IV-7 Descend (IV)

Have you ever gazed into the heart of an apocalypse? I have. I have seen things inside the mind of Tarrasque so deep, so true, inevitable. It is our inevitable end. They… they aren't born yet, do you know that? They aren't born yet. They're made later. They're made later by the ones at the end. 

Because they are the fate of everything, the fate that waits at the end of strife.

You have to understand… you must know, they are fate embodied, because the fate of struggle is destruction, is death. They are things that don't break, that don't die, that know without thinking. That's the worst thing there is, there's not truly a mind there, it just knows. It always goes back to normal because it's always fated. It's fated. It's fated to kill us. It's fated to destroy us.

We're fated to die. We're fated to die. 

We're fated to die. 

No escape, no escape, no escape.

I drowned in its mind. I drowned. I didn't come back. This isn't me. There is nothing left of me. I drowned and I'm still there. At the end, I will wait for you in the emptiness. I will wait, but and in time you will see. 

You will see.

-Interview with Master-Lieutenant Harrison Haebenauer of the 101 Mindthieves, Yellowstone Republic Special Operations after Operation Gravewalker

IV-7
Descend (IV)

The Tarrasque’s bestial madness gored Uva’s consciousness like a thing of claw and fang. Though Uva drew upon all her Psychomancy, she was still drowning, drowning beneath the Tarrasque's overwhelming weight. Its mind was unlike anything she ever tasted. It didn't so much have thoughts as it did axioms, things it had to do. There was no choice in the Tarrasque's mind. Violence, destruction, death, cruelty. These were the only options it had, the only things it truly understood. 

And connected to its emotions weren't memories, but what felt like a physical reallity, a realm made up of bodies, the bones of ruined buildings, Necrotechs, Umbrals, elves, humans, goblins, and more. Of blackest rain and dragons falling high above a festering wasteland, where the skies rained with foul black ichor, and where the winds were infused with sickness and wilting decay.

The mind of the Tarrasque became like a tempest, a storm of madness, and Uva felt herself be torn free from her corporeal form, dragged into the depths of the great beast. She was ripped free from herself in a brutal instant, and draw into the black reality hidden within the Tarrasque’s mind.

Everything blurred. She bit back a haggard cry as she tried to keep her mind from breaking. And then she landed hard on the ground, and something inside her broke as her Non-Euclidean Physique failed to respond. Her Blastmolt Skill triggered. She blinked into place a meter away from where she struck the ground, and her Blastmolt exploded beside her, launching further. Pain blossomed along her ribs first, but then it began to spread across her skin, down her flesh.

It was then that she realized the foul darkness within the rain here was eating through her.

Uva held up a hand, her armor began to flake and dissolve, and the skin underneath was peeled layer by layer. Misting trails of blood danced around her, and the agony she suffered grew from severe to exquisite.

"Mine, now," the Tarrasque bellowed. It was nowhere to be seen, yet it was everywhere, it was all around her. Its voice rumbled like distant thunder, and as she looked up into the sky, there was a long, scarred stretch in this reality that stood before her like a pillar made from a scab. It went high up into the air and slipped past the thicken blanket of ill clouds spewing tar-like venom upon the land.

As Uva lower her head, she also realized she stood among a mountain of bodies, a sea of bodies, a world of bodies. These writhing corpses—No, not corpses, people, people still alive, still suffering, cried out all around her. A symphony of nightmarish suffering greeted her eyes and senses. Most of the victims here were flayed down to the bone, and from their open wounds wept sores, sores that were constantly nourished by the black sludge-like rain. 

More rain hit Uva as well, and it began to burrow into her skin, into her mind. The Tarrasque's fell influence was tainting her, settling into her body and soul, compromising her mind, and filling her with that same malicious desire that constantly oozed from the Tarrasque's every fiber.

Bit by bit she felt its mind intrude on her. If it was an ocean, and she was a pond, she wasn't just being swallowed, she was being replaced. Soon she would join the other victims here, be flayed down to the bone, down to an exposed husk of spewing viscera, and her mind would go as well.

Here she was no Psychomancer, no Pathbearer, here she was sapped and withered, weakened and decayed. Here she was—

“You are not alone." The Starhawk's words were spoken in accompaniment by the Dreamtaker, and for the first time, truly the first time, both her eldritch ally and the Earthwhile Ascendant moved in tandem, unleashing their power through Uva, driving the Tarrasque's brutal presence back. Uva flared with power, and a deluge of colors exploded from her eyes. She turned her Dreamtaker's gaze upward, and twin beacons of eldritch brightness cleaved a scar through the night sky. 

The foul clouds were parted in twain, and the black rain dissolved before the sudden presence of the outside. The Tarrasque let out a cry as something else intruded in its mind. Cracks began to form within this mindscape, this inner hell that resided in the Tarrasque's consciousness. She felt it lash her blindly with its overwhelming magic, yet its wave of mana was raw, unrefined. 

Colossal waves of magic smashed into her, translucent waves that impacted her mind, yet were cut aside, for even gale-force winds couldn't split a mountain, and that's what Uva was with divinity burning in her veins. She was a Psychomancer, she was a Pathbearer, and as the Starhawk and the Dreamtaker said, she wasn't alone. She had the backing of something more, something higher, and with the Tarrasque's intrusive powers stalemated, she struck back in return.

Blastmolt 89 > 90

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings 145 > 146

Viper Stance 77 > 79

Her retribution was meticulous and multi-angled. Her strands exploded out in all directions, rooting through the Tarrasque's mindscape, piercing and shredding. She couldn't find any thoughts for her to break, couldn't find any memories for her to manipulate. Again, this thing didn't have a consciousness, not really. It had intentions, it had things it knew, and it seemed to have a living world, or more like, a living nightmare that resided in its depths. But she was here, and one thing about the nightmare, it still had a shape. It still was a thing of patterns, horrifying, though the contents may be, and so she attacked it. 

She turned her gaze down on the victims littering the ground, their bodies draped over the many jutting ruins that characterized this ruined place. As the colors of the Outside swept through their body, they dissolved, turning into flaking hues that merged with the eldritch gradients. The Tarrasque cried in outrage, offended that she was unmaking some of its destruction, stealing away some of its victims, and so she adapted. She turned her Psychomancy on the other bodies. Their minds were mostly hollow, but there was still a sliver of them left. Of course, there had to be. If not, how would they suffer, and how would the Tarrasque continue to feed?

She burrowed into them and crushed them without mercy. She didn't have time to consider the ethics of what she was doing, if this was right or wrong. As she shattered them, she felt a piece of the Tarrasque break as well. It was rooted within its victims. It was forged from them, seemingly. She didn't understand how its mind worked, but now she had a theory. Perhaps it gained more consciousness with every person it slew, with every body it destroyed, with every mind connected to a path bearer. If that was the case, then it made sense how it was gaining sentience so fast. 

It was literally sapping it from its victims, not so unlike a Jealousy.

But what about this world? Why was it physical? Why was it so unlike any mind she ever entered? Her mana strands cleaved deep gouges through the ground, and they also split bodies apart. Beyond the weltering gore and water falling organs seeping out from widened wounds, she noticed structures and bits of debris and ruins. She recognized some of it. Pieces were from Blackedge, judging from the architecture, but others were chunks of material from Abyss. She recognized the face of a partially collapsed residence block—That was Descender style—and with every revelation, her understanding climbed to new heights. 

A Tarrasque was a creature of destruction. It fed from destruction, it was nourished by destruction, and to that end her mind went to another being that was fed or sustained the same way: orcs. Did the Challenger have a hand in creating the Tarrasque, with how it acted?

Warning: You seek dangerous information. Pursuing this line of questioning further will put you at risk and draw the notice of the [Farwalkers].

The system's notification came suddenly, as did the follow-up.

It is recommended that you do not pursue this line of inquiry any further. 

The second notification came with a pulse of dread, dread that seemed to seep from the very world itself.

The system was warning her. Uva couldn’t remember it ever doing that before

Are you aware? Is this your doing? System? Uva’s thoughts went unanswered.

No further notifications came. But the dread lingered, as did the feeling that she had overstepped. She pushed it aside, as the Tarrasque unleashed another wailing rainstorm of entropic destruction upon her. Bodies dissolved into crimson mist, and as it came crashing against her, she wrapped herself in the dense nest of Psychomancy. Once more the winds broke against her, but then she was moving. 

She cast herself into one of the bodies, and she avoided another attack by diving deeper into one of the many minds sustaining this whole nightmarish reality. The Tarrasque went after her by destroying the body. A tide of rot and decay slammed down upon her vessel, and she was dislodged in an instant. She couldn't wrap herself in time, and so she lost an arm. 

A pained wail escaped her, but she shed her flesh and blinked elsewhere. It gave her enough time to recover and preserve the rest of her body. A sickness burrowed through her flesh, but before a fever could overcome her, a rush of flame exploded free from her pores as the starhawk unleashed its cleansing influence, matching the Tarrasque's pestilence.

The first cry of struggle sounded from the aAscendant, and a melody of torment escaped the dream taker as well. A turning storm of pestilence, of decay, of death, and more crashed down on Uva, clenching her, and slowly it took the shape of a massive claw, a Tarrasque's claw holding her at its epicenter.

"I will not be able to endure this for long," the Starhawk declared, growling the words out through their connective link. Uva was astonished at the Ascendant's weariness.

“Is the Tarrasque stronger than you?”

"No," the Starhawk shot back, "but its mind… its nature cannot be changed. I am faced with an Axiomatic Skill. And it is an absolute thing. We are trapped within this skill… The Tarrasque does not have a mind like most beings. It has a Delve. A ever-existing delve. And we are now trapped inside it.”

“I’m within a skill?” Uva said. And as she looked around, noticing the many broken corpses, places, and things, it made sense. Of course there would be bodies here. Of course this would be a place of unrivaled destruction. It is the literal legend that made up the Tarrasque.

"Its mind-delve cannot be broken," the Dreamtaker hissed. "Escape. Escape is our salvation, escape is the path-way out-survive."

Uva tried to reel herself back into her own body, but found herself unable. A single thread led up into the air, but it was being gripped tight by the turbulent atmosphere. The Tarrasque kept her pinned, and she could feel its malicious consciousness grinding against her. She was locked here, like an anchor pinned between two stones. She pulled harder, used the fullness of her mana, even used the power lent to her by the Starhawk and the Dreamtaker. She barely managed to budge herself. So long as the Tarrasque was focused on her, she wouldn't be getting out.

"No escape! Just feed! To be food!" you are. The Tarrasque’s voice trailed off, and a heavy hint of Shiv bled through. For a briefest of moments, Uva flickered with a pale white glow—a pale white that she remembered seeing through Shiv's eyes. This was the Chef Absolute, and she was being marked as something edible.

Disconcerting, Uva deadpanned to herself. Right, so I'm a prisoner right now, trapped in this place. I need to part the Tarrasque’s attention, otherwise my Psychomancy will be eventually battered aside, and that will be certain death for me. 

But how was she supposed to distract the Tarrasque? She turned her gaze on the ground again, and countless writhing bodies, along with jutting edifices turned to brilliant hues swallowed by the outside. Uva's eyes widened further, and she devoted all of her power into her Dreamtaker's Gaze. 

The Eldritch Skill carved a gaping wound through the Tarrasque's mind, and it briefly let out a very Shiv-like yelp of pain, but then the yelp died down and the Tarrasque began to laugh.

"Ah! New place, new prey."

Dreamtaker’s Gaze 25 > 26

A gap briefly opened within the Tarrasque’s delve, and a pathway to the Outside formed. Strange monstrosities flooded the delve and were promptly devoured by the merciless downpour and wilting winds. The feathered serpent's Uva used against the Recollector undulated into the Tarrasque's delver as well. 

But they, too, were withered, they too were extinguished, first deprived of color, rendered dull and gray before they finally dissolved into motes of ash. 

Uva's heart plummeted. If that didn't work, then what else did she have? She brought up her skills and looked to the only other heroic tier skill she had, Aberrant Fractals. She remembered how she created the Fractals, remembered what they could do. And as she looked around her, she saw so many bodies here, so many bodies infused with trauma consumed by madness.

A nervous breath escaped her. This would either work, or she would be completely and utterly doomed. But she had a feeling that the Tarrasque was about to learn what it was like to have a swarm of screaming shrapnel rip out from the inside of its being.

Her mana strands exploded out in all directions, and she clenched her teeth as she accepted some pain. A few whistling gusts of wind passed through her, and it felt like streams of acid were trickling through her flesh, ripping her asunder from the outside in. But as the Tarrasque roared with glee, Uva unleashed her Aberrant Fractals, compelling them to arise as she pulled at the broken lines around her. Victims cried out and shuddered. 

Hundreds of writhing bodies went stiff as Uva's manistrands were drawn taut. At once, she pulled, she pulled like she was trying to reel a particularly tenacious fish free from the grasp of a frozen pond, and with a final cry of effort, she wrenched them free.

Dancing shards of strange geometries glided through the insides of the Tarrasque delve. Space itself was shorn apart, and Uva directed them outward, directed them with a single command, "Rip and tear until I am free, until it is done." When they did, they began to shred through other victims, shred through collapsed buildings, through fallen structures. 

Blood, dust, and other matter sprayed free into the air, and though the Tarrasque tried to crush the fractals, the space around them always bent, for geometry was twisted around the Aberrant Fractals, and so the destruction of her newest assets was delayed. Her cloud-shaped eldritch nightmares tore through matter like a swarm of daggers and they narrowed and thinned, extending in all directions as they left gouges and gashes across the delve.

Uva found herself grateful that the Starhawk was empowering her once more. Originally, when she invoked one Aberrant fractal, Fatigue washed through her body. A lingering fatigue that lasted hours. Now she'd summoned hundreds, and she was barely breathing heavy.

Shaper of the Aberrant Fractals 111 > 114

“Cutting my… planneeee…” the Tarrasque groaned. A bit of its sapience was seeping away. Its grammar was collapsing, and its words were slurred. Perhaps she was right. These dead bodies and the minds they were connected to did host its greater intelligence, as more corpses were mutilated. 

The winds around Uva died down, and the black miasma staining the air around her abated. She realized that a miasma originated from the rain, the rain that now fell in a torrential downpour hammering her fractals. 

Though air, wind, and matter parted around the Fractals, the rain came with a festering aura, and that made her Aberrant Fractals decay. Their glass-like shards grew dull and black, cracks spread along their lengths. One after another they began to split and shatter, but the Tarrasque was no longer looking at her, and she reeled herself back with a final exertion of will.

This time nothing held her in place, she zipped free from the Tarrasque's mind and returned to her own body.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings 146 > 149

As soon as her mind slammed back into her flesh, she found Roland and Rose leaning over her, along with Valor holding her still. Uva blinked and found blood trailing down her cheek, found her tongue partially bitten through. She wanted to say something, but Valor simply held and pressed a hand against her head. "Uva, Uva, are you well? Are you whole?"

She turned one of her strands into Valor's mind, and sent him a telepathic confirmation. “Yes, what happened?”

"You touched the Tarrasque's mind, and went mad. You were twisting and writhing on the ground. We only managed to sedate you thanks to Roland’s servants." Uva looked to her side and found a short-haired woman and stout man staring at her warily. The woman was a Psychomancer while the man was Roland’s surviving Biomancer. She offered them a grateful nod, but then noticed that the dense nest of psychomancy protecting the Perch was still in effect.

I thought that would collapse with my incapacitation, Uva blinked.

The Stranger smiles upon you.

The Stranger will not let you die so easily, Seeker

Skill Altered: Parallel Thinking (Adept) > Splitmind (Master)

Uva understood what happened then. She clenched her teeth and tasted the blood running down her throat. Of course the Stranger would use this moment to intrude and seize another one of her skills. Still, it was helping her. And that was what she needed right now. All the help she could get. 

Right now, she was bound together with the Dreamtaker and the Starhawk on a level tighter than most would be comfortable. Another roar shook the world, and the Tarrasque sounded furious, but at the end of its call, a new notification appeared within Uva's vision.

Feat Gained: Dreamer of the Black Gnosis - Allows the Pathbearer to sense, absorb, and dwell within spots of psychological madness. Absorbing madness will hypercharge the Pathbearer's Psychomancy and Eldritch Skills.

Uva stared at the Feat for a moment, and immediately several spots in the room came to light before her. She turned to regard them. She realized they weren't spots, rather they were crevices lining various minds. Roland had so many scars inside his consciousness, so many scabs to pluck and feed upon. He was so close to madness, had suffered so much all his life, and an inhuman hunger pulsed through her.

 She turned away from him, immediately horrified by what she was considering, and then the Starhawk's presence was close to her. He noticed her new feat too, but he didn't judge her. He didn't comment.

"I wasn't going to," Uva began, but she was cut off as the Tarrasque cried out once more. Her attention descended, and she found herself staring at the Tarrasque, the Tarrasque with its colossal mind, with that hellscape it called consciousness. It wasn't madness, it was destruction. There was no mind to lose, when it was shaped by a delve. But even so, there were people within its mind, and that, that was a forest of madness she could use to water her powers.

"Uva! Uva!" Adam's thoughts called out to her. The Gate-Lord was stressed and overwhelmed. "Uva, we need you right now! We—”

His voice was cut off as something impacted the town once more. As Uva shifted her mind and looked out from Adam’s eyes, she found the Tarrasque grinding Shiv’s body into the underside of Blackedge. Pieces of the town began to crumble as the Tarrasque threw out both its hands and pulled in opposite directions, crashing wavelengths of force. Blackedge groaned. Uva's Psychomancy threads grew tighter and tighter. But even though she could exert physical force using her mind magic, it wasn't meant for it, and she was slowly losing that struggle. 

So she abandoned her defense, she went on offense instead. She directed her mana against the Tarrasque's mind once more, and when it pulled her in, she didn't resist. She descended into the realm of suffering, but instead of collapsing like a surprised victim, she plunged in as an arrow of divine vengeance. 

Uva was encased in her own Psychomancy and her threads exploded out like a bursting spider's web. A tide of black festering wind washed against her, but she cared nothing for it, nothing because her mana field touched the many victims still residing there. And just then, she fed on them. Her feat flared to life, and her translucent mana screamed with the songs of the outside.

She felt her physiology change as well, she stopped being so human. Her limbs were like the branches of a tree, her garden geometry broke around her, and her mind became stronger than ever before, became like an armored gauntlet when once she was but a clawed hand. Her strands grew thick, becoming pillars rather than threads, and she swept them through the wasteland. 

Bodies shattered, and Aberrant Fractals were summoned into being. The Tarrasque struggled once more, trying to deal with Uva while also doing all it could to preserve this world, this mindscape ruled by destruction. She channeled her gaze, and rather than coming like a beacon, it spilled across the world in a flooding torrent, and it just kept expanding more and more. She didn't feel nearly as weak now. 

Uva could keep channeling. So long as she had madness to feed on, she was endless, endless, and the taste of broken minds and shattered thoughts was intoxicating. If this was what drugs felt like, then Uva was thankful she never indulged, for she was certain to fall to this highest of pleasures.

"Stop," the Starhawk called, but she didn't. She didn't want to. She never wanted to. The Seeker wanted to find the point where the beast simply became a beast instead of an engine of destruction, and there, when it only had one fragment left inside its delve, she wanted to break it.

Uva—

“Uva! Master yourself!” The Starhawk shouted. His voice was loud enough that the inside of her skull rang like a bell, but it was enough to shake her free from her fugue.

“I—” She realized how intoxicating the power was and swallowed. The Feat was feeding her with more power than she was capable of wielding. A burst of shame swelled in her chest but she crushed it and turned her mind to adjusting her psychology. She needed to dull these sensations if she wanted to focus. 

But before she could get anything done, that scarred length she saw within the Tarrasque earlier tore wide open. And as it spread, she thought—No, that’s not a portal. It was like a baleful eye. It flared into existence, ripping ruins and bodies within delve asunder, and Uva briefly caught sight of something on the other side, something massive—

A beam of Psychomancy crashed against her. It nearly split clean through her Psychomancy. Without the Starhawk parrying the blast away, she would have boiled.

A notification appeared before her. 

You have seen something you shouldn't have. You are now hunted by the Farwalkers.

Farrwalkers? Uva remembered what those were. They were the ones that created Inertium. They hated mages and magic. Just what did they have to do with Tarrasques? 

Before she could ponder that further, a massive gale of festering wind impacted her, and this time even the Starhawk failed to hold the entirety of the blow at bay. 

There was more destruction and rot in the attack, and washed through Uva’s protective strands, digging into her supple consciousness. It washed through her flesh, and Uva cried out as more of her psyche tore. But madness was her sanctuary, and she drew on her own wounds as well. Her pillars became the size of buildings, and soon the damage was blunted.

But the Tarrasque’s entropic aura proved to be an insidious. Every second she spent in this place left her mind blackening like a burned piece of paper. If she stayed in the open, the monstrosity would eventually winnow her down to nothing.

So she adjusted her strategy. Uva cast one of her mana strands into a nearby body, though it was far larger than the vessel it pressed upon. She injected herself across her mana, and she vanished, she vanished entirely. This time, as she dove into her new vessel, she found herself plunging deeper, diving into the sea of madness that resided within their consciousness. She kept sinking deeper, diving into the broken psyche. She was like a droplet joining the ocean, and she lit the waters of their ruined with the colors of the Outside.

Soon, there was no trace of Uva in the delve at all. Nothing but ruins and corpses to be remained. Ruins, corpses to be, and the baleful inner eye of the Tarrasque.

“Disappeared?” It cried out.

The Umbral smirked internally. Time to see if I can teach this beast a lesson in counter-psychomancy.

She came up with a planned strategy. To constant raid and wreak havoc within its mind. To summon Fractals and slowly approach the scar-rimmed eye that lingered at the center of this skill. There, she would see if any damage could be caused.

But the thing about best laid plans was that it required your enemy act in accordance to your expectations.

The Tarrasque wasn’t particular clever, but it was absurdly powerful. And when it discharged its Magical Resistance, Uva was ripped free from its mind with an explosion of pain.

For the second time, she snapped back into her body, and this time she curled into a ball as the worst migraine of her life took hold.

And she wasn’t the only one affected. Across the town, she heard Pathbearers and Republic magi scream.

Scream as they, too, were incapacitated.

***

“Stop doing that shit!” Shiv snarled as he felt his Biomancy get torn apart for the hundredth time.

The world spun before Shiv's eyes as he coughed up blood and pieces of broken teeth. A minute ago, things were going well. The Tarrasque was briefly stunned by Uva’s Psychomancy, and he took that opportunity to drain another pond’s worth of vitality from it. But then it discharged its Magical Resistance and everything was back in hell.

Shiv tried his Outside Context strategy, but the Tarrasque was wise to his tactics. It immediately began using Dimensionality against him to teleport him out of its body and hit him at the point of his arrival. That’s how he ended up embedded in the underside of Blackedge.

The only reason he hadn’t died was because Adam blunted some of the impact with an arrow. A Dynmancy arrow that infused Shiv with greater protection. The magic shattered immediately, but it was why Shiv only had a cracked back instead of becoming a splatter against dense stalagmites made from mithril and other magical conducting materials. 

Pieces of Blackedge plunged down and struck the Tarrasque in the head, but it simply snarled and kept going, grinding Shiv deeper into the structure. Strangely, the beast was disoriented, shaking its head constantly while muttering to itself. Uva did something to it. Just not enough to spare Shiv the experience of being used as a meat-sponge.

Adam’s arrows crashed into the Tarrasque’s eyes over and again. The Republic’s Poly-Magi had been bombing it earlier too, but they were all stunned now, their fields shredded by the Magical Resistance discharge. Only the Gate Lord and Shiv were still active. And with how the Tarrasque rearing its fist back, the latter was about to get another death real soon.

Gravitic Wrestler 175 > 178

Pillar of Orichalcum 224 > 225

But then there came a bolt of black lightning, and before the Tarrasque could hit Shiv again, a net of electricity wrapped around its arm. It tried to push forward, but the stormstuff thickened until its body was coated tight, and just then, Dimensional portal opened above the Tarrasque’s head, revealing twelve figures.

Avatars.

“Fucking finally,” Shiv wheezed. He glared as the avatars finally entered the fray. They hovered but a few meters above the Tarrasque and—

Well, they weren’t really looking the monster for some reason. Shiv didn’t get it at first, but then he got the notification.

The Deathless has been spotted. The one to extinguish his Vitae will gain the quest rewards.

And as the Tarrasque struggled against Halur’s lightning, the other avatars continued glaring at Shiv.

The Deathless sighed. The reward on his head was far too large compared to the Tarrasque. He realized what was coming, but even so, he couldn’t help but be offended. “Really? You’re going to—”

The first among the avatar’s waved a hand, and Shiv cried out as he teleported away in a flash of Dimensionality. The battlefield vanished. The Tarrasque was gone. Adam appeared in the corner of Shiv’s vision—but he never came close to reaching the Deathless.

Shiv was cast away skillet that was the Tarrasque, into the naked flame that was the Ascendants and their avatars.