of the moment caught Shiv off guard, but he recovered with a sudden burst of force. He used his Shapeless Tides to pull himself away from the strange girl, and he laid eyes on her features for the first time. He knew her. Shiv noticed her back when he was fighting for his life at Blackedge. She was one of the avatars, adorned in a chainmail dress and bearing a blade that had a strange darkness lining the length of the metal. She pouted at Shiv as he backed away from her.

"Well, that was kind of rude. We just met, and you're treating me like I'm a leper." She placed both hands on her hips, ignoring how she was driving her own blade into her thigh. "Stormhalt said you were a piece of hard meat, but I guess I just had to see it for myself."

Shiv looked on, wordless, at the avatar as he prepared for battle. But before he launched himself at the girl, he spent a moment thinking. She managed to sneak up on me without me noticing at all, and he caught a glint of Divination mana lighting her eyes. I don't think that my outside context problem is quite the edge it normally is. If I break contact with her, I still think I can get away.

But the girl ripped the knife out of herself, and she twirled it between her hands. "Oh, I know that look. Are you going to go for it?" She stared at his knife. "It's not a very good blade for someone who just became a legend, and you have to be a Legend. I know that skill." She covered her mouth and giggled. "I remember seeing those mana vectors on some of those mean old Void Leviathans that broke one of Cripple's better avatars." 

The girl sighed. "Poor Vendo. He was pretty fun. He always said he was ready to die at any moment, but I held him as he broke apart. I held him as the spark went out inside him." She slowly shook her head, and a faintly haunted look came over her. "You know, the truth about Vendo is, he didn't want to die. Not really. No one wants to die. No one. Except maybe for you. You come back, right? What does it feel like? Is it fun?”

By this point, Shiv was getting a terrible feeling about this girl, but something told him that he could use this moment to his advantage. 

Psycho-Cartography: She's clearly interested in you, albeit she's interested in you the same way a cat is interested in batting a mouse to death. But keep her talking. Use your knife in a minute after you go out of context and cast yourself somewhere far away. We don't have much vitae left, but it should be sustainable if we dive in and out of our own soul stuff.

"So you got a name?" Shiv started.

She threw her head back and laughed, and as she did, Shiv caught sight of her Ascendant. It was an ethereal figure looming tall over the knife-wielding child, and he felt his insides crawl as he saw the silhouette of the thing. The Ascendants had too many joints for their limbs, too many fingers to be natural, and their head was strangely deformed. Their body was overly thin, but still vaguely humanoid, and he found himself looking on and trying to figure out just what race the Ascendant used to be. It seemed like a mutated human or perhaps an extremely emaciated elf that was misshapen where their skull was. 

Slowly, the Ascendant faded and the girl remained.

"I had a name," the girl smiled. But only her lips curled. Her eyes remained cold and cruel, locked to him as if she was prepared to tear open his flesh at any moment.

Psycho-Cartography: And that's not natural. You're being affected by an Intimidation skill.

"I had a name," the girl repeated, and slowly her smile faded altogether. She frowned slightly. "You're not running away. You're no fun at all."

"You expect me to act like a rabbit?" Shiv said. "Bounce off while you chase me?"

The girl nodded vigorously. "Yep. Can you do that?"

Despite everything, Shiv chuckled. "Yeah, no. Not much of a rabbit, and you're not much of a girl."

Once more, she pressed her lips together, and her expression turned inscrutable. "You know, it's very, very rude of you not to play along. You're a very rude boy, Shivy. Very rude." And slowly, she showed her teeth, and those weren't the teeth of a girl. No, they reminded him of a shark's teeth. The teeth of a carnivore. "I had a name, but most just call me the Waif. It's the only name I'll answer to now. Same way, Shiv is the only name you'll accept as well."

Psycho-Cartography: She knows about your history. She likely knows that you refuse to answer to Tanner Lowe. Don't let her throw you off.

"Kathereine  wants me to bring you back intact. Stormhalt, well, I think Stormhalt wants you a bit hurt. You wounded his pride a little when you humiliated him in front of Hawgrave."

Shiv thought to what the Waif was talking about, and he remembered Stormhalt punching him and hurting his wrist. "That's his fault," Shiv said. "If he had better Physicality..."

"I know, right?" the Waif interrupted him. But she appeared right next to him between blinks, and Shiv let out a gasp as a cold length of metal slid between his ribs. Shiv grunted in pain and an injection of building agony circulated within his flesh.

"Is something happening out there?" Five called out.

The Waif's head snapped to Shiv's cape, and her mouth opened slightly. "Oh, you're hiding some stowaways inside there?"

This time, Shiv didn't turn away from the girl. He reached out and clutched her head. His force vector slammed against her throat as he caught her tiny arm as well. She tried to push against him, tried to force her blade deeper, but Shiv caught a slight twitch in her left eye as she found herself being driven back by his overwhelming force. He used his overflow tides all at once, and the girl's body let out several cracking noises. Her flesh parted, her bones shattered. 

Yet as she bled, a crawling stream of darkness bled out from her insides as if blood itself. And rather than open wounds, the injuries he inflicted opened wider and became jaws—jaws that held rows of thin and sharp teeth. Teeth that bit down on his arm and body. Teeth that ground against his Orichalcum pillar and tore all the way through. Shiv let out a cry of pain as chunks of him were gouged away. 

Between his Shapeless Tides and Orichalcum Toughness, he could only focus on one and he chose the former. He didn't intend to fight this Ascendant. He needed to—

The Waif burst apart as his vectors tore through her. A flood of tangible darkness exploded out from her wounds and swallowed him. It wasn't like his Creeping Void, though. Instead of this being a miasma, it was a tar-like darkness. Something that had weight. Something that flowed over him. That clung to him. That clenched him tight and refused to let him surface.

Everything went dark around Shiv, and he lashed out with his vectors. He could hear the others in his cape calling out, could feel a building heaviness pulling at him. But with every pulse of force he unleashed, he drove the thick darkness a bit back, and—

A blade flicked through Shiv's neck and death followed. The suddenness of his end took him off guard and so did the following two strikes. Coldness swelled inside Shiv as his vitae was sheared down to a single fiber. He didn't even see the strikes coming. Didn't know where the Waif was and she taunted him, her giggles ringing from all directions, sounding like cascading bells drowning the world in cruel mirth.

"You're a Legend now," she cried aloud. "And you probably thought that made you special, but the thing about legends is they die. They die like every other Pathbearer. They die because that's the difference between you and a god! Now, die for me again! Again! Die!"