IV-6 Descend (III)

Psychomancy will wound your heart, Uva. There is no way to avoid the pain. There is far too often talk about ethics and rules regarding your skill, but so little about the cost it will inflict on you. You are a person too. Never forget that. Even if you gain the ability to shape your own mind, there will still be places where you remain fragile. Because perceive ourselves to be a certain way, and we imagine ourselves to hold to certain forms.

And I think that is what cuts us most deeply: The moment when our sense of self does not match the brutality of reality.

I was your age when I slew someone in the name of our Lady Arachnae. Do not look so envious. It is a black thing, ending another life. Watching all the vampire’s life dissolve behind her eyes left me shaken. Beyond the hate I held for her, she was still a person. And you will understand this better than I ever will. Because you will be looking into someone’s personhood. You will be blessed and damned to truly know what it is like to step beyond your own flesh.

Our skills are not just weapons against our enemies. They can be things to misshape us as well. So. Before you do anything, understand the cost. And take care of your wounds. Take clear to cleanse your injuries so they do not fester. Take care to treat yourselves with honesty so you are not brought down by your own lies. Take care to shape yourself into whom you wish to be.

That is most important. Shape yourself. This is something that must be done beforehand. Done with intent and focus. You cannot live thoughtlessly. Not like the rest of us. The power you have is too great, too invasive, and every act you perform on another mind will come with its own reaction.

Reaction that will chisel at your sense of self.

So learn to be a good sculptor. Learn to think ahead. And understand that even the highest rewards come with their own perils. A setback could save your life, and an inappropriate evolution can become your peril.

Know yourself. Above everything and everyone, know yourself.

Because if you do not, you will die lost and afraid before the end.

-Sister Phure Mettabon to her daughter, Uva

IV-6

Descend (III)

Uva felt like a cauldron with the Starhawk's power boiling within her. The divine mana that he channeled clashed with the colors of the outside, mingling as they flowed free from her being and her many skills. Her threads of Psychomancy were lit with gradients of shifting color and resonating pulses of incandescent mana. What used to be translucent strings that inflicted supple and subtle wounds on minds became tangible cords. Cords that bled heat into reality. Cords that could be woven into a nest to serve as protection. 

As such, when the Republic's forces suddenly descended from that colossal dimensional gate that manifested in the skies above Blackedge, Uva coated the spire of Starhawk's Perch with her newly-empowered Psychomancy and barred the intruders from entry like a spideress sealing the entrance of her nest.

The manifestation of the dimensional gateway was a staggering display of power in of itself. It was larger than the town, with its innermost ring more than capable of swallowing Blackedge. 

Thousands of Pathbearers flowed out every passing second, and they descended in orderly formations with the cavalry soaring through the air, forming a defensive perimeter and monitoring the space. Then plunged the heavyset Vanguards, Pathbearers clad in adamantine armor bearing massive shields or colossal weapons. They slammed down upon the town, avoiding the wounded citizens while making for collapsed ruins. They began lifting massive pieces of debris and slabs of rubble off bodies, and the Geomancers among them began reconstructing the town of Black Edge as well.

Finally there came the dedicated magi. The Republic fielded mixed-lore formations of magi bearing all elemental affinities. The voice called them Poly-Magi earlier, and Uva assumed they were a combined-magical skill force meant to be adaptable and overwhelming at the same time. They hovered just above the city in their varied formations and stood atop magical platforms with spiralling spellpatterns quivering beneath their feet. The magi unleashed waves of Biomancy, of Hydromancy, delivering rain and healing for those who needed it. 

And after the brutality Blackedge experienced, the people still living here needed a great deal.

Among the Republic's forces were also Psychomancers. So many psychomancers—more psychomancers than Uva ever recalled seeing at once. Weave was a city-state, and a young one at that. Of the five faiths, Uva had no illusion which was the weakest. But she didn't serve her Lady Arachnae because Weave was powerful. No, she did it because it was just, just in the face of overwhelming odds, just and the only chance for Umbrals to escape the vile fates that awaited them. 

In her time as sister, Uva faced vampires, dragon knights, compact mercenaries, and hired demons, even Necrotechs in the field. They were treacherous adversaries, overwhelmingly powerful in their own specialized way. But the Republic was on a whole other level. 

She had always known the surfacer were a formidable adversaries. The stories passed down from the Abyssal War primed her with respect and wariness against the Pathbearers of Yellowstone. But she still had underestimated them—underestimated how many of them there were, underestimated the sheer variety of skills they possessed, and how powerful their skills were. 

A hundred Psychomancers were assailing her now, each a Hero or a High Master. Weave, comparatively, couldn't possibly come close to even matching a tenth of that in totality. The Yellowstone Republic mustered them in a casual instant.

Yet there was something else that Uva found herself awed by. It was the fact that even a hundred Psychomancers working in tandem, shaping massive spells that swirled like transparent spheres above the town of Blackedge, they couldn’t push through Uva's protections. They still had no chance to overpower her defenses. And that was due to the Starhawk, the Ascendant, pouring his power into her. His power was further tempered by the influence of the Outside, and anyone who reached too deeply suffered madness and mana strain alike.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings 141 > 142

And it was then that Uva learned the true distance between a mere Pathbearer and a god.

Uva thought herself formidable at Heroic-Tier. Such a threshold of power was something that she only indulged in private fantasies, thinking it to be only achievable in the far distant future, or if the system intervened on her behalf. The latter happened in the form of Shiv, and now she faced adversaries beyond her reckoning; foes that should have killed her time and time again.

But she didn't die. She prevailed, and the system awarded her for surviving its attempted murders. Yet there was no chance that she could survive the Starhawk's wrath. Not if he decided to inflict his violence upon her. 

He was the sun, and she wasn't even an ember. She was but cold ash.

The hundreds of Republic Psychomancers pulled and struck at her dense weave of mana strands, and they couldn't budge her at all. She was impenetrable. She was an iron wall. And they weren't even the waves. They were moisture in the air, flinging themselves, but becoming condensation and nothing more. She had anticipated a struggle against them, a battle. But now she simply did as the Starhawk requested. She moved Blackedge toward the Chasm, preparing its descent into the Abyss, for that was the main purpose of their bargain: To deliver Blackedge, and Starhawk's Perch in particular, into the embrace of the Great One, and ensure the Starhawk’s scheme came to fruition.

The town was wounded, and Uva wasn't nearly as versed with the Starhawk's power as Roland was. Furthermore, she was a far weaker Pathbearer compared to the currently crippled Town-Lord. As such, Blackedge floated slowly, awkwardly, dragged along by a few errant strands through the air. 

Yet, it still flew, and it hovered mainly because of the Starhawk's divinity might. Oddly, it also let out an emission of ever-changing colors. And from that color, a faint whispering followed, whispers of beings lurking just beyond the veil, close by, yet impossibly far…

"Refrain from touching my being again," the Starhawk commanded. There was a tone of severity in his voice, and Uva looked behind and found the ethereal form of the Ascendant towering over her.

"Pardon?" she said, trying to keep her nervousness in check. She reached for her power, yet realized that was pointless. Again, she wasn't even an ember. She was less than ash.

"Not you," the Starhawk replied, his tone softening. "The thing within you. The thing you have so unwisely decided to grant residence within your skill."

A twinge of annoyance thrummed through Uva. "You say that like any of this was ever my choice. The circumstances between me and the Dreamtaker resemble our current arrangement more than you might think. It was this or death. This or certain defeat."

The Ascendant didn't take offense, instead he fell quiet. And what came from him thereafter surprised Uva. "I apologize," the Starhawk said, his voice somber. "I am frustrated. And I feel powerless. The Dreamtaker intends to take advantage of my fragile state and expand their influence. I refuse to allow that.”

That wasn't what she expected the god to say. She didn't even expect him to apologize. Such a thing were beneath powerful path bearers. Beneath gods. Yet, the Starhawk didn't act like a god. No, he was more akin to a man. A man with far too much weight on his shoulders. Weight she was beginning to feel in his stead.

"I have faced many enemies for the Republic," the Starhawk began. “Most can be slain conventionally. Most can be understood. The Outside is different. Their presence leaves me uneasy. And with you being a Seeker, my worry only grows.”

“I cannot say I blame you. The eldritch is… Volatile in the best case and treacherous for most minds to behold." Uva said. As soon as she finished speaking, she felt a shudder of power pulse out from her eyes. The Dreamtaker's attention was seeping out, and the colors drifting free from Uva's mind reached out toward the Starhawk as if to caress him. Uva restrained the colors, she drew them back into her eye, and she felt something almost approximating annoyance resound from the Dreamtaker.

“I merely want to observe,” the Dreamtaker whispered from inside her.

Your observation might come with actual harm, Uva shot back mentally.

The Starhawk inclined his head ever so slightly. "I thank you for your consideration, sister. I suspect I am not so different from you right now. Both of us are bound by bargains we did not wish to make. If only I was less of a blind fool, I could have seen the threat coming, and this wouldn’t have been necessary.”

Uva studied the Starhawk for a moment and realized what he was trying to do. He was attempting to establish a bridge between them, a common point. If he was doing it consciously or unconsciously, she couldn't say, but once more her guard was up, and she wondered if the Ascendant was trying to manipulate her.

"It is not your fault, my lord," Roland forced through clenched teeth. He was sitting not far away from Uva. His personal chair was once a magnificent thing carved from the finest wood that would have costed a fortune down in the Abyss. Now it was barely more than splinters held together in testament to its former quality. 

By his side one of his surviving Biomancers continued treating him while Rose, his beloved wife, returned through Shiv's skill evolution, held his hand and snarled at him, demanding that he stay focused on her, that he stay conscious and cursing at him every time he slipped close toward unwilling slumber. 

"The failing is mine," Roland choked through his words. Uva tasted the hame and sorrow radiating from the Town-Lord. Now that he had been brought back for a while, his thoughts kept drifting to the people outside, the people he felt he abandoned, the people he felt he led to their slaughter. Blackedge was a fortress town, but ultimately was still a town. It was a tripwire, more than it was a bulwark against the Abyss. 

Before the war was over, the matter was supposed to be settled. Yet here they were, repeating old mistakes, renewing old conflicts. Yet things were more complicated than that. There were so many hidden agendas and hidden forces going around that Uva couldn't fully tell who she was fighting anymore. The Ascendants. They weren't a unified faction, but the Starhawk was determined to escape from them.

"The fault is not yours," the Starhawk lowered his head. "The fault is mine. I should have seen this coming. I should have kept a closer eye on Catherine. I knew this was not beyond her. This was not beyond Stormhalt. Yet I was too obsessed, too focused with the grand, vision that I let the details slipped me by."

“Enough,” Valor said, cutting both the Starhawk and Roland off. “You are not children. There are consequences for every choice we make. I know of regret, but this is not the time to indulge. Face your mistakes and continue. Learn but do not be ashamed.”

“How can I avoid shame?” Roland said. He gritted his teeth as he shuffled in his seat. “How can I when so many of my people are—”

"No." Rose shook her head as Roland tried to stand. Rose held him down, planting a firm hand against his chest. "Knock it the fuck off," Rose growled. "If I see you strain yourself one more time, I'm going to choke you out."

Roland blinked, and Uva shared that response. She wasn't sure if he heard what Rose said accurately, but then something impossible happened. The Town-Lord laughed. Uva didn't think he was capable of such emotion after the sheer amount of misery radiating from him.

"Choke me out," Roland gasped out. "Yes, I suppose you are my Rose. I suppose I am not dreaming. Who else would threaten me so sweetly.”

Rose smirked and lightly flicked him on the chin. Roland winced. She whispered a muttered apology to him, but then flicked him again. 

"Lady Van Erren," the Biomancer protested. "Please, Master Arrow is—”

“I know how he is." She cut the Biomancer off through clenched teeth, a snarl escaping from the woman. "I know my husband. You don't need to explain this to me. I've patched him more times than I can count on the battlefield, and right now, this is what he needs." She poked him on the forehead, and Roland let out a slight gasp of incredulity. "A little bit more agitation, a little bit of frustration, and someone to smack him over the head every time he gets close to blacking out." She leaned in toward Roland. "You are not allowed to die when I just got back, Roland. Otherwise, I'm going to reach into whatever hell you plunged into, and I'm going to raise the worst fit you will ever experience in this life and all the lives to come."

Roland lifted a shaking hand, and he rested it on his wife’s extended arm.. "I missed you," Roland choked out. "I missed you so much, across so many years, I've dreamed. I've dreamed..." And then he began to sag once more, and Rose did as she promised. She spatted him on the face, used the warmth of her palm to lead him back into the waking world.

Uva drew her attention away from the two after that. It felt like she was intruding on something private, something at once intimate, yet also appropriate enough to be publicly affectionate.

Something commanded her focus just then. Another hammer of Psychomantic force crashed against Uva’s external wards, and it was followed by a thin beam of Dynamancy. The second bounced off Uva's dense strands as easily as the first did. Once more, she was reminded of her power, of the power she'd borrowed, actually.

"Ignore them," the Starhawk reminded her once more, "simply focus, we are almost there, we are almost..." The Ascendant trailed off, and a sudden surge of pressure hammered down on Uva from above. Her awareness screamed, and her instincts went haywire. She felt terrified for some reason, and she didn't know why. 

Unwillingly, unwittingly, her head turned upward, and she stared through the ceiling, a ceiling that was powerfully cracked, leaking divine mana. Through that ceiling, she sensed them, she noticed them. Twelve divine presences, far above Blackedge. The other Ascendants and their avatars were there, she knew that by intuition alone, and perhaps by the fact that the Starhawk was bound to her mind as well.

"They are here," the Starhawk declared. His ethereal form solidified with a gust of flame, and some details materialized on his body. She noticed the great halberd he bore, a thing that seemed capable of cleaving stars and planets alike, even in this muted representation of itself. She noticed his bow forged from brightest starstuff and one of his arrows trailing with cosmic destruction.

Blackedge began to shiver as Uva prepared herself for a coming attack from the Ascendants.

But she was concentrating on the wrong thing. 

A pained shriek shook the world from kilometers away. A cry of misery and pain, but it wasn't a human voice that delivered it. No, it was a Tarrasque. And she turned her awareness outward, two kilometers away, through a wall of descending ash and falling debris. She saw the large form of the Tarrasque, but more than that she saw tides of swirling red. 

It was like a typhoon was churning over the land, but rather than carrying wind and water in its wake, it displaced waves of vitality, waves of vitality that simply circled over and over again. Uva wasn't sure what the Tarrasque was doing, but her thoughts immediately went to Shiv, and she tried to reach out to him. He didn't respond. 

The link had broken some time ago, either because he was slain, because of the Tarrasque's discharge of Magical Resistance, or because Shiv used his Outside Context Problem.

She turned her Psychomancy then, to Adam, and took a peek at the unfolding situation through his all-seeing eyes. His Seer of Horizons was active, and he was gazing upon the Tarrasque directly. It was writhing, its body was boiling with vitality, and that corona of white and red that swirled around it, that allowed it to resurrect time and time again, was dimming. Adam's Awareness jumped into the Tarrasque’s open jaws.

Everything was a deafening storm of noise and chaos. Adam's awareness bounced between several walls of cracked crystal and bleeding flesh. In seconds, the Gate Lord found the one he was looking for: Shiv. 

Shiv, who was partially embedded in the Tarrasque's flesh, Shiv, who was fused inside the beast's body and ripping the vitality out of its very being in an unceasing torrent.

"How is he doing that?" Uva asked.

"I am not quite sure," Adam replied, "but there was a tinge of excitement at the end of his voice. I think he's bleeding the big bastard dry, though." The gate lord fired another two Veilpiercers, and only then did Uva notice he was far above the clouds, hiding from the Ascendants. After taking a peek into his memories, she realized he was focusing on culling weakened orcs to further recharge his smiting arrow, and with a few more deaths, he would be primed to unleash absolute havoc. “But what of the avatars and other Ascendants? When did they get to Blackedge?”

"Just now," Uva answered. She sent him a brief packet of memories, condensed so that he could stay updated about matters happening inside the perch and around it. A cold pool began to spread from inside the Gate Lord's abdomen. He was worried for his family, worried about what might happen to the perch, and worried for Uva as well. The thoughts began manifesting in his head, but Uva stopped them before they could fully form.

"Do not try and distract the Ascendants or their avatars," Uva said. "The risk is too high, and they are too powerful. You need to remain in place on watch to support Shiv. The other Ascendants have not acted yet, so I will remain in place and see that your family is protected, and that Blackedge is delivered to the chasm.”

"Right," Adam acknowledged with a slight grunt of displeasure. “I… Take care of my family, Uva. And if anything happens—”

“You will know. And I will do everything I can to make sure your parents are protected. Now, focus, Hero Adam. Because I may have need of your eyes and arrows soon enough.” She briefly squeezed Adam's mind, offering him a pulse of reassurance that she didn't entirely feel right now either. Still, it was enough to calm him, enough to get him to focus once more. "Now, how long until you’re ready to fire another smiting arrow?”

His arrow ignited with blinding power as a stream of azure fire was injected into it from the sun hovering over his head. "Right now," Adam finished with a snarl. He took aim, drawing his Spellstring back. Several of the bow strands came aglow with mana as he began to concentrate power into his newest smiting arrow. The Veilpiercer was brighter than the emerging dawn, and for a moment Uva was afraid the Ascendants far below might notice Adam, that they would see just how radiant his arrow was even through the dense clouds of the stratosphere. 

But nothing happened to him.

“They are distracted,” the Starhawk declared. “They are trying to understand what is happening with the Tarrasque as well.”

Ah. Good work, dear brute. Your chaotic nature is aiding us even now…

Just as Adam prepared to loose his a shot at the staggered Tarrasque, a flash of golden mana pulsed out inside Starhawk's Perch. A loud bang filled the room, and Shiv rematerialized, slamming his foot down the same way he did earlier. And just as he did, a notification flashed before Uva’s eyes. A notification that made her stomach curl in horrified disbelief.

Hidden World Quest Activated: Slay Tanner “Shiv” Lowe, the Deathless, before he fully comes into his power and drives your world beyond its current mana stability threshold.

Rewards: Integrated Earth will experience an Ambient Mana Threshold Evolution. Mythic Skill Tier will become available to all Pathbearers within this Ambient Mana Zone. Evolve 10 Skills to Legendary-Tier.

Failure: A specialized Incursion will be triggered to destroy Integrated Earth in 10 years, 6 months, and 5 days.

She noticed then that Roland was also frozen. He was reading something in front of him, and Rose was as well. Valor was staring off into the distance, the flames within his eye sockets flickering. Nearby, Roland’s personal Psychomancer, Biomancer, guards, and more found themselves speechless at the Hidden World Quest they just received. 

Practically everyone had received the quest. Which meant the Starhawk…

Oh, Composer. Uva’s insides went cold. The power of the Starhawk trickled into Uva, but then began to slow. Her incandescent, her divinely lit Psychomancy dimmed, and immediately she began to feel the pressure from the outside, feel the hostile Psychomancers prying through her strands. A sudden tension exploded inside the room, and the only one who didn't notice was Shiv, mainly because he was too busy cursing the system to properly react. Distrust spilled from Uva into the Starhawk, but his attention ultimately drifted away from her and settled upon Shiv.

"What are you?" he whispered, and his words went unheard by the Deathless, but the umbral took them in as something akin to a threat. "I do not intend to claim his life but the other Ascendants will—”

Uva cut him off. "Shiv," she called out. 

The Deathless rose, and he had a haggard look on his face as he met her gaze. “Oh, hey, Uva. Was busy learning how to drain the life out of a felling Tarrasque. System decided to reward the usual way for figuring that out. So, uh, did you all get that quest?”

“Felling shite, son,” Georges muttered. “The hells did you do?”

“Exist,” Shiv replied with a faint snarl. Valor moved to speak with Shiv, but there came a roar, and the Deathless's attention snapped back outside. He did a double take as he realized the exterior of Starhawk's Perch was coated in a dense wall of Psychomancy mana, but that didn't stop him. “Godsdammit. Don’t have time for this. Uva. I’m going for the Tarrasque. I’ll try to finish it off. If it gets close, stun it if you can. Hold it in place. I’m going to leave it empty.”

As Uva as one of her strands shot out to link with his mind, he vanished. He splashed into himself in a burst of white and red, and then disappeared from her awareness. 

For the next three seconds, Uva didn't know what she was staring at, what she was just about to do. She didn't even know Shiv existed. Then he resurfaced, and everything came back to her all at once.

"Uva," Adam called out, "I have eyes on him."

Uva looked out through his eyes and saw Shiv cutting past a group of magi trying to crack the perch’s defenses in a burst of speed. While Shiv barreled through unprepared Republic Pathbearers, fast approaching the devastated town was the massive shape of a Tarrasque. 

It wasn't moving quite as fast as it was before, and no gravity trailed around it. The air wasn't ionized, it wasn't even ablaze. However, it broke through the sound barrier, and it tumbled still, tumbled toward the undefended town.

Something is wrong here… Something doesn’t feel right…

The gathered Poly-Magii noticed the Tarrasque, but then Shiv's form resonated  with a pulse of pressure. As soon as he rang, the system sent a new notification. 

The Deathless has been self-spotted. First to extinguish his Vitae will obtain the quest reward. 

And judging from how thousands of other heads suddenly snapped to Shiv, he was probably pulsating right before their eyes too. The Republic's Pathbearers reacted in two ways. The First formed a barrier, a layered set of wards meant to intercept the Tarrasque, but more than a few others unleashed their spells at Shiv.

Just a shame they were too slow.

An dimensional arrow ripped open a rift in front of the Deathless, and suddenly Adam burst out and pulled the Deathless inside. A barrage of spells cut left and right around the rift, and a fist formed from Dimensionality splashed against its entrance, collapsing it entirely. But by then, Shiv and Adam were both gone, displaced back above the stratosphere.

But before Uva could let out a breath of relief, the Tarrasque impacted the hastily constructed wards and blasted through half of them. Its immense body shattered spell pattern after spell pattern with sheer weight alone, and just as the final layer began to collapse, a brilliant arrow cut down from the sky erupting from a new dimensional wound as it exploded against the Tarrasque's form. 

The titanic beast came ablaze with radiant fire, and the limpness of its body indicated it was already dead. Uva lashed out with her Psychomancy threads. They blasted through the Tarrasque's body, digging divots of gore, and gouging deep into its flesh. Yet as Uva's puppeteer strings searched, she couldn't find any purchase on its mind. In fact, she couldn't find any mind at all. It was then that she realized something. The Tarrasque was dead. There was no mind in it. 

It was hollow, nothing more than a corpse.

But if it’s truly slain, then why haven’t we gotten the quest rewards?

A storm of offensive spells crashed against it as the Republic's Poly-Magi began shaping siege-level magics, flames so hot that the sky turned pale. Slammed down against the Tarrasque in the shape of a hammer falling on an anvil of magma, a rain of Hydromancy fused with Aeromancy came down, and arrows shaped from dense pillars of water and pregnant with screaming electricity exploded against the Tarrasque's rupturing flesh. 

Even more spells hammered against it as the Republic tore the apocalyptic beast apart in an overwhelming barrage.

The mutilated corpse of the Tarrasque slid off hastily erected wards, and as silence followed, the tension within Uva climbed to a boiling point. “Adam! Shiv? Do you have eyes on the actual Tarrasque?”

But it was the Starhawk that responded first. “I can feel it. It’s presence is…” The Ascendant froze. “No. Sister Uva. It’s coming from—”

A deafening shriek shook the world, trembled the ground beneath Uva’s feet, and a predatory mind bearing a storm of violence, hunger, and hatred exploded upward from below Blackedge.

Before Uva or anyone could react, the Tarrasque blasted free from the parting earth and crashed fist-first against the underside of Blackedge.

The town’s very foundations shattered like a crumbling brick.

But before Black Edge could come apart entirely, Uva’s mana strands surged down, piercing through the material and stitching the dense clumps of crystal and stone, pulling Blackedge's base back together. She could feel the Tarrasque’ grinding against her powers, wrestling  against her with its dominion over gravity.

She responded by whipping its mind with her magic, and for the first time, her mana strands struck its mind—

But it was Uva who screamed thereafter. Screamed as a crushing maliciousness hammered through her Psychomancy and seized her very ego. A loud voice boomed within her mind as she learned firsthand why it was a mistake to trespass into a Tarrasque’s mind.

“AND WHAT KIND OF COOKING-MEAT ARE YOU?”The monster shouted telepathically, sounding far too much like Shiv for Uva’s comfort.