IV-12 Rubix

There are situations where certain threats are deemed too grave a danger to be allowed to roam free, yet too valuable to kill, at the same time. In these circumstances, the Yellowstone Republic has a solution: The Rubix Wells.

Titled Rubix Wells due to being most often built deep underground and also composed of modular and constantly shifting cubes. The Rubix Wells are used to hold everything from common criminals at the shallowest levels to extreme threats to the Republic's security. Most of the shallow levels are composed of one large cube, surrounded by several dozen smaller cubes. Its architecture is composed of Orichalcum, rendering even the most Legendary-Tier prisoners impotent in terms of Physicality or escapes through brute force. The surrounding guard cubes also have complete awareness about the general detention cubes forming a certain panopticon, which allows them to constantly monitor the situation of the prisoners.

At the very bottom, however, things are dramatically different with the severity of dangers and the high tier prisoners contained there. The guard cubes are constantly cycling and moving. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that the so-called zenith sector of a Rubik's Well is also entrapped by a sphere of looping Chronomancy. This means that should a prisoner manage to break out of their cell regardless and somehow escape from their cube and ultimately breach the sector, they still will not be able to escape the prison—for the mana core supporting the entire prison will see them reverted in time once they break free of the Zenith Sector's threshold.

As such, we will need to come up with an alternate strategy to reach [Redacted.] We understand that Aviary will not accept defeat or half measures, but we believe that breaching this prison to be all but impossible through direct means or even subterfuge. No one that has been sent down to the zenith sector has returned of their own accord, and we suspect that is the most viable angle to strike a deal with one of the descendants or another elite from the Republic. 

Trying to breach the prison itself is hopeless.

-Report on the Rubix Wells: The Yellowstone Republic’s Maximum Security Containment Facilities

IV-12

Rubix

"You know my favorite thing about this new legendary skill," Shiv said, ignoring the knife the struggling warden was trying to put through his eye. "It just has so much control. Previously, if I was using Gravitic Wrestler, or maybe even the Heroic-Tier skill I got, if I squeezed a little too hard, crack. That'd be it. Frankly, not even crack. Your head would be bloody paste, whether I wanted it to be or not." The Deathless paused as he looked off to the side. "Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. I had pretty good control with Gravitic Wrestler, but the Heroic-Tier skill with all that pressure around me? Forget about it."

The final wheeze came from the warden as their eyes rolled, their limbs went slack, and their legs kicked out a final time. Shiv let them slide down against the Orichalcum wall, but caught their head before it bashed against the ground. 

Shiv wasn't sure what race the warden was. Considering their green skin, but generally human-like dimensions, he had to guess it was either an extremely evolved goblin or a human with a goblin blessing. There wasn't really such a thing as human-goblin crossbreeding. Not like there was human-elf crossbreeding or goblin-elf crossbreeding or, well, frankly elf-anything crossbreeding. But looking at the ears, this Pathbearer definitely didn't have elf heritage. 

One good thing about the Republic was it didn't much care what race you had. It only cared that you served the Republic. And right now, this unfortunate bastard was serving the Republic by taking a well-earned nap.

Nearby, six other Pathbearers lay splayed across the ground. Broken spell patterns flickered around them as leaking mana bled into the atmosphere. Shiv found himself in another valley. It was just like the valley he found himself in when he first got teleported to the prison after he broke out of the wolf-man’s cage. But things were a little bit different now. He wasn't quite the same person anymore. Not in terms of power, and not even in terms of mindset. 

He spent a bit of time thinking before he acted. And right now, he was trying to apply a bit of method to his madness. Because if he didn't, the odds of him breaking out of this prison were pretty low. 

Especially considering he had no way of knowing where to go.

The Deathless rubbed his right thigh where one of the wardens punctured him earlier. Their blade flashed a bright white, and they managed to drive it through him before he was prepared. It was a good reminder that he wasn't invincible, and that there were other Heroic-Tier Pathbearers present, aside from the ascendant itself. But still, the gap between heroic and legendary was remarkable. 

After the enemy Pathbearer stabbed him, Shiv gripped the blade and unleashed a slight amount of force. Pointed vectors of overflowing kinetic energy slammed against the edge of the blade, and the adamantine weapon snapped as if it was a wooden toothpick. It took him considerably less effort to choke out the offending warden thereafter.

Shiv's Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides also allowed him another wonderful option: He attacked the spell patterns waterfalling down the valley walls themselves. He shredded all the surrounding magic, breaking whatever spells were active, and rendering this place a spot of darkness along a long stretch of light. 

Ahead and behind, more spell patterns rained down to the base of the valley, bathing the small pathway with light. Along the pathway were many other cells, but the lids were gone, and the inhabitants were missing as well. 

Whatever Bonk did to free everyone, the prisoners took advantage of it, because they looked long gone. The insides of their cells were empty, and their chains and bonds lay shattered on the ground.

Shattered, Shiv blinked. Good felling shit. Just who the hells were they keeping in these cells?

Shiv activated and then deactivated his Outside Context Problem Skill briefly, just to confuse the Ascendant again. He didn't know where Cripple was, but every time he triggered the skill, Cripple probably couldn't think about him. That bought Shiv extra time. When he finished, he started draining from the world, and then he knelt down to see if this group of wardens had anything useful for him to pilfer.

"Hopefully you have something, unlike the last group," Shiv muttered to himself. "Damned Ascendant always on my ass. At least one of you has to be my size. Tired of running around, bare ass naked. Felling asshole had to steal my clothes."

As Shiv ran his hands across the warden he just choked out, he noticed their armor was smoking. The magic infused within it was spewing free, ruptured by Shiv's overwhelming might. The magical resistance imbued within it was smashed to pieces, and the magical fields extending from it were also lacerated to the foundations. That had been the first thing Shiv attacked, their armor. 

The moment he put his hands on the enchanted metal, he pushed his shapeless tides in, and he shredded the Psychomantic connection extending between the guards and the surrounding walls. The waterfalling spells were connected to the guards in some fashion. That's why Shiv ripped through them using his tides, and judging how the guard knew exactly where he was after he attacked the first group, he suspected that there were monitoring spells or some kind of telepathic link that kept all the guards connected to one another.

Shiv didn't stick around after he disabled the earlier group, especially after another twelve guards teleported in, all of them seeming Heroic-Tier at the very least. He activated his Outside Context Problem and simply fled. As much as he wanted to fight, he didn't know what his enemies were capable of. And it wasn't dying he risked here, it was being disabled and put back in the cage. A Legend though he might be, he knew better than to underestimate heroes. After all, Sullain had died to an army of Heroes and less, and there was still Cripple to be wary of. 

Shiv could contend with the Ascendant's might now, but contend didn't mean he had the upper hand. Not even close.

Now with this third group of wardens disabled, Shiv acted quickly. He found the tall goblin too thin of physique to offer any useful clothing, so he ripped their helmet off and projected his Psychomancy into their mind. Shiv wasn't an accomplished psychomancer. Frankly, he wasn't a good Psychomancer at all. With everything that kept happening, he never had time to get more in-depth lessons with Uva, but digging through his own memories had given him some instruction when it came to delving through another's mind. 

It was still chaotic, and he was sifting through an overwhelming flood of details. Flashes from the goblin's life hit him. Sparring matches, the death of loved ones, foes bested, humiliating defeats, monsters they still had nightmares about. All that hit Shiv at the same time, and he struggled to process all of it. But, among the chaos, he got a glimpse of a few memories. 

He recalled the guard teleporting from another place. Another cube? Shiv was confused. He wasn't sure why the guard was thinking about cubes. The tall goblin and their team had been dispatched by the Ascendant himself through a telepathic broadcast. They used the mana rushing down the valley walls to rapidly move from place to place. Shiv stared at the Orichalcum walls as he realized through the guard that there were mithril supports hidden within as well.

Psychomancy 26 > 28

Briefly he considered ripping the walls open and cracking the supports. Maybe that would disable most of the spells active, but he didn't want to give away his position, and Orichalcum was durable enough that he wouldn't be able to damage the structure so easily. It'd be a prolonged effort, and if he stayed in one place for too long he would be dealing with the Ascendant itself. 

"Not yet," Shiv told himself. "Not until we’re out of ideas.”

He moved on to the other wardens and finally found someone who was around his size. A humanoid automaton was stripped by Shiv. Their armor wasn't anything to note. It had self-repair enchantments, was made of adamantine, could emit light, and had Magical resistance. Magical Resistance that Shiv found laughable at this point. However, it also had a Psychomancy enchantment. A very specific kind of Psychomancy enchantment. It was called Chain of Thought, and as soon as Shiv put the helmet over his head, he began hearing chatter. 

Whispers brushed against his mind, and the helmet crackled. He tried to make out what it was saying, but then he realized the enchantment was likely damaged or disrupted by his Legendary Skill. "Right," Shiv said to himself, "I did have to tear through the armor's Magical Resistance and mana fields to do this. Well, at least I'm not naked anymore."

As he stole armor from an automaton, they weren't wearing any supportive clothing underneath, so the cold jagged bits of metal still prodded Shiv. It was awkward, but not uncomfortable. His body was Orichalcum by this point, so chafing wasn't likely. "Still, what would I give for some underclothes?" Shiv muttered. He went through the items possessed by the remaining guards and stole a utility rig off of one of them. 

A leather vest filled with tools and potions hung off his chest, and Shiv expected it to get broken the first moment he got into a hard fight. That made him endeavor to not get into hard fights. He was trying to escape, not turn this into a bloodbath. Before he left, he noticed one of the Pathbearers had interesting boots, non-prison issue boots. 

Where everyone else had prismatic sabotons, this little elf was wearing pitch black leather shoes. Shiv looked down at his foot, and then he looked at the elf's shoes. Might be a snug fit, but Shiv shrugged. He had a feeling this would benefit him. He took the shoes off the elf and barely managed to force his feet inside. Once he did, a smile crept across his face as he took in the enchantments.

Equipment Obtained: [Nightwalkers]

Tier: Master

Condition: Stable

Composition: Shadeleather; Spatial Magic

Enchantments > Nightswim; Last Step of Midnight; Self-Mending

Immediately, he began to feel an affinity with the surrounding shadows. More than that, the shadows were lined with dimensional static. Being in the dark fed the shoes with power, and Shiv triggered the Nightswim enchantment for the first time. He splashed down into a puddle of blackness, and true to the enchantment's name, it did feel like he was in a pool. 

He pointed his Shapeless Tides forward and glided across the ground. The moment he hit light, however, his Nightswim enchantment began to burn. Brightness affected the skill. Darkness recharged it. Then he activated the Last Step of Midnight Enchantment and found himself standing back on the edge of darkness. In that patch of black, he made by shredding all those spell patterns. "All right," Shiv chuckled. "I think I can make some use of you."

Just then, he felt a shudder of pressure in the air. The flickering spell patterns to his left and right broke. Shiv reacted intuitively. He cast himself back in time and out of context. As he did, a burst of incandescence exploded into being over the six Pathbearers he just downed. Shiv jolted 600 meters away and as his temporal shell settled, he found himself not far from his Orichalcum cell, but pointed in the opposite direction of his initial escape. His Nightswim enchantment was completely spent. It seemed that brightness damaged it even when he wasn't using the enchantment. 

"All right," Shiv muttered, "not quite as good as I thought, but it'll do in a pinch. Just won’t last long. Another layer to my Stealth kit. Shit, I miss my Magebreaker.”

He pointed his Shapelss Tides forward and blurred across the world without making a hint of noise. A chill was seeping past his skin and settling into his flesh. Despite this, he found himself more resistant to vitality loss with every level he gained in outside context problem. He kept going forward as long as he could, and only when the chill reached his bones did he surface. As soon as he did, he slammed himself against the valley walls. The overflow vectors of force he had been gathering were unleashed as slashing tides. 

Spell patterns became like strings severed by a sweeping blade. The magic here was strong, but they had little hope of resisting a legendary tier skill. One after another, the spell patterns snapped. Soon the mana began to flicker, and Shiv started draining from the sheen layered over the world once more. He did so without fear now. 

Even as billowing clouds of stormstuff slammed into him, he forced it aside with a slight snarl of effort. He stood before the rupture without fleeing, indifferent to the storm thanks to his legendary ascension. And when he was restored enough, he went out of context once more. He continued on like this for what felt like a near hour.

As Shiv went forward, a building sense of unease grew stronger. Every other cell lining this place was vacant, and he hadn't seen any guards for a good long while. He had no idea how big this place was, but judging from all the cells he counted, it was colossal. He also knew that he wasn't going in a circle because he left a partially drunk flask behind him. 

Shiv never saw that flask again. 

"Just how many people are you bastards keeping down here?" Shiv said as he counted cell after cell, brushing by below. He looked up and frowned. He had flown up along the valley walls earlier in the opposite direction of the magical waterfall. It took him around 10 seconds to reach a ceiling capped by Orakkalkam. And that was all it was, a ceiling. Maybe there was some other trick to it, but Shiv hadn't figured it out yet. 

Right now, his mental map of the prison was a disc. The entire thing felt circular to him, and there was only forward and back in terms of direction. Up led nowhere. Left and right led nowhere. And the prison cells themselves? Shiv paused. He hadn't checked all the cells. Maybe there was a way out there? No, that didn't make any sense. If he was going to design a prison, why would he build an exit through one of the cells? It's most likely the only way out was through teleportation. That's how all the wardens got in. But Shiv couldn't quite leave through such means.

But then his frown deepened as he looked up at the ceiling once more. I can't leave through that way, but what if I try to make a direct escape? Make my own exit. He regarded the Orichalcum ceiling once more and launched himself upward. As he came to a halt before the ceiling, Shiv placed a temporal anchor there. 

His Chronomancy field cracked, and he gave it a few seconds to recover. He looked down and around, but he didn't catch sight of any new wardens or the ascendant for that matter. Things were quiet here, a little too quiet for his liking. If there were other prisoners, were they gone? They couldn't have all escaped at once, right? He doubted that was a possibility. So the only other likelihood was that they were resolved by the Ascendant.

Cripple was barely gone for more than a few seconds before it returned to Shiv's cell. Shiv tried to imagine containing a prison of this size in just a few seconds and couldn't. He was missing something here, a larger picture, but he wasn't going to get it if he kept doing the same thing as before. He focused on cultivating as much strength as he could and every few seconds he would trigger Outside Context Problem and quickly dismiss the skill right after. When he was ready, he shot the Orichalcum wall a glare and began circulating his vectors, both overflow and innate, into his hands. 

"All right," Shiv growled, "let's see if I can crack you faster than my cage.”

He drove his digits against the Orichalcum and channeled his overwhelming strength against the mystical metal. He tore at the Orichalcum, ripping it with his vectors in a way he couldn't with gravity, with a control he hadn't had until just a half hour ago. Shiv strained, every muscle in his body tightened, and with each heartbeat he birthed new force against the red gold metal. 

One second passed, two, then three. The Orichalcum grew brighter, its durability feeding off Shiv's will. But with the seventh ripple that left him, the Orichalcum gave a loud scream as a deep gash was opened in its structure. Shiv finally let out a shuddering breath as his heart leapt in triumph. He saw a rent opening before him, and he poured more strength in. 

He pulled in two directions. His rippling vectors slashed into the Orichalcum and the red-gold began to dent. Shiv whipped his head around for any sign of the Ascendant in the meantime. When Cripple didn't appear and punch a hole through Shiv, he continued on, tension warring with hope inside. With every subsequent tide of force, the gap he made in the metal grew larger and larger. What was a thin rent turned into a massive rupture, and soon Shiv pushed his way through.

As soon as he did, he went out of context again as he whipped his head behind. He expected to see Cripple there, just glaring at him, maybe even just a centimeter away, preparing to drive a fist through his chest. But there was no Cripple, there was no incandescent mana, there was nothing, just an open rupture lining the red-gold metal. 

"All right, that was way too loud," Shiv commented to himself. Cripple was there earlier. It must have heard him. Unless it got distracted by something else. And that thought unnerved Shiv more than it pleased him. The way Cripple spoke to him made it clear that the Ascendant regarded him as an extremely dangerous threat. But there were other prisoners here. Zenith Category Prisoners. He knew he was referred to as Priority Zenith from some of the guards' memories. But what about the others? Considering how severe this place's security is, I would bet that they're Heroic-Tier threats at the least—

A piercing shriek that crashed against Shiv's mind. He pushed back using his Shapeless Tides and barely managed to fling off the psionic attack. His vision was doubled and his skull was still ringing. Shiv recovered after a moment but found his muscles shaking. The Deathless blinked and shook his head. Was not expecting that. Felt like a literal ocean of Psychomancy mana got dropped on my head. What the hells was that.

Once more the shriek followed. This time Shiv was ready to meet it. He unleashed his ripples outward and held the magic back before it could clamp down on his consciousness. But it remained a battle. He was pushing against layered tidal waves of translucent mana and the scream just went on and on and on. Shiv tried to rip through the mana like he did with the Orichalcum but to his astonishment he found the mana even denser, even stronger.

"All right," Shiv spat through gritted teeth. "Maybe I've done a little bit of underestimating. Maybe my neighbors are Legendary too." And that made Shiv grit his teeth. A bunch of Legendary Pathbearers and monsters imprisoned in the same place. Now it made perfect sense why Cripple was missing all the time. The Ascendant was trying to keep this breakout controlled. Shiv let out a growl of pure strain as he pushed his arms forward. Against all odds he began driving the Psychomancy back and then his fingers dug into it. 

He tore at both sides. His vectors exploded in opposite directions and a gash formed in the Psychomancy. The scream was cut off and what followed thereafter was a pained cry. The Psychomancy receded. It slammed backward more like a bubble rather than a destabilized spell. Shiv guessed that whoever was projecting all that Psychomancy had just collapsed their field back in on themselves. But still, all that force, all that strength. "Hey, I don't know if you can hear me," Shiv grunted through his labored breaths, "but I'll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine."

The unseen Legend didn't respond immediately and Shiv licked his lips, anticipating another attack. But what he didn't expect was a faint whisper that trailed over his mind. "Deal." It was a deep rumbling voice that sounded like a bag of marbles being thrown down steps. The deathless swallowed as he felt an uncanny rush of fear glide over him as well. The sudden fear came and passed with the psionic whisper, and Shiv decided to continue on.

As he traveled beyond the Orichalcum walls, he found that the warden's memories were right. The supports here were made of mithril, and there was so much mana circulating through them that they were practically as durable as Orichalcum itself to Shiv. Spell patterns of every type circulated within this space. 

Shiv felt like he had smashed through drywall and found himself among the inner bones of the prison. Crawlspace was how he would describe it. Although there were still twenty meters of room between the mithril and the gear-shaped mechanisms that were fused to them. Massive pillars of mithril were connected to the Orichalcum by large bolts. The bolts were made from mixed components. Some were red gold, others were crystalline, an integrated set of materials. 

As Shiv looked around, he noticed that the mithril supports were also connected to other structures. There seemed to be adamantine caps built over them, caps that were connected to the gears he noticed earlier. And before Shiv could wonder why there were gears here, said mechanisms began to spin. A loud rumbling followed, and soon sparks flew out from behind the mithril architecture. Shiv flinched back, expecting an attack of some kind. What he didn't anticipate was for the mithril around him to suddenly start moving.

One of the supports slammed into his back, and Shiv was briefly caught off guard. He found himself nudged forward before he converted the force acting on him into overflow tides. Suddenly the gears around him screamed in strain, and several cracked, spraying out as broken fragments of metal. The mithril pillar that Shiv was pushing against shuddered with magic and launched him off at an angle. He slammed into another pillar and ended up cracking it with his Orichalcum pillar. 

The crawlspace was filling with debris, but the overall structure continued moving. He could see more gears spinning along the sides of every mithril support in his field of view. And then after a few seconds there came a sudden crash as the gears shook. A vibration passed through the entire structure. Another burst of force washed into Shiv as striped vectors as he held himself steady against a structural bolt connecting the mithril to the Orichalcum walls. 

A low groan filled the insides of this crawl space and the deathless swallowed, not sure if he broke something essential or if it was supposed to be like this.

Regardless, a second passed and Shiv reacted off of instinct. He flung himself at the gears, and he barreled through them with a spike of his shapeless tides. Compared to the mithril and Orichalcum, the gears themselves were positively fragile. They turned to dust at his approach, breaking apart to the finest grains. But as Shiv burst through them, he found himself slamming against another set of gears, breaking them too, before he breached into a new crawlspace, one that resembled the area he'd just left. 

The Deathless bounced off a mithril pillar and came to a halt against a new layer of Orichalcum. He blinked as he tried to process what happened. He spun his head and looked behind him. Through the way he came, he saw dangling mechanisms, broken belts, and mana bleeding into the air.

Alright, I am in a new place, he reassured himself. He placed his palm against the Orichalcum. This must be a a new part to the prison. Suddenly, his mental map was updated. The prison no longer looked like a disk. Maybe it was a series of disks stacked together, and he was between them right now. But if it was a disk, then where was the larger prison? Was he going upward, down? Was this the right way out? 

He bit back a hiss of frustration as he considered what to do next. Alright, maybe that's why there's no one else left in my area. Maybe that's why Cripple left too. It was tracking me when I was ambushing the wardens because I managed to pull some information from their minds. They stopped coming right after that… Godsdammit.”

Shiv thought about how Cripple pursued him when he had a kidnapped guard nearby. That had been the reason why Shiv couldn't claim a guide after choking him out. The bastards were just relying on me to stay lost. Now he was in another section in the prison and Shiv had a feeling it was going to be much like his. 

When he tore through these walls, he would find himself staring down a narrow valley. But this time, there might be new Pathbearers, new wardens, or maybe prisoners. And that's what Shiv was counting on. Prisoners. If there were other escapees, they might have better knowledge of this place's layout, or some other information he would find useful. Maybe if I break through enough of these places, Bonk might be able to find me, or I might be able to find Bonk. 

But, Deathless thought to himself, another thing I could do is try ripping through the ground. It's made of Orichalcum, too. I wonder what's on that side. Part of him was afraid of it being more mithril and gears. Gears that led to another section of the prison. That he was trapped so deep and between so many layers that he was going to have to spend days or even weeks digging himself out.

As Shiv deliberated, the surrounding gears screamed to life once more. But as they tried to move, the entire structure locked up. Too much of the surrounding architecture had been damaged. Some gears spun on, but they rotated, connected to nothing. A shower of sparks descended on Shiv, and his surroundings groaned with strain. 

And that brought a new surge of motivation to the Deathless. He might not know the layout. He might not understand where he was. But if he broke enough of the internal mechanisms, he could see this entire place locked up, stuck. And even if Cripple wanted him ignorant, sooner or later Shiv was going to figure out how this whole prison worked.

"All right," he drew in a breath. He drove his hands against the Orichalcum once more and began to tear. This time there was no tension. He would deal with the Ascendant if it appeared. But he had a feeling that Cripple was somewhere else, probably trying to hunt down the legendary Psychomancer that blasted Shiv's mind earlier.

 "Wait!" Shiv growled as he made his first gap in the red-gold metal. "I should have asked that guy for directions! Or help! Dammit, Shiv, think!”

Feeding a spark of anger into his Legendary Skill, Shiv's hand blasted forward, and he tore a clean hole through the Orichalcum. Slowly he began forcing it larger, pushing at the sides using his vectors until it furled outward. 

Shiv shot through. 

Once he was on the other side, Shiv found himself greeted by a horrific sight of death and gore as he shot down the sides of an Orichalcum valley. "Broken moon," Shiv whispered to himself as he looked down upon dozens of wardens decorating the ground. Most of them were in pieces, dismembered in brutal fashion, and all of them were missing their eyes. They also had what looked to be bladed feathers lodged in their torsos. The feathers radiated with magic and bled a bright white aura into the air. Shiv wasn't sure what kind of mana that was, and had never seen anything with that hue or color before.

Tentatively he descended, his black leather shoes splashed down into the blood, and he pumped Creeping Void out of himself just in case there was someone hidden preparing to ambush him. Shiv licked his lips as he regarded the bodies. He swept over them using his aegis of assimilation and studied their wounds. 

All right, very clean cuts, probably done by a blade or something much sharper than that. Most of their organs are still intact. It's just the eyes that are missing. The eyes have all been gouged out. Shiv turned one of the bodies over and he winced in pity. He was looking upon the face of a relatively young human woman. Her shoulder-length hair lay splayed behind her, blonde locks drenched in red. Her features were twisted in a frozen scream, but her eyes had been brutalized, had been utterly savaged. 

Whoever attacked her drove their fingers in and crushed the sockets as well. And Shiv was willing to bet this was done by someone's thumbs because he felt the faintness of a print embedded against the woman's very bones.

Psycho-Cartography: The wounds to the bodies were clean, which means that we might be dealing with someone that has a heroic or potentially even legendary slashing skill. It could be from a weapon or a specialized kind of physicality. But with the eyes, I can't help but shake the feeling that there is hate here. They could have simply shredded the skulls of these Pathbearers. Instead, they took the time systematically blinding every single one of them and forcing them to die in anguish. That takes hate. Real hate.

Psycho-Cartography 62 > 63

New Skill: Investigation 1 (Common)

Shiv examined the other Pathbearers and found each of them in a similar state. With the amount of damage inflicted upon their bodies, their equipment was also unsalvageable. But then a glint flashed in the corner of his eye. Shiv turned and found a blade drifting in the blood. A blade that maybe wasn't so much a blade after all. 

It resembled something between a wand and a dagger. The way it was shaped was pointed, and he could see a thick orb of Pyromancy, dotting its tip. The spine of the weapon was made from focus crystal, but the sides were red gold Orichalcum. Shiv blinked and walked over to the weapon and knelt down. He studied it for a moment, trying to see if there was anything wrong with the blade, before he reached down to pick it up. 

The moment he did, a hand shot out from the blood. A clawed hand that clamped around his wrist. A surge of Biomancy surged out of that hand—

Shiv didn't bother wrestling with his foe. He flung himself back in time, shouldered a temporal wave aside with a roar of effort. And then, as his hidden enemy surfaced from the blood, he slammed into them, pinning them against the wall. He felt a lashing claw, infused with Biomancy, bounce against his shoulder. Shiv directed his overflow tides against it, and the blow was knocked aside. Before his enemy could do anything else, Shiv wrapped his arm around the hostile's back, and he flung both of them in the opposite direction.

A loud crash sounded as Shiv slammed his ambusher head first against the opposite Orichalcum wall. A cry of pain escaped the ambusher, and Shiv wrenched them over his hip, slamming them against the wall once more. As they crashed down, he locked their arm and twisted hard. He pulled at an angle using his vectors and then slammed a fist down against their elbow. He tore the limb clean off.

The ambusher was wailing now, but they weren't done yet. They slammed their remaining hand upon the ground where all the blood was, and spears of red mana, spears of Biomancy, slammed against Shiv. Or rather, they would have if his Aegis didn't catch them. He pushed back using his own Biomancy field, but gritted his teeth as he felt his adversary slowly overpower him. Definitely High Heroic. 

"Yeah," Shiv growled, "you got my number there." But then he tipped the scales by slamming his foot down on the ambusher's chest. They let out a gasp of pain, and he pumped his shapeless tides into their body. A brief clash followed. His Leendary skill speared against their magical resistance and their Biomancy. And with every heartbeat, more of them broke apart. 

Several blood-forged spears impacted Shiv, but he ignored them. A faint Orichalcum pillar came into shape around his body, and the blood constructs flashed harmlessly against his form. It helped that his force vectors were threading through his enemy's Biomancy now, making them far weaker than before.

For the first time, Shiv got a good look at his enemy and recognized them for what they were. "Fucking vampires," the Deathless spat. The bloodsucker writhed and twitched beneath his feet. They reached out with their remaining hand, gripping his ankle, trying to shred him from the inside. Shiv pushed back with another pulse of overflow vectors. 

The vampire's fingers were bent back and twisted. Shiv didn't even have to reach down to do it with his hands. The vectors did the jobs themselves. Some halves of force angled the vampire's fingers backward. Others ripped the hand down the middle. The vampire opened his mouth and Shiv saw bladed fangs coming up to bite his leg. The same bladed fangs were shattered as the deathless brought his elbow down, crushing the vampire's jaw into his throat. 

With that, the vampire's Magical Resistance crumbled fully and Shiv clutched them by the face as he tore their Biomancy asunder as well. A wailing cry escaped the ruined bloodspawn and gurgles of blood left their mangled face. Shiv drove his Aegis of Assimilation into the vampire's body and found their heart immediately. To his surprise, the vampire was pulling a new trick. Its heart was split into different pieces, all of them connected by dense strands of tissue. Shiv had no idea what that was, but he had a feeling that if he fought the vampire conventionally, just crushing one heart wouldn't do.

"You and your goddamn tricks," Shiv said. "Well, the tricks won't save you now." The bloodspawn made a whimpering noise, and for the first time Shiv realized he was fighting a man. It was hard to tell with his narrow, vulpine-like features and that long mane of wild, white hair. The vampire had also seen better days. Its skin was sallow, like molded yellow wallpaper, and its eyes were pitch black. 

What's more, Shiv could see its veins. They were filled with coursing darkness too, and Shiv had no idea what was happening there either. The vampire whimpered. It held out its remaining hand to Shiv, its remaining mutilated hand. Fingers were pointed in the wrong direction, but they were healing before the Deathless's very eyes. He snorted. "Yeah, no, you don't get to kill all these people and expect mercy."

The vampire shook his head. Shiv paused. He looked at the dead wardens nearby and ripped the vampire off the ground. He held the bloodsucker up with one hand and pointed to the nearby bodies. "Why, you didn't kill them?"

"No, no," the vampire shook his head vigorously. "Not me, not me. It was, it was the Rebis."

"The what?" Shiv said, trying to decipher the vampire's slurred and broken words.

"Rebis," the vampire cried louder.

"What the hell is that?" Shiv asked.

"Zenith prisoner! Zenith prisoner escaped!"

"And you're not a zenith prisoner?" Shiv asked.

"No," the vampire cried out. “I am only Zeroth.”

He was having a hard time deciphering the vampire's messed up words, so he projected his Psychomancy into its mind. With its magical resistance shattered and all its mana fields utterly destroyed, it had no capability to resist Shiv. He dug into its thoughts and stood a whirlwind of chaotic memories. The vampire was terrified of him. A dense chain of blood and tissue formed between them, as Shiv's Shape of Monstrosity was empowered. "All right, let's speak this way. It's more clear."

The vampire flinched as it heard Shiv's telepathic message, but he nodded in response. "Okay. Okay. I promise. I promise you. I didn't mean to attack you. I was simply, I was simply hiding, hiding from the monstrosity."

"Yeah, you were hiding up until I went for that knife," Shiv said. "And with how you seemed to know where I was standing, feels more like you set up an ambush instead of anything else."

"No," the vampire cried out. But a beneficial thing about Psychomancy was you could get a general feeling when someone was lying, nested so deep in their mind. Shiv didn't want to kill any of the wardens, but vampires, well, aside from Angelo, most vampires were fair game. He didn't even consider them people. He reached down and crushed their arm at the shoulder. The vampire let out a piercing cry.

"Do not lie to me again," Shiv said. He pulled on the fear chain running between them and noticed that he was growing a bit bigger. As he grew a bit bigger, parts of his newly stolen armor began to buckle and break. Shiv sighed. "Now look what you did."

"I'm sorry. Please, please understand that I was desperate. I have been trapped here, trapped here for years, years so long, so long without company, no companionship, so long without even blood. My Lineage Core screams inside my chest. The things they have done to me, the things they have done to us here."

"Done to you?" Shiv asked.

"The Republic, the Republic is twisting us. The deniable prisoners. The Republic is testing things on us. This is, this is, this isn't just a prison, it's a laboratory."

Shiv scowled as he took that information in. Why does it feel like every time I peel away, there's something even worse beneath it? The Deathless shook his head. The ascendants were full of shit. Every bit of them was full of shit. Running someplace like this was… Shiv paused, well, experimenting on vampires was something he might do, just for the hell of it. A brief pulse of hypocrisy passed through Shiv as he decided to let that go. But what they were doing with him and what they were doing with some of the other prisoners, now that he might have a problem with. But he put that out of his mind for now as he looked down at the vampire. "Say, how well do you know the layout of this place?"

"I don't, I don't," the vampire wheezed. Shiv smacked his lips together in disappointment.

"Fine, do you know someone who knows the layout of this place?"

The vampire went still. "I have spent long inside my cell. They give us scant minutes to walk the outer prison, but many of the others, they know what I am. They shun me. They have attacked me before."

"Yeah, and I can't really blame them," Shiv shot back. "So, where did they go?"

"Don't know. When we were released from our cages, when our bonds were disabled, I fled. I fled under chaos. I fled by hiding in the blood. I was trying to find my own way to escape." And for the first time, the vampire let out a sobbing gasp. And despite how much he tried to hold back, pleasure spilled from him. "So much pleasure, the pleasure of having tasted blood again after so many years. I fed," the vampire said. And it was a thing of beauty to the bloodsucker. "I fed after so long. I had forgotten the taste. I had forgotten the texture. I had forgotten so much, so much. As I was lost to the hunt, as I was given unto my urges, I saw it, the Rebis! The monster… the abomination that they made here."

"The Republic made the Rebis?" Shiv had asked.

"Yes, they fused two prisoners together, an automaton and a human, both of them monstrous beings, monstrous Pathbearers of incredible power. And they volunteered in exchange for service and freedom. If the procedure was complete and they were alive, they were to be given their freedom. Such were the rumors among us. Such were the rumors. I felt such envy, such envy." 

The vampire's mind now came aflame with rage and jealousy, but that died down to absolute terror. "And then the procedure, it was… I saw them thereafter. The bodies were placed together. They were fused, part man, part machine, fused perfectly down the middle. The symmetry was sublime, but its mind, it was ruined. And now it remains a prisoner among us. It remains a prisoner because the Republic didn't know what to do with it, didn't know where to put it."

Shiv felt goosebumps crawl across his body as he looked forward and back. He didn't see anything, but somewhere out there was a messed up magic project created by the most messed up minds of the Republic for whatever messed up reason they had to justify this whole mess.

Mess mess mess, Shiv complained to himself. Everywhere I go, there’s some nightmarish bullshit happening.

"Then I pitied him. I pitied them," the vampire repeated over and over again. "I thought I was a miserable creature, but I heard them scream. We can all hear each other in our cells. It is the one privilege, the one pleasure we get down in those depths, in those coffins. We can hear each other. Sometimes we spoke, but after the Rebis, no one spoke because at night it sings to itself and it screams and it hates."

And just then a piercing cry of misery and agony sounded from afar. "It has found a new victim," the vampire said. "It has found them and it is not far away. We must flee, we must. If you see it, it will try to kill you. It hates anyone that lays eyes on it. It knows it's hideous now. It knows it's an abomination. Do not let it see you looking at it. Do not. Do not."

And Shiv could feel genuine concern coming from the vampire. This creature was practically insane. Even after all the damage Shiv had inflicted upon his body, the vampire was still terrified. Terrified of the Rebis, mortified of it coming back to finish them both off.

"All right, fine. But just to clarify, you don't know how to get out of this prison." The vampire went still. "And you did kill a few of the wardens." The vampire didn't respond now. Shiv nodded. "I'll tell you what. I'm gonna make this quick."

And a final rasping breath escaped from the bloodsucker. "I knew. I knew I was going to die in here. I knew."

"Yeah," Shiv said. "And it could have been avoided if you didn't attack me."

The vampire's black eyes cleared up and Shiv saw bright red irises regard him. A hint of sanity returned to the vampire for the first time. He just sighed. "What the taste of blood. You don't know what it's like. You don't know what the addiction is like."

"I know it's bad enough that it killed you," Shiv said. "Close your eyes."

The vampire shook his head. "No. I wish to be a Pathbearer before my end. I wish to see the face of my killer… Oh, you’re so young… You poor thing…”

And that earned just a measure of respect from Shiv. He offered the vampire a brief nod, and then he placed his hand against their face and closed it. Once more, the life in the shapeless tides revealed how neat it was. Vectors spilled along the vampire's body, and ripples of force came crashing inward to a single epicenter. Every single part of the vampire's flesh, bone, and more was collapsed inward. Shiv's final mercy was giving the vampire a quick death. One moment, it was an entire body. The next, it was a sphere of mangled gore crumpled into a soft mushy ball between his fingers. He retracted his hand and flipped some of the viscera off.

With that done, he went for the wand dagger once more. It lay there just a few meters away from where he saw it earlier. Must have been knocked aside during the struggle. As he knelt down to pick it up, he felt power course along the spine of the blade. The crystalline matter lit up, and Shiv realized it was a little bit different from focus crystal. For one, its insides were veined, infused with branching streams of mana. 

And another, he felt the pyromancy come alive, but at its insides there was a faint dot of static. There was a hint of dimensionality. Shiv briefly the enchantments but winced as another piercing scream distracted. "Well, not a bad find at all. I needed a new knife anyway. Time to see how durable you are, Orichalcum knife.”

He frowned and stared at the walls nearby. The walls had been ripped clean of mana. There wasn't even a flicker of spell stuff left. Shiv just noticed that. Once more, he regarded the crumpled ball of vampire and considered his final words. Wherever this Rebis was, it was probably ripping through the magical architecture as well, and that made them a legendary tier adversary. 

Shiv was trying to escape, but so was everyone else in this gods-forsaken hellhole. With everything said about this Rebis guy, Shiv found himself curious. There were risks in pursuing them, but maybe they could give him some insight on how to get out. Frankly, he felt bad for the poor bastard. Bastards. From what the vampire said, it was literally a human and an automaton stitched together down the middle. How the hells did that work?

“If things go bad, I don't need to fight them,” Shiv said. He planted a temporal anchor where he was and proceeded down the valley. “I’ll just escape.” 

He sped forward for around three seconds before he unceremoniously came upon the so-called Rebis. After so much build-up by the part of the vampire, Shiv was expecting some kind of nightmare of metal and biology. What he got was a winged creature kneeling over a body, driving its thumbs into someone's eye sockets. 

The warden screamed, their legs kicked out, but they no longer had any limbs. Their arms and legs were scattered. Judging by the blood that lined the edge of the Rebis’s wings, Shiv had a guess as to how they were cut. Speaking of the wings themselves, Shiv noticed that the left side was purely biological, skeletal with sheets of membrane lining between. The right, however, was entirely mechanical, with each wing projecting thrusts of force. 

“Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me!” The Rebis said over and over again. It clutched the head of the warden tighter and tighter, and with a final jerk of its hands, the warden let out a cry and went silent.

Shiv winced. Shiv grimaced at the murder, found himself a little conflicted. He didn't really have a problem with killing, but the wardens hadn't given him cause, and it didn't take that much effort on his part to keep them alive but disabled. The Rebis seemed to hate them, judging from the few dozen bodies that laid scattered all over this place. Shiv looked around, waiting for Cripple to show up, but the Ascendant didn't. 

"Felling hells, Bonk," Shiv commented to himself. "Just what kind of monsters did you let out of their cage? Really good distractions, though."

Shiv clenched his new blade tight and considered how to proceed. His Psycho-Cartography told him that he needed to tread carefully, that it wasn't going to be so useful against someone who's entirely insane, but they did know something about it. They knew it hated to be looked at, and it hated these wardens for all the experiments that were conducted upon it. So Shiv decided to take a gamble. 

He dropped, slamming his foot down upon the skull of an eye-gouged warden. Their head burst like a wrecked melon, and Shiv spat on them. "Piece of shit," he said. He felt his acting skill go up, and suddenly the Rebis turned. It was far faster than him, Legendarily fast. In a moment, its wings were pointed directly at his neck. Shiv didn't even see it move. The Rebis left no shockwave, no afterimage. It was in one place, and then it was another. And Shiv kept his gaze down, avoided looking the Rebis in the eye.

Acting 15 > 16

But through his periphery, he still caught sight of the creature. It wasn't nearly as ugly as the vampire described it, but it was still a pretty gruesome sight. Half of a person was fused with part of an automaton. The automaton side was easier to describe. It was a thing of smooth metal, with only a black bead for an eye. The texture of its chassis was mercury, but that ended at a threshold of raw-red flesh. The human part of the Rebis was extremely emaciated. There was no fat in the man. He was practically bone—and his genitals were missing too.

Poor sonnabitch, Shiv sighed.

“Who-who…” The Rebis sniffled as it looked at Shiv. The man-half of its face shuddered and flinched. It looked down at the warden Shiv just crushed. “You… are a prisoner?”

“Not anymore,” Shiv replied. “And I see you aren’t either. See you managed to find your way out. I heard you doing your butchery and decided to see if you wanted a second pair of hands.”

The Rebis stared at him for a long moment, and let out a whimper. “You… are not scared of me. I can taste fear. I can smell and feed from it. You are not scared. You are not like the others… I don’t know you…”

Shiv frowned as he noticed something—the notification marking him as a target of the system didn’t pop up with the Rebis. But why?

“But I know him. Sort of.” A new voice entered the fray. Shiv didn’t even see the Rebis turn. It was just suddenly facing the other direction. He looked past its head—and moved away from its extended wing to see a familiar face.

The wolf-man Shiv shared a cell with earlier was ripping pieces of machinery out from an automaton. He was armored now—clad in a dense plate of adamantine with a series of automaton heads lodged along his back like spines. Beside him, drones hovered in the air. Winged drones that had crossbows and other implants sticking out undercarriages.

Some kind of Artificer or Engineer Path, Shiv guessed.

“You know…” The Rebis whispered to the wolf-man.

“He’s the Deathless,” the wolf-man said casually. “He dropped in to say hi earlier, and the system offered me a most peculiar reward for his head.” Shiv began gathering overflow force. He prepared himself for battle, for the wolf-man to come for him—or the Rebis to take his head off.

The wolf-man regarded Shiv and chuffed. “So. You managed to escape, and your orc friend let all of us free too? Quite impressive. Quite impressive indeed.”

Shiv blinked. “You knew about Bonk?”

“Oh, yes. You have a very peculiar Chronomancy Skill, do you know that? And the orc was rather loud until he started playing dead—and he did that admirably after you were brought down. I was surprise the Ascendant didn’t finish you off. Why is that?”

The Deathless considered his options. “I’ll tell you if you know how to get out of here.”

The wolf-man chuckled. “That’s going to be a bit bigger of a project than you might think. However… With your help, I think we might be able to capture a Guard Cube.”

And there it was once again. “Why cube?”

“You don’t know?” the wolf-man said, tilting his head. “Ah. Unfortunate. You are in the well. The Rubix Well. Here, the most powerful and curious of the Republic’s victims and enemies languish. And we are at its very bottom. Trapped in so many layers, our prisons but shifting modules. Like parts of a rubix cube.”

“Wait, the gears…” Shiv muttered.

“You saw the mechanisms?” The wolf-man said, sudden interested.

“Yeah,” Shiv kept going, “I tore my way into this place from the Zenith Cube, I think.”

“Tore,” the wolf-man breathed. “Then, your strength must be…” He trailed off, and took a few steps closer to the Rebis. He whispered something in the mutilated creature's ear and looked at Shiv with a smile. “Well. This changes things. Now I know we can take one of the guard stations. And after that, we just might be able to make good on this mad escape. Be you interested in joining us?”

“Tell me about how we’re getting to one of these guard stations first,” Shiv said. “Then, I’ll give you my answer.”