III-54 Capture (II)

Orcs! Orcs everywhere! They're everywhere! They're felling everywhere! We need reinforce— -Last Received SkyCast from Expedition Force Thebo

Orcs! Orcs everywhere! They're everywhere! They're felling everywhere! We need reinforce—

-Last Received SkyCast from Expedition Force Theborn

III-54

Capture (II)

Shiv grasped the lance embedded through his midsection, but as soon as he touched it, he felt his hands bounce off, flung back by a blast of unnatural recoil. The vibration was spreading through his body as well, opening his wound wider and wider. Shiv’s Biomancy granted him insight: something about the lance's constant tremoring amplified its ability to pierce—-destabilized the structure of his flesh on a fine level. His Adamantine Adaption warred against the rider's weapon, but it continued sliding through him as if a blade being pushed through wood. His armor and flesh offered some resistance, but not nearly enough.

Avoid the lance, Shiv thought to himself, no more resisting; adapt. 

One of Shiv’s Biokinetic hydras reared back and bit down on his flesh. He tore his midsection open with his Biomancy, allowing him to channel a deluge of viscera and blood directly at the rider. It splashed over her at colossal speeds, and the ropes of his intestine coiled around her face. A muffled scream sounded from her as Shiv shrugged off the hurt. A chain of fear extended from the rider, the Deathless took hold of it. However, the moment he tried to pull, it snapped.

She still wasn't scared enough, but her fear fed power into his body and alacrity to his reflexes. The world slowed as he dashed right, ripping himself free from the lance. In the same instant, another of his mana hydras swallowed his wounds, and it came alight a constellation of crystalline injuries. 

He swung the crystallized wounds at the rider with his lashing Biomancy field, but her dragon suddenly descended and went ethereal. Shiv’s gore passed through her body and spun through the air. The Deathless simply grunted and assimilated the biomass into his Biomantic aegis. He lost his cancer flail when the rider stabbed him. He needed to build a new one.

As he tried to track the dragon, though, he found he couldn’t keep up with their sheer speed and maneuverability. Every time the rider and her dragon went ethereal, they became four times faster. The Deathless scoffed as he started unleashing his Creeping Void once more. A swell of blackness expanded out from his body, drenching the sky. The dragon suddenly tore past him again—there was only a distance of fifty meters between them. Yet the beast missed him, and the rider speared nothing but open air.

She continued her ascent. The dragon and her rider burst through the clouds before Shiv could fully react or follow, and he found himself glaring at a patch of dense, black clouds with no clue where his rival Chronomancer was.

No wonder Helix recommended that eye-level awareness. Once she stops being so obvious or so close quarters, I'm basically blind. For a beat, he considered chasing the dragon, but decided against it. The rider would be back to run him down once more. But now he knew her ways a bit better. He just needed to figure out how to deal with her speed and intangibility. 

From directly above, Shiv could see thousands of gray bodies smashing through teams of inquisitorial Pathbearers. Orcs shot up from all corners of the land. Some leaped. Others flew. Many teleported. Some just emerged from gusts of wind. They pressed in from all directions, clenching the expeditionary force in a brutal encirclement. 

Those who once stood as the Inquisition's outer vanguard were overrun, but the orcs didn't kill them immediately. Rather, they broke limbs. They peeled off helmets and began scalping skulls. They flayed flesh while keeping their victims alive. Shiv felt his stomach twist with muted horror.

Orcs never went long before they reminded you what they were.

A cacophony of screams rose above the roar of combat. The remainder of the expeditionary force retreated inward, adjusting themselves into sixteen compact formations. A wall of defenders stood along the outside, while fast-moving Pathbearers stood behind them. At the center were eight groups—columns of magi. And between the magi were two singular Pathbearers, one of whom had a gleaming bald head.

“I got eyes on Sijik,” Shiv shouted aloud. At some point, his Dimensional veil burst as well; Adam could probably hear him now. This would give the Gate Lord something to track

Shiv shot down as he took in the surviving Inquisitors. To his astonishment, their morale was holding. A new barrier, a protective force, fused over them. Radiant barricades and small formations were forged by falling bolts of lightning. The Deathless also noticed weak bolts of lightning jumping between each of the soldiers, flashing from helmet to helmet before it finally soared upward, cleaving just past his body into the air. His eyes followed that bolt as it flashed behind a curtain of thick and dark clouds, and he watched as it tore southward, likely to Fortress-City Diego.

That’s probably someone teleporting out or some kind of lightning-flung message, Shiv muttered, well, Stormhalt's probably going to know about this soon.

A lightning-infused Veilpierce exploded out from a dimensional wound and split the escaping bolt in half. Twin crashes of thunder sounded in the distance as Shiv let out an impressed laugh. “Good godsdamned shot, Adam! Now. Gotta deal with the rest.”

But as he looked down again, he found the Inquisitor’s shrouded by a massive four-hundred meter wide dome of force. Projectiles and attacks splashed off it like water peeling over a shield. Shiv hovered in the air for a moment and considered his next steps. 

A sphere of fire splashed against the Inquisition's defenses, but it quickly dissipated as the Expeditionary force's Pyromancers worked their own mana in return. The same ball of fire was unleashed as a scything blast of light. Shiv instinctively looked away, but several exposed orcs stumbled back, clawing at their eyes. They were promptly blasted off the cloud by missiles launched by the Inquisition. It appeared the expeditionary force could shoot through their protections, but not the other way around. 

The Deathless squinted. He counted at least eight columns of dedicated magi earlier, and spent a moment observing the Inquisitors through their protective shell. It seemed two columns of magi were Aeromancers with how much electricity was flowing between them. One of those Aeromancer columns specifically seemed to be focused on generating electricity, letting the currents flow through the other soldiers present. The other Aeromancer column directed the bolts, flicking them out at distant targets, slashing at the eyes and mouths of the encroaching orcs. 

But the expeditionary force was fighting a horde of Heroes and Masters. Those who were struck by the bolts were not killed. They were merely disoriented or dazed. Others parried the bolts, and a few even caught them, ripping at the whips of electricity as if they were material chains. Shiv saw the obfuscated forms of the Inquisition's Aeromancers get pulled through the air, but they were pulled back by their allies. And just then, a shroud of gravity flowed over the Inquisition. The few thousand soldiers they had left were all further imbued with greater mass, with the anchoring power of Dynamancy.

But even so, they were assailed from all sides, and the contrast played before the eyes of the Deathless. The Inquisition fought together, a singular organism moving toward unified goals. The orcs, however, were like a swarm of hornets. All of them posed a threat of their own. But their coordinated attacks were only things of improvisation, prompted by Maestros or personal interest. 

Where the Inquisition's magic was concentrated, performed in concert, the spells from the orcs fell like a rainstorm, pelting them from all directions. Massive tides of flame enveloped the magical defenses guarding the Inquisition, and the barriers held, as each of the Inquisitorial magi supported one another. Just then, Valor's words resonated inside Shiv. The orcs were dangerous, the orcs were elite, but the orcs, as a whole, were unfocused and lacked nuance with detail. That, and they were laughing. Having a joyous time torturing the Inquisitors they just captured.

Shiv’s eyes widened as he watched the orcs adapt the Inquisition in their personal, cruel ways. They strapped wounded and tortured Inquisitors to their chests as human shields. Men, women, bots, and more screamed for their allies to stop firing, screamed for their mothers, for their makers, for a merciful death.

Some died as counter-attacks from the expeditionary force struck them, but the Inquisition was hesitating now—with many members unwilling to murder their comrades and friends so casually.

Psychopathy has its virtues, Shiv thought grimly as he started creating a new Vitae Golem. Really fucked up virtues.

Just then, as an Aeromancer lifted his staff trying to feed a final bolt of lightning into the spell his column was shaping, a Veilpiercer tore into existence right in front of his face. A gleaming arrow imbued with Pyromancy, Dimensionality, and Necromancy struck the Aeromancer at the center of his neck. He tumbled back, his spell broke, and the ball of lightning his column was trying to maintain grew unstable. 

Lashing forks of electricity whipped out and tore through a good dozen Automata Pathbearers—several of whom were Dynamancers. The barrier weakened. Then came more of Adam’s arrows. 

Infinitely more.

Shiv watched with interest as every arrow that impacted the Inquisitors became two more, then four, then sixteen, and so on. Then, a literal flood of Veilpiercers raged as a stampede within the Inquisition's ranks. Commanders began to fall. Elite Pathbearers took wounds to their eyes, ears, optics, ankles, and joints.

***

Skill Evolution: Bowslinger (Adept) > Propagating Salvo (Master)

Propagating Salvo 101

Adam gritted his teeth as he tried to find Sijik through the chaos. But it was hard. It was hard to focus with all the screams clawing at his mind. He saw the things the orcs were doing. Bile lurked in the back of his throat, and Adam felt a visceral hate kindle within his bones.

The godsdamned gray-skins were monsters. The Inquisition were traitors, but no one deserved what the orcs were actively doing to them—the casual torture.

He was going to need to talk with Shiv about resolving the orcs after this was done. But for now, he loosed another shot. A Veilpiercer that became two on impact, that became four, that became sixteen, and then even more…

***

The orcs seized on the opportunity, hammering the magical defenses from all sides, and new cracks began to spread.

Shiv unleashed his Vitae Golem then, and this time he had enough breathing room to infuse it with Vitality Drain. Smash through that shield, kill the mages, detonate yourself after thirty spikes, try not to die. The golem shot down and Shiv followed right after. He projected his Minor Illusion and cut off his Creeping Void. 

He didn't want his allies to be fighting in the dark. Shiv also decided against using Chameleon, just in case one of the orcs accidentally hit him. Shit was chaotic enough. His golem struck the topside of their mana shield first. Cracks spread, not nearly large enough to break through. But the same crack grew into a colossal fracture as Shiv slammed down. A scant second thereafter, both he and his golem discharged. Kinetic blasts erupted off their bodies. The shields projected by the Inquisition's Dynamancers dented inward as parts shattered away entirely. At the same time, Shiv brought his Biomancy field down as well. The blood-red heads of his mana-formed Hydras crashed against the barrier, unleashing a tide of mana explosions, impacting the protective dome like a falling star.

Inertial Overdrive 116 > 118

Then came the orcs, towering gray-skinned monsters imbued with titanic Physicality and blessed with implacable Toughness. Spells crashed against them and broke against their bodies as if pebbles flung against the face of a mountain. They swung their great axes, hammered with fists large enough to wrap around a grown man's torso. More shockwaves joined Shiv's, and the Dynamancy barrier maintained by the expeditionary force began to crumble and break.

But the barrier hardened for a beat, then roared with surging force. Shiv felt a shudder of pressure coming from the barrier. Instinct told him to bring his Skysplitter up just in time as well. The barrier detonated outward, and a colossal explosion flung the orcs, along with Shiv's vitae golem, high up into the air. A crushing torrent of force slammed against Shiv, and he realized every blow he delivered, every shockwave and discharge he emitted upon the Inquisition's protective barrier, just got turned against him and the orcs. 

Even so, he caught the blast along the flat of his blade and levered up. He magnified the size of his Skysplitter, and he twisted under the tidal wave of force. It took his Plaguefueled, Gravitic Wrestler, and his Biomancy combined for him to trigger Frictionless Vector and have the blast slide over him. The clouds behind Shiv were bifurcated as a jet stream of force split the sky.

Frictionless Vector 66 > 69

And then Shiv was through the broken shield. He deactivated his Chameleon and spiked himself right into the center of a magi column. He slammed boot first down on the neck of an automaton, and the bot's body groaned as bolts and screws burst free. Shiv swept his mana hydras wide, expanding them as far as he could, making them spiral around him. At the same time, he detonated his inertial sheathe and blasted a pocket of blood and writhing bodies where a few dozen magi once stood. They ruptured into welters of ruined flesh inside their folding armors, and Shiv drank them in using his Biomancy. He assimilated their biomass to forge a new flail, charging through the other magi at the same time as he tried to find where Sijik was.

Magical Resistances held against his mana hydras. Shiv’s fields recoiled. He slammed into the magically-hardened Pathbearers and lashed their flesh with his Skysplitter. At the same time, a new cancer flail extended from his field, and a wrecking ball of mangled biomass whipped out low. 

Shiv's new cancer flail was a nightmarish implement. A mess of human limbs, elven faces, jagged teeth, and more sprouted out as clumps along the sides of the weapon. Ankles and knees shattered. Pathbearers screamed. The Inquisition laid eyes on Shiv for the first time, and rivers of fear flowed from their beings to nourish his. He felt himself grow stronger, faster, felt his mana surge with increased might. Magical Resistances shattered against his amplified Biomancy, and then his Vitae joined the frenzy as well, drinking vitality while gouging eyes and crushing skulls.

Shape of Monstrosity 103 > 106. 

Whip Proficiency 9 > 10

"Enemy at the center!" a enemy Psychomancer screamed. "Close ranks! Close ranks! Rapid response!"

And Shiv saw the drill-headed automaton pushing through the formations, coming right at him. The deathless grinned in anticipation. His dance with the automaton was interrupted by the dragon rider earlier. Now they could get properly—

A blade broke against Shiv’s spine. Shiv felt his armor lose two centimeters of material, just to heal immediately thereafter. Behind him, an Assassin tumbled, spasming on the ground as their face was covered by a spray of basilisk venom. White foam erupted from the paralyzed Assassin—then it was joined by a spray of red as Shiv swiped his blade through her body. Shiv's armor was spewing vile, hissing-green fluid from the veins threading its crenulations. Inspiration seized Shiv. He promptly used his Biomancy to direct jets of basilisk venom at the organics all around him as well.

Awareness 34 > 35

Multi-Tasking 18 > 19

More fear flooded into him. A lance of gravity struck Shiv, but he slapped it aside with his Magebreaker—sending it blasting through a group of Pathbearers to his left. The drill-headed bot descended from the air, his skull roaring. Shiv launched a corpse at the automaton in response as he unleashed a brief splash of Creeping Void.

The Creeping Void 112 > 113

The enemy Pathbearer immediately tore into corpse’s flesh without realizing it wasn’t Shiv. The automaton drove its skull against Shiv’s decoy body. Sparks flew free from Shiv’s corpse. And more sparks burst out from the automaton as Shiv swung a size-magnified Skysplitter against the bot’s back.

Deepest Edge 65 > 66

Deception 20 > 21

Shiv spiked himself over thirty times as he cleaved deeper and deeper into the bot’s midsection. A mechanical scream sounded from the machine. It reached down to stop the blade—only for Shiv to discharge his Inertial Overdrive. The bot’s head snapped back at an awkward angle as it was flung limply through the air. Shiv frowned. Well, you were a disappointment.

But before he could capitalize and finish his foe off, waves of cascading Dynamancy drove his inertial discharge back. Shiv's eyes widened, and just then he felt a crushing mass press down on his body as well. Shiv spiked his field upward as the Dynamancers pressed down. Even so, he was slowed dramatically, and spells and attacks began to smash into him from all sides. Godsdamn Dynamancers, Shiv grimaced, but he was strangely impressed by the Inquisition's resilience and how fast they adapted to the conflict. 

A series of arrows crashed into his armor; most of them bounced off, breaking without inflicting any damage. However, an adamantine ballista punched deep through his chest piece, but didn't quite manage to break his skin. As Shiv ripped it out, a burst of Psychomancy caught him by surprise, but Uva’s strands wove around his head, and a clash of translucent mana exploded away from him, sparing his mind. A forest of Psychomancy strings erupted out from Shiv's cape, and it was also joined by two dozen drones that shot up into the air, screeching pitched frequencies. 

The automatized Pathbearers around Shiv went rigid, briefly stunned by whatever noise the drones were making, and Shiv took advantage of that. He cast himself three seconds back in time with his Chronomancy and the Inquisition lost track of him. The Dynamancers lost their hold on his body for the second time, Shiv detonated his Inertial Overdrive. As a new blast spread out, it killed a few dozen more soldiers before the Dynamancers responded, keeping the shockwave contained.

Strider of the Unbending Path 136 > 137

“Chronomancer! Chronomancer in our midst!”

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE OUR WARDS—AGHHHH!”

“CHRONOMANCERS! RESPOND! WE NEED—FELLING FUCK! THEY’RE DEAD. THEY’RE ALL—NO! NO!”

Several telepathic broadcasts followed, and each ended with a building weight of panic and terror. Shiv learned why as harrowing screams drew closer to him again. The orcs were back, and pushing in from the outside. And with Shiv at the center of their formation, the Inquisitors were caught in a brutal pincer they needed to adapt to.

“Rally!” A rasping voice bellowed. “Stand and fight! The Ascendants demand it! Stand you cowards!”

Inquisitors bearing tower shields slammed their weapons together, and flashing walls rose before them, resembling the battlements of a stronghold. Orcs crashed into these battlements, and the shield-bearing Inquisitors on the outside cried out as they were driven back. At the same time, Shiv’s Vitae Golem smashed into another column of magi and detonated its sheath. Bloody mist painted the air, and the white and red form of the golem flashed gold as it reverted back two seconds in time to perform the same action again against another column of magi.

Shiv triggered his Chameleon enchantment and vanished in the chaos. His Shape of Monstrosity fed his palate the flavors of morale-breaking terror along with the coppery stench of blood. And dread was addicting. Shiv applied his Psychomancy against himself—and only then noticed how Uva was tearing and breaking minds all around him.

The automata Inquisitors were also unresponsive. Their bodies were rigid, and their eyes were flickering. Shiv guessed Can Hu did some kind of machine-telepathy bullshit just now. Pretty powerful bullshit. Shit. I miss him acting as my armor.

Shiv charged through a group of magi—and found most of them with Veilpiercers in their eyes. He prepared to behead a tall elven Pathbearer—only for the poor fool to get dragged into a pocket dimension by Whisper. Orcs emerged from thin air to drag wicked blades across throats or unleash coiling serpents made from Necromancy. Shiv hissed and avoided the corrosive serpents—and felt someone bounce a knife off the back of his head. Shiv swung his knife in retaliation. It sparked off another blade as he took a boot to the chest—but Shiv pulled his field forward, tackling an invisible foe through a group of enemy Pathbearers.

As Shiv and his adversary rolled across the ground, he found himself grappling with an orc wearing a mask stitched together from flayed human faces. Recently flayed if judged by the smell.

“Godsdammit,” Shiv cursed, pulling the orc back to his feet even while the gray bastard kept trying to stab him. Shiv disabled his Chameleon and Creeping Void. “It’s me, dumbshit.”

The orc froze mid-stab. “Oh, Insul! Apologies! Quite the quaint little slaughter, eh?” And then, like he hadn’t been trying to murder Shiv for the past few minutes, the orc vanished again.

“This is absolute incoherent madness,” Uva cried out inside Shiv’s head. “What just happened was—the order would never accept something like this.”

“This is more a quality than a detriment for the orcs,” Valor said sourly. “No such thing as friendly fire.”

Shiv shook his head and continued searching for Sijik. “Where is that bald bastard. And how the felling shit am I supposed to find anything in this mess?”

The world around him had dissolved into pandemonium. The Inquisitors were retreating closer and closer together. Rippling blasts of fear bled from their very souls. Shiv looked over the heads of the Inquisitors and beheld a nightmarish sight. The orcs had strapped mutilated shield-bearing Inquisitors to their own tower shields and were using them to bash their fellows. Somewhere in the backdrop, Shiv thought he heard the sound of a wailing of a newborn—followed by a sickening crunch.

A loud burp came at the end of that. “Ah. Elven babies are the best.”

I recognize that voice—the felling fuck, that’s Male Pregnancy! Those godsdamned orc bastards lied to me! They said they killed hi—oh, shit! Bald! Bald! Sijik!

As a limbless body splattered against Shiv, he caught sight of a bald head as a beheaded orc blasted through a group of soldiers. Between scurrying bodies, darting arrows, and tides of fire was Master-Inquisitor Sijic. The man was dangling high in the air, and a swirling haze of ash shrouded around his body. He was kicking against something unseen, and a second thereafter, an orc Shadow turned visible. Waves of shifting Aeromancy bled off the orc’s body as he laughed at the struggling Master Inquisitor. But Sijik shaped a spell with a single gesture. The ash surrounding the man’s body poured into the orc's orifices in an instant. The beast stumbled back, and his head detonated in a welter of gore as obsidian fragments hatched free from his skull.

Yep, that orc was an idiot, Shiv commented to himself. He blasted towards the unaware Sijik. At the same time, the Vitae Golem returned. It detonated itself again among the Dynamancers, and an ambient weight pressing against Shiv vanished entirely, and the Deathless got even faster.

***

Screams. All Sijik knew were screams. All around him were screaming Inquisitors and deaths and orcs and so many orcs—

Something clipped his shoulder. Pain blossomed across his limb. But Sijik stared on, shell-shocked by the carnage unfolding around him. How… Why… Where did they come from…

These were scenes from a nightmare. A nonsensical nightmare. He was on the way to negotiate or force the release of the Animancy Core from Gate Lord Confriga and Compact. To claim the head of that traitor, Oldsmith. But now… Now he was caught in the jaws of madness. His expeditionary force of Masters and Heroes had been massacred in an instant. 

All around him, his people wailed. The orcs laughed with glee as they battered the Inquisitors down, ripping both armor and limbs from bodies. The clouds beneath Sijik’s feet vanished as the last of his Aeromancers abandoned the spell. Weightlessness took him. The Master-Inquisitor drew upon his Pryomancy Geomancy Skill Fusion. His Ashes of the Unkindled Wrath washed around him, and he flew up while so many of his people fell.

He needed breathing room. And then—and then he needed to—

Something slammed into his chest. Sijik felt his protective ashes burst apart—felt his ribs shatter. The Master-Inquisitor choked as one of his bones punctured his lung. But just as suddenly, his injured rip snapped back into place. His lung reinflated. A breath washed through Sijik’s body—but he never managed to exhale as a strong hand clenched his torso.

The Inquisitor gagged as a massive humanoid shape materialized before him. For a moment, he thought another orc had its hands on him. But this was no orc. No. They wore bone-like armor that also had the texture of scales. Bright green fluid dripped from the cracks of the armor as Sijik shaped a spell.

Or tried to.

The giant squeezed. Sijik’s sternum broke in half. Sijik’s spell died before it could take form and he let out a piercing cry. “Unhand me! Vile… abomination!”

The large figure chuckled amiably. “Ah, but I prefer to be called Omenborn. Inquisitor Sijik. Adam’s gonna be happy to see you.”

“Adam?” Sijik gasped. He writhed and struggled. His mind was awash in terror and pain. But from the sky came another voice—a voice he knew.

“Release him!” Sijik looked up to see Hero-Inquisitor Athena plunging fast atop her dragon. Relief and self-loathing flooded Sijik. For one, he was about to be saved. But he was going to be a saved by an impossibly arrogant woman that thought herself his better just because she had a Heroic-Tier Skill.

“Oh, good,” the bone-armored giant laughed. “You’re back again.” He regarded Sijik and looked down at something between them. Sijik then noticed a cord connecting him to the giant. It resembled a rusted chain with barbed needles poking out from it. “Yeah. You’re not going anywhere. This won’t take long. I’ll be right back. Uva. Put him to sleep. He’s going in the garden.”

“Wait—” Sijik called out.

Then, something pierced through his broken Magical Resistance and ripped into his mind. The world turned into a haze of swirling colors and incomprehension. The last thing Sijik saw before he lost track of himself was a Dimensional cape swallowing him.

***

Shiv’s Chronomancy field tremored as he glared at the fast-approaching dragon. Three hundred meters. Fast. The dragon flared its temporal shell first, and Shiv manifested his own Strider of the Unbending Path to counteract them. Time halted. The battlefield beneath them went still. The rider pointed her lance in-line with his skull this time, and Shiv held his arms open. 

He also unleashed he unleashed his Creeping Void and launched a decoy corpse to take the blow in his stead.

Shiv laughed as he watched the lance pierce through his decoy’s head. He cut off his Creeping Void before it could fully swallow the battlefield, then launched himself higher. As the dragon rider drove her long lance further through the decoy’s skull, Shiv lashed out with both Vitae and Biomancy to seize the offending Rider.

Deception 21 > 22

She thought she had impaled him—was accelerating even faster. Her vibrating lance drill clean through the corpse’s skull at an alarming speed. Shiv winced at just how potent her weapon. Or maybe it was her skill.

Whatever the case, it was a good thing she missed him earlier. That would have cost him a life without doubt.

His Vitae and Biomancy crashed into the rider at the same time. Her Magical Resistance flared bright and fractured from the impact. The rider let out a shout of pain—

***

Smite the Wicked can be used!

Adam felt his azure dawn erupt into a supernova as his arrows took a hundredth victim. With Propagating Salvo, every person he struck with his arrow resulted in a propagation of his Veilpiercers. The Inquisitors were hard of armor and Toughness, but with the orcs ripping through them as well, their deaths climbed.

And when they did die, Adam felt it. He tasted their vile deeds. Brief imprints of torture, of unlawful murder, of deceit, and sacrilege passed through his mind. The faces of innocents castigated for crimes they didn’t commit—or merely for using a skill the wrong way washed through Adam’s psyche as well.

Adam tried to hold onto those memories, to remember the ones that suffered. They vanished as quickly as they came, cast off into the howling dark by the hands of the Inquisitors.

Between the orcs jovial atrocities and these fresh horrors rushing through his mind, Adam’s sanity screamed. But then something emerged from his azure dawn. A stream of light flowed out into one of his Veilpiercers, infusing it with the colors of dawn and twilight. It contained the full weight of his wrath as well—the hateful screams of undeserved victims and noble souls delivered unto undignified ends.

JUSTICE IS A LIE! A chorus of voices screamed in his head. NOBILITY IS AN UNTRUTH. THE POWERFUL TAKE. THE VILE FEED AND FLOURISH. THIS WORLD IS RUST AND RUIN.

BUT YOU STILL REMAIN. YOU. WITNESS THESE MISDEEDS. YOU. BEHOLD THE DARKNESS AND DO NOT TURN. YOU. STAND FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT. FIGHT FOR THOSE WHO NO LONGER ARE. YOU. SERVE AS THE COUNTERBALANCE AND PUT BRUTAL POWER TO VIRTUOUS PURPOSE. 

JUSTICE WAS A LIE!

BUT MAY YOUR WRATHFUL HANDS DELIVER UPON THIS LAWLESS WORLD A MOMENT OF TRUTH!

And laid upon his bow was an instrument of death incarnate. Its brightness was a second star birthed upon the land, and as Adam tasted the power within his feat, he cast his Awareness skyward and drew his bow back.

A dragon came for Shiv as the slaughter of the expeditionary force continued on beneath them. A dragon with scales of gold. Atop, its rider was a woman with a corinthain-styled helmet. He could see her blood shot eyes—but more than anything, he could taste the sin radiating from her body.

She was an infection upon the world.

She was an enactor of wrongness and cruelty.

Her spirit called to his death-charged arrow, and the voices of the lost, the damned, the broken, and the meek goaded Adam to release his shot.

His eyes came aglow with Divination mana as he cast his Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant against her. Her dragon flashed with Chronomancy—but its path was sealed by the narrative of existence.

For the first time, Adam unleashed a soul-smiting arrow, and the world faded into a chasm of growing light.

***

—and she tore free from her saddle, she slipped out of the dragon’s temporal shell as well. Shiv prepared to finish her now that she was frozen in time—but just then, the dragon’s tail lashed out and knocked him back a few dozen meters by pure chance. Shiv turned his glare on the time dragon, and promptly batted it across the head with one of his mana hydras. The dragon’s face snapped off to the side with a blast of Biomancy, and Shiv slammed into his neck a moment after.

He drew his blade back—and froze. I… Well, I already got a few basilisks. A Court Leviathan. Yeah. I can have a dragon too. I deserve to have a dragon, too. You’re mine now!

Shiv struck the dragon’s Magical Resistance again, and it shattered, he reached into its mind using his Psychomancy. Animal instincts and feral rage spilled over into his consciousness. Shiv gritted his teeth but projected and order at the dragon. “Calm! Calm! Calm down, godsdamm—ah, fuck this.”

He seized the dragon by the neck and decided to choke it out instead. He had to use his Biomancy to figure out where its arteries to properly apply his blood-choke. The dragon thrashed for a moment, and Shiv nearly smacked himself when he realized he could have just pinched the dragon’s blood vessels with his Biomancy instead of doing this the crude way.

Or maybe not. Maybe I might just burst its blood vessels and kill it. Need more control.

The dragon wriggled hard, but despite behind nearly three hundred meters, it couldn’t quite reach Shiv with its arms, and it couldn’t turn its head around to bit at him. It briefly tried to go intangible, but Shiv smacked it across the head to spun it. Then, he continued on with the dragon strangling until it finally went still. Its temporal shell faded. He dismissed his Chronomancy as well.

Gravitic Wrestler 147 > 148

Shiv held on to the dragon with both hands as he chuckled to himself. The massive beast was limp but alive. “And now, let’s deal with—” A scream sounded behind him as the rider flew through the air, coming at him with a knife. Ah, there you are.

The Deathless prepared to swat the rider across the sky using her own dragon, but before he could do anything, a massive kilometer-long chasm of azure radiance tore open beside him, and a brilliant arrow struck the rider’s chest. The world vanished into a swell of all-consuming light. Shiv spiked himself back as he tried to blink the blindness out of his eyes, and judging from the screams coming from below, he wasn’t the only one.

“What in the Composer’s melodies was that!” Uva cursed, flinching from the light.

Shiv grimaced and swung his makeshift dragon-club from left to right. “I don’t—” The light faded as fast as it came. And through the air came a half-melted helmet that crashed into Shiv’s chest and dissolved on impact. A helmet worn by the rider. The rest of her body was gone as well.

Shiv blinked.

The orcs below blinked.

The Inquisitors were spared. Mainly due to many of them having been blinded and tortured by the orcs.

Nearby, a massive dimensional chasm remained in place. On the other side, Shiv saw Adam hovering in the distance, his own expression slack.

The Deathless and the Gate Lord just stared at each other for a beat. Then, below, the butchery resumed. The screaming restarted as the orcs got back to scratching their itches. Shiv awkwardly held his new dragon up using both hands and pulled Inquisitor Sijik out from his cape via a mana hydra. “So. I got Sijik and a new dragon.”

Adam nodded slowly. “I can see that. W-well done.”

Shiv grunted. “So. Uh. What the felling fuck did you just do?”

The Gate Lord’s mouth opened and closed. “I shot a… very angry arrow.”